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Hardware

Vapor-phase Processor Cooling 167

Posted by CowboyNeal from the over-the-top-approaches dept.
Econolinecrush writes "If even exotic water-cooling isn't enough for your processor cooling needs, there's always vapor-phase cooling. The Tech Report has an interesting review of Asetek's latest Vapochill system, an admittedly pricey cooling option, but one that manages to fight off condensation while keeping even high-end processors running at sub-zero temperatures. A little extreme? Sure, but it's undeniably cool nonetheless." I haven't seen a cooling system this intense since my organic chemistry labs.
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Vapor-phase Processor Cooling More

Vapor-phase Processor Cooling

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  • The thing you people miss... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by unterderbrucke ( 628741 ) <unterderbrucke@yahoo.com> on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:47PM (#5533404)
    ...is that processors actually have a limit to how much they can be cooled. To be cooling it below zero is a ridiculous waste of power, money, and will only shorten the lifespan of your CPU.

    • Re:The thing you people miss... (Score:5, Funny)

      by neostorm ( 462848 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:50PM (#5533420)
      Yes, but who doesn't want to have the coolest processor around?

    • Re:The thing you people miss... (Score:5, Informative)

      by LBArrettAnderson ( 655246 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:52PM (#5533438)
      partly true, partly false. Cooling a CPU increases its lifespan (as if they'll die before they're 1/1000 the speed of newer cheaper processors). All you have to do is cool AROUND the threads. They can get as hot as they want, and as long as they don't melt the silicon (around) or other stuff, it should be perfectly fine. If I could have a processor cooled to 20 K, i'd do it.
      • They can get as hot as they want, and as long as they don't melt the silicon (around) or other stuff, it should be perfectly fine

        sorry; i guess that may have been misleading. The hotter the metal gets, the slower it goes, but we're talking about cooling it even more, so yeah...

      • No, you are wrong

        The life of a silicon device is limited by the molecular diffusion of it's N-P gates or the migration of metal and Silicon at the interfacees.

        This migration is based on a exponential factor of exp(-t/KT) -- t: time T: Temperature (K)

        You cannot get it as hot as you want, you'll diffuse the materials together and you will lose the sharp metallurgical transitions necessary for the gates.

        And before you chide me for referencing NP gates in a CMOS world... Remember that we still have transito

      • I'm not really concerned about my processors lifespan. I've got a bunch of computers out in the garage with perfectly good processors in them. Processors become obsolete long before they wear out.

        I dunno, this whole project seems to me to be one of those geeky "cool to think about" things. I'd take one if they were free, but no way I'm gonna pay money for it.

    • What? That's just stupid. Of course you're not going to actually run it below zero. However, more cooling = more voltage = more multiplier. Investing in an expensive cooling system lets you overclock more than one chip.

      For instance, you spend $200 on your cooling system, save 150 on an equivalent CPU, then upgrade your CPU six months later and save another 150.

      • Re:The thing you people miss... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        However, more cooling = more voltage = more multiplier

        offtopic physics lesson: the voltage stays the same, the current increases.
        • No, when it's cooler, you can increase the voltage without it crashing. The higher the voltage, the more performance you will be able to squeeze out of it, at the expense of heat. So you need something like this to dissipate that heat.

          • Re:The thing you people miss... (Score:1, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            voltage = potential difference from start to finish. There is a certain charge on the power supply that doesn't change, and at the end of the power supply that doesn't change. More resistance causes less current to flow.
            • It's somewhat counter-intuative but the stopper is really capacitance. it takes so much energy to charge the transitors and interconnectios so the higher the clock freq, the more energy it takes. on the other hand reducing the size reduces the capcitance and the energy requirements and therefore the heat generated by the cpu core, thats while when all other things are equal a 13 micron processor will run faster than a 25 micron processor.

        • Re:The thing you people miss... (Score:5, Informative)

          by The Clockwork Troll ( 655321 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:09PM (#5533530) Journal
          Actually both typically increase when overclocking.

