Thermal High Power CPUs
Student: William Hansen, 2021-2022
Sponsor: Lenovo, Morrisville, NC
As PCs become more powerful, the increasingly dense electronics generate significantly more heat, leading to a perpetual and compounding cooling problem. It is necessary to dissipate this heat effectively and silently to maximize processor performance, reliability, and user experience. Current approaches to air cooling within Workstation computers is limiting the implementation of higher power CPUs due to generating excessive noise. On behalf of Lenovo, I am performing technical research, modeling, prototyping, testing, analyzing cost/performance tradeoffs and customer research, culminating in the model of a high power processor cooling solution for Workstation computers. It is necessary to either optimize air cooling or identify an alternative, more effective solution to maintain competitive edge in the high performance PC market. The solution must integrate into the existing chassis and hardware, satisfy brand marketing requirements, and be realistically manufacturable on a commercial level.