The next frontier in liquid cooling -- laptops

If you think the iPad 3 is hot, try holding a $3,000 gaming laptop on your knees while you're playing Mass Effect 3. While high-performance desktops have had the luxury of using liquid cooling to chill their red-hot components, notebooks have been forced to rely on humble air-cooling solutions to try to keep heat to a minimum.

Asetek, a leader in PC cooling, is trying to change that, having just released a video that shows off a liquid cooling system that can not only work in laptops, but also in all-in-one desktop PCs. The company claims that its new patented solution has overcome previous attempts at liquid cooling portables, which offered little advantage over traditional heat sinks.

In the video, Asetek shows an overclocked Alienware M18x using its laptop liquid cooling to provide a 23% boost in performance on the 3D Mark Vantage benchmark, while also lowering noise output. (Interestingly, no claims about reduction in temperature are noted.)

Since this is more of a proof-of-concept video, Asetek hasn't yet announced any partners that will ship with the new cooling system. But if gaming PC manufacturers start adding this as an option, would you be willing to pay the inevitable added expense to buy a liquid-cooled laptop (or all-in-one PC)? Let us know in the Comments section below.