          The poster probably meant that you can run a higher Vcore without as much concern for the increased temperature that results (from the increased current).

          For those who don't know, you typically run a higher Vcore when overclocking a system in order to improve stability (i.e. in order to ensure that CPU signals can still ramp up/ramp down to valid voltages quickly enough at the faster clock rate).

          For those who know more than I, please feel free to correct me or elaborate where I've oversimplified.

    • Re:The thing you people miss... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Quelain ( 256623 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:43PM (#5533662)
      What is this limit then? As far as I could find out, about 40 K (yes Kelvin) is the lower limit for doped silicon, because the dopants 'freeze out' at that point.

      I assume you mean 0 degrees celsius when you say 'below zero', so how does the freezing point of water have anything to do with the performance of silicon semiconductors vs temperature?

    • Re:The thing you people miss... (Score:4, Informative)

      by anethema ( 99553 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @10:05PM (#5533763) Homepage
      Cooling it is NOT a waste of power and it will NOT shorten the life of your cpu.

      The cooler you run your cpu, the longer it will last. Yes, between -1 and -30 (celcius)you WILL be able to overclock more.

      The reason you can overclock more is this: To get a higher clock speed out of your cpu, you need to increase the voltage its running at. The problem comes from the fact that when you raise the voltage, you substantially raise the temp your cpu is putting out, and if you dont dissipate this heat, you will get lockups and instability.

      This way, if you have your cpu running at a crazy high voltage, you can get crazy high clockspeeds out of it.

      Here [tomshardware.com] is an example of a cpu that was clocked at around 2.2 ghz and got to over 3 ghz with a vapochill system.

      You will never see that with watercooling (room temp) or aircooling.

      So obviously there is reason to cool the cpu down past 0 degrees C.

      Now it just comes to the question, do you want to spend that much money on cpu cooling.

      For that price you could buy several new cpu's. On the other hand, you can use the vapochill system on any new cpu you buy, so i guess its up to you to decide :D
      • The cooler you run your cpu, the longer it will last. Yes, between -1 and -30 (celcius)you WILL be able to overclock more.

        Cooling the processor below the dewpoint of the room air will shorten your processor's life. Water does not mix well with electronics.

        • Re:The thing you people miss... (Score:4, Informative)

          by PurpleFloyd ( 149812 ) <zeno20@@@attbi...com> on Monday March 17, 2003 @11:15PM (#5534127) Homepage
          Cooling CPUs below the dewpoint won't hurt them at all if you are careful to seal everything well. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with it; it just means you have to be careful about sealing off the areas to be cooled. Most vaporphase and Peltier cooling systems are insulated quite well around the chilled area, with closed-cell foam and lots of sealants (mostly silicone). The Vapochill system even includes a little heater to place on the backside of your motherboard to keep it around room temperature.

          In fact, lowering the temperature of the CPU will actually increase processor life, all other things being equal. Heat can and will shorten a processor's life; a process called "thermal electron drift" will cause the transistors to fail (perhaps someone more intelligent than I could fill in the details; I just know it ruins processors and the rate is directly proportional to the heat of the CPU over long periods of time).

    • well heres my 2 cents to this first of what YOU are missing this is a novelty its not ment to be for high end servers although . . . its like people that supper charge cars to get more speed second off the reason that the processor runs soo much better at these cool tempratures is 2 things. The frist is that at room temprature anything that conducts electricity automaticaly resists the flow of electrons the only way to get true conductivity would be to freze the material to absoloute zero. which may or ma

    • Re:The thing you people miss... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Do they really have a limit? Do you have any data to back that up? In your comments in the last cooling article you express that you don't know how it works but now all of the sudden you are an expert?

      Overclockers have tried cooling with liquid nitrogen, helium, dry ice, flourinert, PCBs, mineral oil, vapor phase change, water, air and all the above in conjunction with peltiers to drop another 10 degrees C off their lowest temps.

      Of all the documentation of overclocking attempts I have ever read, destructi

    • Actually, for overclocking, cooling below 0 is the closest thing to sensible out there. The gates really can switch faster than spec when kept that cool. Otherwise, you either get lucky that your CPU was binned at a higher speed than marked, or your system will be less than stable.

