Captherm Systems MP1120 CPU Cooler Debuts At CES 2014

Now when it comes to tech products that grab my attention, Captherm Systems have done more than just grab my attention. To kick things off, it’s hard to ignore the fact that they have placed a large image of an explosion on the back of their booth with the tagline of ‘The birthplace of the MP1120… Where it all begins’. Now at this point, like you I’m a little baffled as to what this is all about. After all at this point, all I’ve got to go on is what I can see in front of me on the stand.

So what is all this fuss about? Well as it happens this explosive shot is more than integral to the production of what I think is a revolution in CPU cooling technology. Captherm Systems have been busy working away over the last eight years to create the cooler that we have before us and what makes this unit so special is the fact that it is a water based cooler that does not require any form of pump to transfer the heat away from the CPU block to the radiator. To do this, Captherm have worked on the principle that as the relative air pressure is lowered, the boiling point of water is greatly reduced, so much so in the case of the MP1120 that if you were to place the block on your hand, the water that can be seen through the hermetically sealed window will start to boil and rise up to the radiator as steam, where it then condenses and flows back down to the block. A 140mm fan on top of the radiator then helps to transfer the heat away from the unit and thus the cycle is repeated.

What’s more, Captherm state this this cooler has 500x the cooling efficiency of a traditional closed loop water cooling system, and because there is no pump required and that it can potentially run passively, the unit is virtually silent.

Where the explosives come into the mix of this sci-fi creation is with the metal base that is placed on top of the CPU to transfer heat to the system. Captherm place 1x1m square plates of copper, titanium, various grades of aluminium and stainless steel on top of each other and then place on top of that ~500lb of high explosives. The explosion causes the metal plates to bond together into a single hermetically sealed lump and the sample below is what is left after the explosion. This mixture of metals is what gives this remarkable cooler its high level of efficiency and revolutionary cooling capability.

To be honest this product has more than blown me away – even though ~500lb of explosives are used. If I had to give any product from this years show an award for tech innovation, with out I would have to hand it over to the guys at Captherm Systems. Timo Minx gives us a personal insight in to this coolers history in our video interview below: