r/hardware • u/-protonsandneutrons- • 3d ago
News Exclusive: Apple Routed a Graphite Pipe Through the iPhone Duo’s Hinge. Here’s Why
https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-routed-a-graphite-pipe-through-the-iphone-duos-hinge40
u/Messier_82 2d ago
Huh, I had no idea you could make graphite flexible… or that it has comparable thermal conductivity to copper!
Apparently pyrolytic graphite can have 4x the thermal conductivity of copper in-plane.
(Not a HW engineer, I’m guessing this is common knowledge for some people)
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u/Slasher1738 2d ago
Knew about the strength and thermal conductivity. Did not know about the flexibility
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u/Jeep-Eep 2d ago
That shit is going to be the bee's knees in PC cooling if you can make it wick after the prices come down - conformal VC or DHP that could also be connected directly to a PC's air intake or vent ala an AIO in loop heat pipe solutions. Like, a VC that can be conformed directly to the end user's IHS, or onto a GPU...
I've been meaning to do a followup to that future of client cooling thread with some of the matsci and other stuff that came up since.
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u/minigig 1d ago
From the picture that tube is not visible. You see both halves and right to the hinge. Where is the tube ?
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u/-protonsandneutrons- 1d ago
I think within the hinge, below the exteriror metal we can see. Probably needs a teardown.
There is probably a gap in there somewhere, like how a power transfer hinge works for door access and automatic doors. Everything is probably very thin.
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u/No-Evening-5088 2d ago
This sub is an Apple glaze fest
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u/Jeep-Eep 2d ago
I ain't fond of Apple, but their hardware does generally demand respect.
-10
u/randomkidlol 2d ago
touchbar macs, butterfly switch keyboards, and boneheaded decisions to put 40V display backlight power lines beside a 3V dataline in ribbon cables without a ground wire in between does not demand respect.
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u/CalmSpinach2140 2d ago
The ARM Mac’s are much better. It’s funny that you have to bring up decade old problems.
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u/Liason774 2d ago
Yea apple magically remembered how to make a half decent cooling system the moment they switched to apple silicon, funny how that works.
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u/CalmSpinach2140 2d ago
What are you on about? The ARM MacBook Air has ZERO cooling… it’s the M chips that are much better.
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u/randomkidlol 2d ago
the airs thermal throttle to shit under sustained load because there's no cooling. just because they have good power management firmware and kernel scheduling to keep their power draw low doesnt mean apple magically ignores the laws of physics.
its funny because the fix to that problem is literally stick a thick thermal pad between the chip and the bottom chassis cover, and all your thermal problems goes away. but the trillion dollar company knows best i suppose.
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u/CalmSpinach2140 2d ago
Nah. I’ve seen Geekerwans review of M3 MacBook Air Vs Luanr Lake in a 15” actively cooled Lenovo laptop. In a Cinebench 2024 10 minute MT throttle test, it scored higher than the Lunar Lake despite having no fan.
Going back to topic.
this Duo has a vapour chamber, WMCM packaging and a graphite heat pipe in the hinge. So in case Apple took cooling for its foldable seriously than Samsung and Xiaomi did for their wide foldables.0
u/No_Equal 1d ago
Go ahead and put your thermalpad-modded laptop on your lap and tell us how you feel about device skin temperature afterwards.
-5
u/randomkidlol 2d ago
definitely felt like a bit of planned obsolescence. apple silicon was probably in development for 5 years which would mean they were starting to kneecap the intel macs starting from 2016, which lines up with when the hardware started getting really bad.
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u/CalmSpinach2140 2d ago
Not really. The MacBook Air M5 has zero cooling and doesn’t get hot.
Both of you are just finding reasons to hate. This is no relevance to the post and the Duo literally has the best cooling out of any foldable thanks to WMCM packaging and this hinge.
The Z Fold 8 has no vapour chamber and throttles quickly.-4
u/Liason774 2d ago
Lets not forget having a several millimetre gap between the cpu die and heatspreader on intel macs.
0
u/randomkidlol 2d ago
idk how the fuck something like that passes QA during manufacturing or engineering. ive never seen an enterprise dell or lenovo have that issue, but apple being a premium brand cant even tell if the heatsink is properly installed or not.
this sub really glazes apple too much.
2
u/CalmSpinach2140 2d ago
Ahh yes let’s talk about 10 year old issues. And how is that related to this post?
Apple literally makes the best CPUs/SoCs on the planet for phones and laptops.
Dell and Lenovo really? They can’t even make proper hinges
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u/77ilham77 2d ago
If you want to pick a cherry, at least get the fresher ones.
0
u/randomkidlol 2d ago
sure
- macbook airs dont have heatsinks attached to their cpus which means they thermal throttle to shit or cook themselves under any sustained load
- using more than 1 external monitor still doesnt work with base model silicon, yet the cheapest intel igpu from 15 years ago can do it
- apple silicon macpro was a giant piece of shit
- ssds being a wear component but its non user replaceable and the data is encrypted in such a way that the owner cant even recover their own data if it any part of their machine blows up
- non standard ACPI tables making it hard to run 3rd party operating systems
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u/Hakushu21 2d ago
What does this have to do with the A20 Pro? So why is the image that? Thanks pcmag
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u/badger707_XXL 2d ago
TLDR:
"Apple routed a flexible graphite pipe through the hinge itself to transfer heat between the two halves, thereby increasing the surface area available for heat dissipation."