      Of course, after spending all that time and money, the next stepping will come out that handles the same speed at half the cost and none of the risk.

      Of course, if it's being done just for the hack value, whatever floats your b

  • Maybe this is what I need (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:48PM (#5533407)
    To run my Cray III supercomputer in my basement.
  • , an admittedly pricey cooling option, but one that manages to fight off condensation while keeping even high-end processors running at sub-zero temperatures. A little extreme? Sure, but it's undeniably cool nonetheless." I

    Undeniably cool? Or freezing cold?

  • VapoChill? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ralphart ( 70342 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:48PM (#5533411)
    ...Just the thing for running the latest vaporware release!
    • ...Just the thing for running the latest vaporware release!

      I want to play Duke Nukem Forever, but I think I'd have to be the one frozen if that's ever going to happen.

  • sweet (Score:2, Funny)

    by uidzer0.org ( 659497 )
    at last my 486 becomes useful again!

  • here's a thought... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:50PM (#5533422) Homepage Journal
    underclock. even out of the factory, CPUs are basically overclocked for all intensive purposes. I know thats not what you all want to hear. But every advance that the chipmakers make that should be able to reduce the heat coming off a processor ends up getting put into running it faster instead. I grant its good for the MHz race, but the MHz race in the long run isn't really that good of an idea.
    • intensive purposes

      I think you meant for all intents and purposes, although it is true that CPUs are overclocked for intensive purposes as well.

    • I could not resist.

      You meant to say "for all intents and purposes" instead of "for all intensive purposes."

      Sorry. Just trying to squash the stereotype that we all can't write or spell.

    • Re:here's a thought... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Klaruz ( 734 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:30PM (#5533617)
      Does anybody have some resources on doing this? How far down can I underclock a chip? How much of a difference does it make? How about notebook chips? etc...

      I've read a lot on things like flower coolers, silent power supplies, hd enclosures, etc, but I've never ran across any good info on underclocking. I wouldn't mind spending a bit extra for a faster chip so I could underclock and have a quiet system. My 1.4 athlon is loud and plenty fast (heck my 667 g4 is fast enough for me). I wouldn't mind my next pc being a 2.5ghz system run at 2ghz or something, but silent.

      • A few answers... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )
        Reducing speed in itself does not change wattage in any way. However, with a lower speed, you can also use a lower current (less "driving force" to change from 0 to 1 and vice versa). Notebook chips have circuitry that lets them change their power drain on-the-fly, something desktop processors can't do (or I think the PIV can, but only if overheating, not software controlled).

        The base power gain is equal to the square of the voltage difference (That is, 90% voltage = 90%*90% = 81% power use), which in turn

        • Re:A few answers... (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          dynamic power dissipation depends on frequency

          (Pd = C*VDD^2*f)

          so decreasing frequency will also decrease power dissipation

        • geez (Score:2, Informative)

          by lingqi ( 577227 )
          u guys ever actually know anything before sprouting off? or what?

          a CPU is not a resistor, so don't expect the power-drain to be similar to be a linear thing like a resistor.

          CMOS process (read about how they work) forms a channel for one of the two transistors, and to form the channel the power needed is in the nA (nano-amp) range. to maintain the channel, similar.

          but when CMOS drains power is when the pair switches - i.e. both transistors are partially ON. current flows from power to ground through a rel

        • There may be limits to underclocking (probably are), but they will be more forgiving than overclocking. In general, the logic state transitions will happen on the clock pulse, but will not be latched right away in order to give the level a chance to stabilize. It will then continue in that state until the next clock. If the signal arrives 'early', all it means is that it has even longer to stabilize.

