Lenovo Cools the Thinkpad Helix with a Tiny Vapor Chamber

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

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If you are looking at a silent solution with the purchase of your next tablet, give the Lenovo Thinkpad Helix a look. Lenovo has forgone the noisy fan cooling system in favor of a small passive vapor chamber that eliminates the need for cooling fans completely.
 
I was seriously considering this machine over the Surface Pro 3 when I decided to go with the SP3 but the screen and design of the SP3 kind of won me over the Helix's more conventional docking solution but innovative cooling solution. I do however look forward to the day when all higher end convertibles and hybrids use a passive cooling solution are need none at all.
 
heatlesssun said:
I was seriously considering this machine over the Surface Pro 3 when I decided to go with the SP3 but the screen and design of the SP3 kind of won me over the Helix's more conventional docking solution but innovative cooling solution. I do however look forward to the day when all higher end convertibles and hybrids use a passive cooling solution are need none at all.
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No cooling solution? You mean like every 80386 sold in a personal computer? Go back to 1993 and leave 2014 alone for us modern people. Or maybe buy a piece of paper. I hear those don't need cooling.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
No cooling solution? You mean like every 80386 sold in a personal computer? Go back to 1993 and leave 2014 alone for us modern people. Or maybe buy a piece of paper. I hear those don't need cooling.
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So in 2014 all modern computing devices have active cooling solutions?
 
heatlesssun said:
So in 2014 all modern computing devices have active cooling solutions?
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No, but it's because of people like you who complain and moan anytime they have to carry around 50 lbs of cooling in the form of copper heat pipes, aluminum fins, and four 35,000 cfm fans that we can't have nice things anymore. :mad:
 
I'm perfectly fine with active cooling solutions and have plenty of them around in various forms. But nice things shouldn't need 10 times their weight in copper to work well don't you think?
 
LOL "Vapor Chamber" is marketing speak nonsense for heatpipe. Something used in every laptop heatsink since ever.
 
heatlesssun said:
I'm perfectly fine with active cooling solutions and have plenty of them around in various forms. But nice things shouldn't need 10 times their weight in copper to work well don't you think?
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Only nice non-computer things shouldn't need 10 times (Wait, only 10? What's wrong with you? A processor is really very light you know so a heat sink and fan or water cooling or some kind of air conditioner kinda cooling should be like hundreds of times heavier! Seriously, where are you even getting your information from? Who gave you a license to operate that thing? I bet it was sent to you via the postal service and you never showed up to take the actual test in person.) their weight in copper. Like my cat doesn't need any copper cooling and is soooo cute and fun. Paperback books don't usually need active cooling stuff either since passive is just fine. Computers should totally have a ton of cooling stuff attached. This thing with passive cooling just compromises performance and makes stuff too thin to install a reasonable battery and too easy to break if you accidentally put someone else's tablet on the top of their car and they don't realize it when they start driving and accidentally squish it which wouldn't happen if it was the size of a sofa sleeper because it'd be way too hard to miss (though I guess you could mistake it for living room furniture and think it's supposed to be on your car's roof because you're moving between apartments or something, but what are the odds of that happening right?)
 
BryanSTG said:
LOL "Vapor Chamber" is marketing speak nonsense for heatpipe. Something used in every laptop heatsink since ever.
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Vapor chambers are flat and in this case only .5 mm thick and it's fanless so this is much more than marketing as fanless cooling solutions are still pretty rare in non-Atom x86 mobile devices. And the design has many tangible impacts such as weight, durability, noise and heat dissipation. How well this design dissipates heat is critical to how well received this hybrid will be. If it does the job well some will buy this machine because it is a non-Atom x86 device with no fan.
 
BryanSTG said:
LOL "Vapor Chamber" is marketing speak nonsense for heatpipe. Something used in every laptop heatsink since ever.
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It is quite different than a heatpipe..but thanks for playing the "Did he read/watch before commenting game". You win a prize of exactly 2 feet in your mouth.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
It is quite different than a heatpipe..but thanks for playing the "Did he read/watch before commenting game". You win a prize of exactly 2 feet in your mouth.
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I think it's just a kneejerk reaction that's always skeptical of any claims that companies make these days about anything new or innovative and it's always "just marketing and that stuff has been around forever". Very little is indeed something totally new under the sun but there are those instances where companies actually do things that do push the envelope and are far from common. I doubt most people have ever seen a .5 mm think heat pipe or a fanless non-Atom hybrid, even in a place like this. I know I haven't.

Effective cooling and thermals are about the last piece of the puzzle technically when it comes to non-Atom x86 tablets. Getting these kinds devices to run at full speed without fans and lots of heat is still an Achilles heel for most of them. If the Helix 2 can lick these issues it would be a major engineering feat and worthy of some praise. I'll be very interested to see how this cooling really works under sustained load.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
It is quite different than a heatpipe..but thanks for playing the "Did he read/watch before commenting game". You win a prize of exactly 2 feet in your mouth.
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I did watch the video and its marketing BS must have worked on you.

