Heatpipe Orientation?

Ok I have an old laptop without heatpipes right now and sometimes set it on its side to view tall pictures. I am planning to buy a new high end gaming laptop that will certainly have heatpipes. I know heatpipe efficiency can plumet if the wicking action has to go against gravity, but I am not too worried about the temperature issue since its just viewing pictures and such.

So my question is can the heatpipes themselves actually be damaged by using a laptop on its side?
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Hmm looked deeper into it for the last couple hours. Seems like it definitely should not be an issue in sintered powder heatpipes, which I believe is the type almost all laptop use, unless they are over 300mm which again would never happen in a laptop (just haven't seen any data for longer lengths and the data for up to that length show heat transfer getting progressively worse with length based on orientation, guess is even 600mm would be fine though really).

Data for mesh style wicking again seems fine though more questionable if over 200mm, but again unlikely to be an issue in a laptop.

Groove wicking however might be an issue if it was long enough or too far outside its optimal heat range.

Do any laptops even use groove style wicking in their heatpipes? Or can I just assume they are all sintered powder by now?

 

..I thought there only was sugar cone spun web mesh or something like that

No, seriously though. Sound science and good points. Gravity maybe would be significant at very low temperatures?

But since the heat-pipe in a laptop usually is bent in some way, I didn't think they could use tricks like that in the first place. Think they actually use some sort of copper&liquid/dirty water thing?

 

Hmm the more I think about it though the more I believe the heat-pipe could not get damaged. I suspect based on common materials in a sintered powder heat-pipe, that even if it became dry at the hot end and almost no heat transfer was occurring, that the chip would get destroyed long before the wicking in the pipe was. My best estimate based on wicking materials is you would need in excess of 200 Celsius.

And even a grooved heat-pipe should be able to overcome gravity almost completely for at least 5-10 cm and still have some function up into the 20-30cm range. A sintered powder heat-pipe should lose almost no efficiency till over 10-20cm even directly upside down making orientation irrelevant in a laptop.

Ok time to totally stop worrying about this, lol: learned a lot about how heat-pipes worked checking it out though hehe.


Edit: in response to post above me: yeah at a very low temperature difference between the chip and the heat sink (probably under 5 degrees celsius) a heat pipe might not function at all if upside down.

 

It won't damage anything, just the temps will run a lot higher than desired. This may end up in the fans running louder than desired as well even at idle.