          The limits come in from things like capacitor leakage. There are processors that can be stopped just by tur

      • Your real barrier to underclocking is the CPU PLL multiplier setting, if it's fixed, you can only go about 20% or less below the spec clock speed. You'll start having problems with the Frontside bus and PCI/AGP busses, also the refresh timing for the SDRAM may get out of spec if you go too slow and the system clocks are not independent.
        If you have a PowerPC or unlocked Athlon, you should be able to clock down to 100MHz if you want to..
        Modern CMOS is fully static, you could go to DC, if the PLL could handle
        • Back in the old days when we walked twenty miles to school bare-footed in waist deep snow uphill both ways our CMOS computers used static circuits and static ram, 500 nSec. there was a switch on the front that would disable the clock oscilator and connect the clock line to a push-button and to debug a program the computer you would single step through it, by single stepping the computer, push the button, the clock line cycled once and you could figure out what the programming was doing with a comparison to
    • underclock. even out of the factory, CPUs are basically overclocked for all intensive purposes. I know thats not what you all want to hear. But every advance that the chipmakers make that should be able to reduce the heat coming off a processor ends up getting put into running it faster instead. I grant its good for the MHz race, but the MHz race in the long run isn't really that good of an idea.

      Silly me, I have just been buying dual cpu boxes instead. Then again, I only need that high of performance on
    • It's "intents and purposes," not "intensive purposes." Yeah this'll prolly get modded -1 Offtopic, but I feel like being a bastard. :)
    • underclock.

      I do. I usually run my Athlon XP2000 at 100MHz FSB instead of the 133MHz it's rated for. Keeps the CPU at about 39C instead of almost 50C and it also keeps the room a lot cooler too :)

      I think it'd be a pretty good idea if desktop computers supported a speedstep feature like laptops have... Or even better, being able to assign different performence levels to specific apps. The only thing I want full space-heater level peformence is when I'm running games, Divx encoding or Photoshop. I don'
    • ...underclock.

      Yes, it will increase the life of your processor. A bit. Probably. It will also definitely save power--only really an issue in a notebook.

      On the other hand, I've never had a problem with a CPU being the first component to fail in my computer. (Hard drives with their moving parts tend to go long before.)

      Instead of buying a top of the line CPU for the purpose of underclocking (and paying a premium), buy a chip rated for the speed you would have underclocked to. Use the dough you saved

    • CPU makers normally downgrade their CPU's for the purpose of stability... if they ship out a new processor that they grade as "3.5ghz!", sure, it can run at 3.5, but you can usually go up some mhz until you start to notice system instability.

      Yes, some chips aren't stable right from the factory, but for all intensive purposes, chipmakers would rather loose 100mhz or more to avoid risking the lable of "instable".

  • Fridge? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:53PM (#5533445) Homepage Journal
    If I'm not mistaken, vapor-phase cooling is just an ordinary refrigeration cycle.

    Geeks, of course, always go for the term that would sound coolest on the bridge of the Enterprise.
    • That's exactly what it is. Reading that article gave me flashbacks from Thermodynamics... (shudder)
    • Geeks, of course, always go for the term that would sound coolest on the bridge of the Enterprise.

      that's what being a geek's all about. Cool Names = more people think you're a nerd = more isolation from the "norm" = more time alone at home going to... certain... websites...
    • you know the first time you heard "Vapor-Phase" you drooled in want!

      well, I did. And I still do. It might just be a fridge, but it's a damn good one.

      • It might just be a fridge. Actually its a bit small for a fridge, If you could canablize a dorm sized fridge and was good bending tubing, you could probablby get about 8 quad processor mobo's to fit and you'd have about the coolest over-clocked beowolf cluster arround. Maybe put in a pump and have it recirculate WD40 over the non-cpu parts of the boards for cooling the memory and controling condesation.

        Image the looks on your friends faces the first time they helped themselves to a beer.
        • I dunno. I have a 3.5 ton refridgeration unit for my data center. I can store meat in that room with the thermostat down.

          Not really tied to the processor mind you, but it does toss a monkey wrench into Newton's law of cooling... Drop the room temperature 30 degrees farenheit and you will see a marked increase in the amount of cooling ANY type of heat sink is capable of.

        • Graphite in an oil suspension. Graphite is a conductor. I have seen what happens when you apply voltage to curcuits that have been sprayed with WD40.

