Heat is a major enemy to your computer's performance as it can create resistance inside computer chip or any other circuit board. As resistance increases, voltage flow will decrease, which will cause a slow response of your PC. In order to minimize the heat building up inside your computer, new technology has been created and tested by a group of researchers at the Purdue University.

This new break-through in computer cooling systems has an incredible ability to improve air flow on the computer chip. The experimental device was funded by Intel. Purdue University researchers experimented with this improved ionic wind technology, which can produce a cooling rate of 250 percent as compared to other conventional cooling technology, which has only 40 to 50 percent of cooling efficiency.

The device is placed on top of a computer chip to help cool it down. The cooling device consists of positive charged wires (anodes) and negative charged electrodes (cathodes). Anodes are placed ten millimeters above cathodes (negative electrodes). When voltages pass through the device, the negative cathodes discharge electrons onto positive anodes. This electron jumping (onto positive anodes) passes through air molecules, producing positive charged ions. These ions would then be pulled back by the negative charged electrodes producing ionic wind effect.

This new improved tiny “Ionic Wind” engine combined with a conventional cooling fan creates air flow immediately to cool surface of computer chip. This new cooling technology will be ready in a year to use in today's computer and the next generation. It will also enable engineers to design thinner laptops that will run much cooler than today’s machine.

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Eventually, fans used to cool CPUs and motherboards in computers will be obsolete, as newer products enter the market in the "green" sense of the PC industry. Almost every component in today’s newer PCs are requiring much lower power consumption in addition to dissipating less heat.

CPU coolers, such as the Nirvana NV120 Premium, also turn in good performance for both Intel and AMD’s latest CPUs and run in near silence. These newer CPU coolers are also easier to install.

When cooling CPUs using water, heat is carried away from the source of heat such as a radiator. With the traditional heat sinks attached to older CPUs, the fins of the heat sink are mounted on top of the CPU. This keeps the heat generated from the CPU in the same vicinity since there is no other place to mount the it that would allow for heat dissipation. Water cooling allows for a transport mechanism to carry the heated water away to secondary units, usually a radiator. The water also allows for quieter running fans that not only “quiet” the noises of the fans, but also allow for speeding up the CPU’s by tweaking the frequency or “over-clocking" the CPU.

With the newer CPU Micro Architecture from both Intel and AMD, the power consumption has been constantly lowered while increasing the performance. While these newer chip technologies, such as Intel’s new 45nm CPUs may be known for their “green” effect, fans needed to cool the newer motherboards housing these multi-core socket CPUs have either been reduced or eliminated. When it comes to data centers, the savings in power more than makes up for the premium paid for newer technology of water cooled versus fan cooled.

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The first Central Processing Units (CPU) were introduced in the early 1960's, when IBM chose Intel's 8088 processor to serve as the 'brains' of the first computer. This was a very large, bulky computer which required a cavernous room to house its components. The CPU is the most important internal component of the computer system. The processor is the logic circuitry responsible for processing the basic instructions that drive the computer. This is called a microprocessor or a logic chip, and is the engine that goes into motion when the computer is turned on, designed to perform the complex logic operations.

After engineers figured out how to mass produce CPUs, the technology became more affordable for the average person to own. It was not until the late 1970's that the introduction of the integrated circuit made it possible for smaller CPU's to be manufactured. This enabled the transformation of very large computers to more affordable, smaller desktops and led eventually to our modern day laptops.

Microelectronic silicon computer chips have expanded their capabilities, from a single transistor per chip years ago to the millions of transistors per chip on today's chips. On larger computers, the CPU requires more than one circuit board, but on the smaller personal computer, the CPU is just a single chip. In today's computers the CPU's are very small and square, and each contains multiple metallic pins. In just 30 years, technology has gone from a 5 MGz processor to more than 2 GHz in processing power.

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Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore, both engineers, quit their jobs at Fairchild Semiconductor Company in 1968, to create their own company. Noyce presented Art Rock, a San Francisco venture capitalist, a one page business idea and in less than two days Rock raised $2.5 million dollars and Intel was born. Noyce and Moore decided on the name “Intel” for their new company.

The first central processing unit (CPU), also known as a microprocessor, was the Intel 4004 (U.S. Patent #3,821,715), introduced in November, 1971. Intel engineers Ted Hoff, Stan Mazor and Federico Faggin are credited with the invention. The Intel 4004 was a 4-bit universal microprocessor that was approximately the size of a thumbnail. It contained 2300 transistors and could execute 60,000 operations in a second. Shortly after the release of the Intel 4004, the Intel 8008 was released. The Intel 8008 was capable of doubling the operations of the Intel 4004. Today's 64-bit microprocessors, still based on similar designs, perform millions of calculations each second. The microprocessor is the most complex, mass-produced product ever and contains more than 5.5 million transistors.

The Intel 4004 microprocessor was designed when Busicom, a potential Japanese client, contacted Intel to design twelve custom chips for a desktop calculator. Busicom wanted separate chips, all for different operations, including printer control, keyboard scanning, etc. Intel had the brainpower to design a single chip that could, more efficiently, replace all twelve chips Busicom was requesting. Faggin and Hoff headed the design team and Mazor wrote the software for the new multi-purpose chip. The new Intel 4004 microprocessor was as powerful as the ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) computer (research funded by the U.S. military).

The Intel 4004 was 1/8” X 1/6” where as the ENIAC took 3,000 cubic feet of space and 18,000 vacuum tubes. Intel bought back the design and marketing rights from Busicom for $60,000. It only took Intel a few months to have the 4004 in widespread use due to their marketing plan for development of applications for this chip.

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Traditional air cooling has a long standing history of cooling things that run hot, starting with machines, automobiles, motorcycles; computers are no exception to this list. When the heat increases, and noise/airflow start to become a concern, the switch to liquid cooling has always been ready to proceed.

Without getting into the heavy rules of thermodynamics, liquid cooling absorbs heat much more efficiently than air. With air, you are limited to the shape and confines of your case. Air has to flow in through the case in increasing volume, and increasing the volume of the air means you have to have larger holes, faster and louder fans, and your filters have to keep up with all of this. Due to air’s low molecular density, it cannot ‘hold’ as much heat as the same volume of liquid. It is all about thermal conductivity and heat transfer.

With increases in graphics and processor technology packing more heat into smaller packages, the higher end systems will meet a point of diminishing returns for air cooling very quickly.

With liquid, the heat gets pulled into the liquid and away from your expensive electronics, routed through the tubing to the radiator, where it can be exhausted more efficiently across the radiator's greater surface area. The heat is literally drawn from the components, ‘condensed’ into the liquid rather than the air, and since there is more molecular surface to transfer the energy it gets transferred outside the case even faster than simple exhaust fan blowing.

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