A heat pipe is a sealed metal container, commonly shaped into a long copper tube but they can also be made in a flat wide shape. Inside the container is a small amount of distilled water and a couple other ingredients that help with the heat distribution.



One end of the pipe is placed onto the heat source (cpu/gpu) and as it gets hot the water begins to vaporize and move as steam up the center of the pipe. As it reaches the top of the pipe it cools, condenses back into water, and flows back down the sides. This provides excellent heat dissipation, and can be combined with a heatsink at the top as well.



There is no risk of a leak, because of the low quantity of water and also if the container does rupture it will suck air in due to its low pressure. There is no need to clean algae or refill the pipe, as it is designed to run as many as 100,000 hours without service.



The Xbox360 already has a heatpipe built into the cpu heatsink, so this isn't exactly a breakthrough in technology. In this case, they have replaced the normal gpu heatsink with one containing the bottom end of a heatpipe. The pipe exits the front of the gpu, and ends in a small heatsink off to the side in front of the cpu heatsink.





(Photos sent to xbox-scene by =Ikari= )



Well we can be happy that Microsoft finally found a solution to keep 360s from coming right back to their repair shop. It remains to be seen whether they decide to start installing these in every console at the factory, but I'm guessing that they will eventually. I'm honestly surprised that they didn't start factory installing these on the new Elite model when they came out.



If they get around to reducing the cpu to a 65nm as rumored (down from the current 90nm) and start installing the heatpipe on the gpu, it's possible that we might have seen the end of the 360 overheating epidemic for good!