          Not Pretty.

          • I've never seen any trace of graphite in WD40, I buy the stuff in Gallon cans. WD40 is typicaly used for cleaning, it'll cut thru waxes and grease and adhesives pretty good. A well known use is is to use it to dry out wet electrical devices , just power off anything that might arc before application. I frequently use it on the base of light bulbs before I replace them, they screw in and out a lot easier and last about twice as long because the bases don't arc through.

            Now if you said it's a bad IDEA becaus
    • well, actually, now that I think about it, It's not just an oridinary refridge cycle. It is an extremeley powerful fride cycle. After all, It takes a component that would normally light on fire, and makes it less that ambient temperatures. Show me a frdige thatcan do that

      • It's all a matter of pressure and materials.

        The temperature gradient is not that large. The freezer section of your refrigerator can maintain a temperature gradient of over 100 degrees in a several cubic foot box. The CPU cooler only has to deal with one tiny hotspot.

    • Unfinished business (Score:5, Funny)

      by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:57PM (#5533725) Homepage Journal
      PICARD: Data, what is our damage status?

      DATA: All shield, weapons, and propulsion systems are offline. We are being drawn into the nearby star Jhi-Quwo IIV. Hull temperature is reaching maximum tolerances. I estimate destructive hull breach and core detonation in 23 minutes...22:59...22:58...

      PICARD: Geordi! Is there anything we can do?

      GEORDI: Well, Captain, there is one possibility...but there may be risks.

      PICARD: We're in a risky situation now! What is it?

      GEORDI: I've run some analysis and we may be able to slingshot around the star and get to a safe distance -- if we can survive that long. Currently we will be unable to withstand the heliosphere of that star. But there is a chance...

      PICARD: Yes?

      GEORDI: One of the crew members has a vapor-phase cooling system installed on their workstation. If we can utilize a tachyon pulse modulator in combination with the vapor-phase cooler and route it through the warp core and to the shield arrays, we just might have a chance...

      PICARD: Make it so! Who has this vapor-phase cooling system?

      GEORDI: Well, sir, uh, *cough*worf*cough*

      PICARD: What? Worf?

      WORF: Grrrr...(string of Klingon insults and scowling) 0v3rc1o|<3rz r00l!!11!

      PICARD: *head in hands* I guess this is it. Send a message to Starfleet, and tell Dr. Crusher to meet me in my ready room.

    • Re:Fridge? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by UniverseIsADoughnut ( 170909 )
      >>If I'm not mistaken, vapor-phase cooling is just an ordinary refrigeration cycle.

      Yep, sat through 2 thermo classes and some other supporting classes on doing this. If you set it up right you could do it with no compressor, just using natural convection loop. But that system wouldn't be very customizable.

      I'm just waiting for the folks ar intel and AMD to run nano tubes through the core and pass fluid through it.
    • It's called the Carnot (Car-no, silent t)cycle, after the Frenchman of the same name who published a book on the effect as it related to steam engines, I think...

  • tomshardware (Score:4, Informative)

    by danalien ( 545655 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:57PM (#5533472) Homepage
    and here is the tomshardware review http://www4.tomshardware.com/howto/20030224/index. html [tomshardware.com]

  • Kind of on-topic (cooling systems) (Score:5, Informative)

    by questionlp ( 58365 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:00PM (#5533491) Homepage
    The [H] has some pictures [hardocp.com] and links [hardocp.com] to a company that is providing low-profile waterblocks and watercooling solutions for rackmount servers, even a look at a watercooled dual Opteron server. I'm not sure if I would be all that comfortable with using such a solution in a production environment or if that will help reduce the noise produced by those servers (10K and 15K RPM hard drives and blowers to keep those things cool aren't exactly... quiet).

    Interesting nonetheless.

