“Last week Apple Computer, Inc. introduced its most powerful Power Mac model to date, which sports two 2.5GHz G5 processors and a nifty liquid cooling system (LCS). Curiosity surrounding the new LCS is running high as Apple officials have recently reiterated warnings that other G5 products from the company remain a long-shot due to G5 heat issues,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.
“Aiding some of the curiosity, sources have recently provided AppleInsider with side and rear-view diagrams of the new Apple LCS, which detail some of its many components,” Marsal reports.
Full article with diagrams here.
Joe McConnel, you think that’s overkill? Would you rather have this for liquid cooling:
http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?idx=63&code=021
Cool tower; pity about the brick beside it.
hmmmmm. water heats, why don’t they use Anti-freeze it don’t boil like water?
“hmmmmm. water heats, … “ – jayyy
Wouldn’t be much of a cooling system if the fluid can’t heat, would it? That is the whole purpose: transfering heat from the processor to the fluid.
jayyy,
It probably isn’t just water. We all don’t live in the sun belt. 100% Anti-freeze jells if it gets too cold. It is probably 30% or so Anti-freeze. Good for 10� C below.
To Al
bingo….. thats what i meant … a percentage of anti-freeze and water would give it longer life.. etc. etc.
Ahh, gotcha. ‘Kay, here is the composition according to Apple-X.net
The LCS cooling system fluid is predominantly water (80% or greater) with a mixture of corrosion inhibitors, antifreeze, and bacterial growth preventatives.
Blaster, good surfing. I just wonder why the water cooler is necessary. I am actually used to more intelligent designs, for instance http://www.overclockers.com/articles651/ , which I have used to cool overclocked amd xp2400’s with a single slow fan. I thought I read here and elsewhere that the g5’s were efficient. Maybe they are and this water cooling is being tested to accomodate the eventual 3.0 and above? Or maybe they aren’t. wtf knows?
Apple did a great job to fit the water cooling system into a small cube. I hope all the fans can be designed out of the PowerMac to minimise the noise it makes. iMacs and the Cube were silent Macs but for one reason or another Apple abandoned the fan-less design. If water-cooling becomes a standard feature for future Powermacs then we could see a return of the silent Macs.
Wondering how long the cooling pump will last and what a repair or exchange will cost. What happens when it failes, does the machine shut down? Does anybody know if Apple will implement a cooling monitor in Tiger?
This is all just fascinating to me – can’t wait to see one of these units in action! With the one notable exception above, thanks for the good discussion, links and info.
As for the potential cost of repairs, I think there should be no question that an AppleCare Warranty purchase would be in order for anything that will pair electronics and even the remotest of chances for an event involving liquid to occur internally, and without warning. Highly unlikely, given how sturdily built the system appears to be, but nonetheless not out of the realm of possibility. Interesting that the AppleCare Protection Plan is still just listed at $249.
I agree with NoMacforYou! I have four labs full of Macs,
but LIQUID COOLED! Does the average home user really need
a liquid cooled system. I could see if Apple was catering
to a high-end market like Sun or HP does where even slight performance gains in hardware are important to their clients. As was mentioned above, once again, liquid cooled
systems are nothing new, but i’m sure Apple will have a
huge marketing campaign to launch their “new” system.
I’d sure like to know how reliable these systems will be
since we recently took delivery of two new G5 computers
that were D.O.A out the box.