It is a .5 mm thick vapor chamber, which is ... a .5 mm heat pipe. How is that quite different? It sounds exactly like a flat, thin, heat pipe that works the same way.
 
heatlesssun said:
Vapor chambers are flat and in this case only .5 mm thick and it's fanless so this is much more than marketing as fanless cooling solutions are still pretty rare in non-Atom x86 mobile devices. And the design has many tangible impacts such as weight, durability, noise and heat dissipation. How well this design dissipates heat is critical to how well received this hybrid will be. If it does the job well some will buy this machine because it is a non-Atom x86 device with no fan.
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It is the same thing and works the same way. Heat pipes do not have fans an can be any shape you make them. They're also almost always flat in laptops for obvious reasons, which makes this "vapor chamber" a heat pipe.

Please explain the difference between a flat heat pipe and a vapor chamber.
 
BryanSTG said:
I did watch the video and its marketing BS must have worked on you.

It is a .5 mm thick vapor chamber, which is ... a .5 mm heat pipe. How is that quite different? It sounds exactly like a flat, thin, heat pipe that works the same way.
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How many devices do you know of that use a .5 mm heat pipe fanless design? For a non-Atom x86 device it's far more than simple marketing but a rare and very unique cooling solution that if effective would be almost a revolution in these devices as cooling and thermals have long be a difficult issue with these kinds of devices.
 
BryanSTG said:
Please explain the difference between a flat heat pipe and a vapor chamber.
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Vapor chamber or flat heat pipes[edit]

Thin planar heat pipes (heat spreaders) have the same primary components as tubular heat pipes: a hermetically sealed hollow vessel, a working fluid, and a closed-loop capillary recirculation system.[9] In addition, a series of posts are generally used in a vapor chamber, to prevent collapse of the flat top and bottom when the pressure is lower than atmospheric, which is 100 °C for water vapor chambers.

There are two main applications for vapor chambers. First, they are used when high powers and heat fluxes are applied to a relatively small evaporator.[10] Heat input to the evaporator vaporizes liquid, which flows in two dimensions to the condenser surfaces. After the vapor condenses on the condenser surfaces, capillary forces in the wick return the condensate to the evaporator. Note that most vapor chambers are insensitive to gravity, and will still operate when inverted, with the evaporator above the condenser. In this application, the vapor chamber acts as a heat flux transformer, cooling a high heat flux from an electronic chip or laser diode, and transforming it to a lower heat flux that can be removed by natural or forced convection. With special evaporator wicks, vapor chambers can remove 2000 W over 4 cm2, or 700 W over 1 cm2.[11]

Second, compared to a one-dimensional tubular heat pipe, the width of a two-dimensional heat pipe allows an adequate cross section for heat flow even with a very thin device. These thin planar heat pipes are finding their way into “height sensitive” applications, such as notebook computers and surface mount circuit board cores. These vapor chambers are typically fabricated from aluminum extrusions, and use acetone as the working fluid. It is possible to produce flat heat pipes as thin as 1.0 mm (slightly thicker than a 0.76 mm credit card). [12]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe#Vapor_chamber_or_flat_heat_pipes

The big deal here though isn't the vapor chamber or heat pipe per se, it's that such a thin one can be effective without a fan.
 
Are you sure its not just a heatpipe that is in contact with the metal LCD lid?

And, I doubt its all that effective, its just likely has very little heat to transfer in the first place. Its probably using some extremely low power processor. My old ass Dell Mini 9 for example was fanless, as the Atom 270 processor just didn't output much heat.
 
Ducman69 said:
Are you sure its not just a heatpipe that is in contact with the metal LCD lid?

And, I doubt its all that effective, its just likely has very little heat to transfer in the first place. Its probably using some extremely low power processor. My old ass Dell Mini 9 for example was fanless, as the Atom 270 processor just didn't output much heat.
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It is just a heat pipe, which is why I'm confused about the hype. It's not a new invention or discovery and definitely not news.
 
Ducman69 said:
Are you sure its not just a heatpipe that is in contact with the metal LCD lid?

And, I doubt its all that effective, its just likely has very little heat to transfer in the first place. Its probably using some extremely low power processor. My old ass Dell Mini 9 for example was fanless, as the Atom 270 processor just didn't output much heat.
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There's nothing that special about fanless Atom designs, there all over these days. This is a Core M that goes up to 2.6 Ghz and would crush even a Bay Trail Atom in top end performance. This chip only has a TDP of 4.5 W so no, this cooling solution doesn't have to deal with a lot of heat. However that's still twice power what most ARM and Atom SoCs have to deal with. The question is how well this thing cools understand sustained load, that will be the challenge here.
 
BryanSTG said:
It is just a heat pipe, which is why I'm confused about the hype. It's not a new invention or discovery and definitely not news.
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Again, it's not so much the heat pipe but that it's a fanless non-Atom design and there's just not that many devices out there like that. That's the big deal.
 
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