    • Actually, water-cooling somewhat makes sense for rackmount systems. There is a high density of machines, so you could cool multiple machines with a single installation. Run the coolant to a radiator in an air-conditioned environment (or even immersed in liquid nitrogen, if temps are too high.) With a decent valve system this would be very expandable. Watercooling IMO makes little sense for home computers, as you're buying a lot of equipment for a single system, but if you can spread the cost out among say,
      • I know some Cray systems use watercooling to move the heat away from the cores to the outside environment. I definitely think that with squeezing two very high heat-output processors into a single rack units (like dual Itanium 2 processors, EV6/EV7 Alpha processors, etc.) would get a lot of help from watercooling.

        I'd just be a bit nervous if a hose developed a crack or corrision occurs in the water block or elsewhere in the system. Of course, I would think that the manufacturers of those systems and the se
      • Where can I buy one...

        I'm on a 3 year replacement cycle for my data center. I can't get any budget for staff, but al long as it's remotely plausable I have a dapper budget for equipment.

        Fill that with some florescent coloring a clear tubes. Throw in some black lights. You could charge admission.

      • Actually, water-cooling somewhat makes sense for rackmount systems.
        ...
        Run the coolant to a radiator in an air-conditioned environment (or even immersed in liquid nitrogen, if temps are too high.)

        Eek. I know you're only half serious, but suggesting that a water-filled radiator should be immersed in liquid nitrogen is asking for trouble.

  • What about electro-migration? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JKR ( 198165 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:01PM (#5533496)
    Cooling is all fine and dandy, but increasing the voltage increases electric field strength across the transistors, as well as increasing the power as the square of the voltage. As I understand it, this should cause many more early failures due to electro-migration and thinning of the aluminium / copper traces in the metal layers.

    However, I'm guessing electro-migration is thermally activated, or at least sensitive to the temperature; does the extreme cooling mitigate the increased field strengh?

    Jon.

  • Too cool for comfort (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:05PM (#5533513)
    Too cold is not good. Sub-zero is not good. Cooling should keep the CPU near the ideal transistor "junction temperature" for which it was designed (ok, equivalent "Tj" in the case of CMOS). Operate at the wrong temperature and you get clock skew, conductivity weirdness, capacitance changes etc. which were not planned for in the chip's design.

    Cool yes, but not too cold. Keep the chip in spec for stability and long life. Colder is not necessarily always better.

    • Well that's the good thing about vapor phase. The refigerant always boils at the same temperature at a given pressure, so the chip will get no colder than the boiling point of the refigerant. Fluorinert is usually used for this kind of cooling. From what I can tell, you can get it in various forms with different boiling points.

      As an example, imagine your chip is a pot holding water. If you put it on the stove, the pot won't go higher than 100C as long as there is still a significant amount of water in
    • it has to get pretty god damn cold for stuff of that nature to happen then your talking about the guy that uses liquid nitrogen to cool his computer. that would require the chip to be close to absoloute zero (the temp that atoms stop which may or may not be possibl)
  • Yes, but what kind of cooling does the psu get when you are pulling 450 watts from a 350 watt PS? I have seen many a PC nuke itself when the power supply overheated, melted solder down which then ran and shorted vairous connectors. (A actually fused an ATX connector to the mother board this way). So, what kind of protect does a psu have?

  • This technology has been around a while (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Kryotech [kryotech.com] used to have a product that provided vapor phase cooling for Athlons. They sold barebones systems with case, motherboard, and refrigeration, and you provided the rest. They were achieving clock rates of about 20% higher than you could get with traditional cooling techniques at the time. Plus, they were officially sanctioned by AMD in the sense that using the Kryotech cooling system didn't invalidate your processor warranty.

