Patent Application
20090205808
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a liquid cooling device and, in particular, to a liquid cooling device for multiple electronic components.
2. Description of Related Art
As modem computers have to process very complicated processes, its internal circuit design also becomes more complicated. Electronic components in the computers produce heat during their operations. Therefore, a liquid cooling device has been introduced. The liquid cooling device comprises several liquid blocks, a pump and a heat sink. The liquid blocks are filled with a coolant and directly mounted on the electronic components for absorbing heat generated from them. The liquid blocks are in liquid communications with the pump and the heat sink via tubing. Therefore, the pump operates to make the coolant circulate in the liquid blocks. The coolant thus transfers heat from the liquid blocks to the heat sink. After the heat sink dissipates the heat, the coolant can flow back to the liquid blocks for repeatedly heat dissipation.
From the above explanation, the existing liquid block is designed for a single electronic component. To dissipate heat generated by multiple electronic components on a mother board, the liquid-cooling heat-dissipating device has to have several liquid blocks respectively disposed on the those electronic components. However, this increases the production cost and complicates the assembling operations among those liquid blocks since a lot of tubing for connections is required.
To overcome the shortcomings, the present invention provides a liquid cooling device to mitigate or obviate the aforementioned problems.
An objective of the invention is to provide a liquid cooling device that can be applied to multiple electronic components.
To achieve the objective, the liquid cooling device comprises:
two liquid blocks communicating with each other via tubing and being filled with coolant, each of the liquid blocks for being mounted on an electronic component;
a heat-dissipating plate integrally extending from and being outside one of the liquid blocks for being mounted on another electronic component;
a pump being connected and communicating with any one of the liquid blocks via tubing; and
a heat sink being connected and communicating with the pump and any one of the liquid blocks via tubing.
The invention can achieve liquid-cooling effects for three electronic components just using two liquid blocks and the heat-dissipating plate. The invention does not only reduce the cost by having one less liquid block, but also simplifies the connections among the components by using fewer tubing.
With reference to
The first liquid block 20 is mounted on the north bridge chip 12 and has a base 21 and a cover 22. The base 21 has a bottom surface being in contact with the north bridge chip 12 and a top surface formed with heat-dissipating fins 211. The cover 22 is mounted on the base 21 and completely covers and seals the heat-dissipating fins 211 to accommodate the coolant. The cover 22 is formed with two inlet/outlet 221.
The second liquid block 30 is mounted on the image processing chip 13. The second liquid block 30 has the same structure as the first liquid block 20. One of the inlet/outlet 321 is connected via tubing 33 to one of the liquid inlet/outlet 221 of the first liquid block 20.
With reference to
The pump 50 is connected with one of the inlet/outlet 221 on the first liquid block 20 via tubing 51 so as to have liquid communications with the first liquid block 20.
The heat sink 60 is connected via two tubing 61 with the pump 50 and one of the inlet/outlet 321 on the second liquid block 30, respectively. The pump 50 operates to make the coolant circulate among the first liquid block 20, the second liquid block 30, the pump 50 and the heat sink 60. When the coolant absorbed with heat flows to the heat sink 60, the heat is dissipated into the environment by the heat sink 60.
The invention uses a heat-dissipating plate in combination with two liquid blocks 20,30 to absorb heat produced by three heat-generating electronic components. The heat-dissipating fins 41 on the heat-dissipating plate 40 can further enhance the heat-dissipating effect. In comparison with the conventional liquid cooling device, the invention has one less liquid block and thus a lower production cost. Moreover, the invention simplifies the connections among various electronic components.
Even though numerous characteristics and advantages of the present invention have been set forth in the foregoing description, together with details of the structure and features of the invention, the disclosure is illustrative only. Changes may be made in the details, especially in matters of shape, size, and arrangement of parts within the principles of the invention to the full extent indicated by the broad general meaning of the terms in which the appended claims are expressed.