    Using Kyrotech cooling, you could get a system running at 1 GHz when the

  • What you people really don't get (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 0x1337 ( 659448 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:20PM (#5533580)
    Is that cooling your CPU to subzero temperatures will neither increase its lifetime nor incrase its performance. It is the overall design of the system that matters (I.e. Motherboard, and memory) I know plenty lamers whose AthlonXP 2600+ system runs slooower than my Athlon 1 Ghz system, which is indeed pretty fucking sad. And yes, I will re-iterate that having the the CPU running below the junction-temperature is bound to cause problems. So is strapping a 5 pound heatsink on your core - and cracking it in process like a dumbass. Otherwise - I guess its cool. I can't wait to see some one gut a fridge, use the innards for cooling the computer (Use propane instead of freon tho)

  • ... but what about making processors more effective instead of relying on us consumers to buy a ridiculously HUGE cooling array to go with the latest (n+1)ghz Pentium or AMD XP (N*1000)? I mean, I've got some old p2 333mhz laptop and when I do some pretty intensive stuff on it, I could prolly make breakfast on the bottom side of it. It'd be a tad raw though, not because of the lack of heat, but the battery would die before my eggs would be done :\

    So where the hell is my 25, 2ghz processor which can run wi

    • Every modern processor can run with a good heasink and fan. However, that's not the point. People want to overclock, and people want cool factor.
    • its a novelty its like people who mod cars and put niro into it etc. . . ya know most processors can run well with a crappy heat sink. its the fast processos that take more and more heat. they are constantly trying to make processors more efficient a p2 at 1.4 ghz would be ungodly hot and an athlon XP at 333 may not even need a heat sink.
    • Hey, in a data center you are only moving at the speed of the network anyway...

      I used to work on a factory floor. The parts that failed most often were cooling fans.

      Most of my applications could run comfortably on an 800Mhz processor. And that's a database. Everything else is throttled by Disk I/O or network I/O

  • hmmm.. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "I haven't seen a cooling system this intense since my organgic chemistry labs."

    Do you mean organgic chemgistry?

  • immersion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stinson ( 564450 ) <cancerouspete@@@cox...net> on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:38PM (#5533647) Homepage Journal
    i still don't understand why people buy into this type of (dont want to say crap, but kinda silly products), immersion cooling is more efficient, and even, as not only do you cool your cpu (on the top specfically), you cool all sides of it, and the rest of the motherboard. You can use something expensive like pure h2o, or that plasma type liquid they used in one of the Crays. Or something as cheep as oil. They use oil to cool power transformers on telephone poles. You can't forget either tho, how cool a case with a window and immersion system would look, as evertying would really glow, and you might even be able to put fish in it (depending on the type of liquid used, and if the cpu fans are in use too...sushi anyone?)
    • this is a bit harder than you may know :) first you have to get a liquid that wont conduct electricity. H20 de-ionized as soon as you taint the water with ions the becomes useless. I considered doing this but found it to be too complex to perform without major investments. if you use convection you have to have below room temp cooler to get any reasonable advantage. you could use a pump and run it through a radiator which would be dificult at best.

  • Cray X1 phase change cooling & video (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:43PM (#5533664)
    The Cray X1 is a Very Neat machine.. It employs phase change cooling.

    Cray has a very nice 45 minute video with lots of good clips of the fog spray, etc:

    http://cray.com/company/video/x1.html
  • even if you dont care about cooling your processor. He gives a very nice and lucid explaination of the laws of thermodynamics. I found it interesting.
  • ....why not just take your computer and stick it inside a min-fridge? Seems to me to be a whole lot simpler than this whole business ;).
    • Give it a try, you'll see.

    • Yeah! that is what I had in mind. And it cost MUCH cheaper. But you will have a few problems which CAN be solved.

      1. Condensation of water. This can be threated with, NOT opening the freezer. And placing dehumidifier in the freezer with your computer for sometime before you power on the freezer.

      2. Your mouse, keyboard, monitor, network, and power cables needs to exit. Other then accessing your cdrom and floppy.

  • Peace of mind (Score:4, Insightful)

    by milkmandan9 ( 190569 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @10:25PM (#5533879)
    In the end, what the Vapochill gives you is peace of mind, the luxury of never again having to worry about an important aspect of your system, processor cooling. Upgrade the rest of your system to your heart's content, but two things will remain constant: The Vapochill as your processor cooler, and the temperature of that cooler at a nippy five degrees above zero.

    Unfortunately, reliability is exactly what the Vapochill does not provide. When it comes to reliability, there is often no replacement for simplicity. I never worry about the 486 I've got in my firewall because it doesn't need a heatsink or fan. I can be fairly certain, however, that the fan on my workstation processor will seize up someday and the chip may self-destruct.

    These guys can't be more wrong about the reliability. This thing may shut itself off if it overheats, but if reliability were the number one concern, I'd underclock a new chip so that even if the cooling system does fail, it's not a catastrophe.

  • Space shuttle tiles (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @10:48PM (#5533978)
    The heat-dissipating tiles on the bottom surface of the space shuttle are made of a specially engineered material that is like a sponge with many microscopic holes. I once had the privelege of holding a piece of this material in my hand. It looks and feels like a cross between metal, ceramic and glass. And it feels cold to the touch. I am told that this material dissipates heat so rapidly that it can be placed in a flame, as of a blowtorch, for any period of time, and be touched with one's hand immediately upon removal, yet still feel cold to the touch. Truly a magnificent material.

    I believe that if the packaging of processor chips was made of this material, processor manufacturers could immediately forget all about heat, heatsinks, fans, and all that other BS.

    To counter arguments against NASA, they always say that space exploration has furthered technology here on Earth in ways that benefit us all. I believe that this is something they should figure out how to manufacture less expensively in order to eliminate heat problems from multitudes of electronic products and save time to market since engineers won't have to worry about this anymore.

    • I wonder how much cheaper it could be made. I don't know how much it costs in the first place. Is it truly cost-prohibitive right now, for the small amounts that would be needed for already-expensive high-end processors?

      I saw them demonstrate on TV how it can be handled after being super-heated. Really amazing.
    • I'm not so sure...

      Those tiles are heat resistant. They just don't heat up. They are not good heat conductors either... they are insulating tiles. Making chip packaging out of those would ensure you turn your chip into slag in short order, even under very low power, because NO heat would escape.
  • So, how loud and annoying is it to have a fridge running on/under your desktop compared to a bunch of fans?
    • --I have a few of the camping style ammonia vapor refrigerators, they run either electric or from a small propane flame. No compressor, perfectly quiet.
      If you want a used one for a project, try some place that has wrecked/used RV's. You'll still have heat to exhaust from the room if you need that though, but your computer would stay pretty cool inside one.

  • I'd rather see... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lurgen ( 563428 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @11:30PM (#5534188) Journal
    Personally, I'd prefer to see a whole lot more work going into silent computers. Processors and video cards are at the point right now where overclocking only yields benchmark improvements - bumping that chip up 15MHz only gives you a few points in 3DMark, or UT2k3.

    For actual use though, it doesn't make any difference. 150fps, instead of 130. Or 0.5 seconds faster load times. Does anybody really care any more?

    I'd be a lot more interested in spending money reducing the noise output of my machine. Give me passively cooled power supplies (instead of these 3 fan monsters). Cases designed purely for better noise reduction (Antec Sonata is heading in the right direction).

    Having a frozen CPU running 20% faster than it was meant to might win you a few brownie points at a LAN party, but does it actually make any difference? I doubt it.

    *shrug* each to their own. I'll be impressed when I see a 3GHz P4 or Athlon running without any noticable noise.
    • I don't know what chips you're using, but mine is overclocked by 700MHz. I expect I could probably take it up even more if I increased the voltage. The difference in my case is more like 50fps to 70fps. Is that noticeable? Not really. Except that when there's lots of action on-screen, my framerate is usually half the average. 25fps is playable for games where reflexes are important, but it's close. 35fps, however, is quite playable. For hardcore gamers, this is especially important. Serious gamers
      • Actually, I play CS quite a bit (have since it first come out), and even with half a dozen smoke grenades in my field of view my framerate stays well over 60fps (it sits on 99 the rest of the time). I'm not running anything special - not a single component in my system would cost more than a refridgerated case.

        But again, I want a quiet machine. One that is 100% reliable, no matter what too.

        As for gamers being compared to athletes? Athletes (and any serious professional) know full well that you need the ri

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