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Hardware

Building Your Own Air Chiller 88

Posted by Hemos from the getting-under-the-hood dept.
Several people have taken the time from their busy day to submit the how-to make an air chiller story that's currently running on OCMod.com. Me, I think that if I open my case the magic pixie dust that runs my computer will fly out, and my bad hardware karma will ruin my machine, but hey, maybe you'll have better luck then I.
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Building Your Own Air Chiller More

Building Your Own Air Chiller

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  • Good idea! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You'll need to use this to cool down VA's hot stock prices!!

  • Re:??!!YOU CLOSE YOUR MACHINE!!?? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey Jack, You don't know Jack:)
    Actually...leaving the cover off of some designs will cause your CPU to get HOTTER. This is due to exhaust fan placement. This is mostly true of newer systems which use strategically placed fans to create a path which air will flow across the cpu. By removing the cover air now flows in the side, through the exhaust fan, and the airflow around the CPU is not in the air flow path.
    So, yes, the cover keeps liquids off of your CPU, but the cover can also be there as an effective cooling solution.
    Since I just did that long thing on CPU cooling, this reminds me directly of VW air cooled engines. People were constantly thinking they could remove the engine lid on VW's with air cooled engines, it looked like removing the lid would naturally increase air flow. VW's are designed with the hoods to be closed however, so removing the lid completely can cause overheating:(
    -TM

  • ??!!YOU CLOSE YOUR MACHINE!!?? (Score:5)

    by emil ( 695 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @08:59AM (#288317)

    No self-respecting geek would run a piece of computer equipment with all the cover components installed!

  • Cooling solutions are good (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak AT yahoo DOT com> on Monday April 16, 2001 @09:20AM (#288318) Homepage Journal
    But, as others have noted, condensation is bad.

    IMHO, a heat exchanger and some non-conducting fluid is probably the "best" solution. (There was an article a while back on cooling via oil and an air conditioning unit, but the link was very dead, the last time I checked.)

    Alternatively, find a material that semiconducts at extremely =HIGH= temperatures, and stick your computer into a vaccuum flask.

  • What they *should* teach in school is that "than" and "then" are not homophones. If you pronounce them properly they do not sound the same.
  • Sounds like you're talking about room air conditioners in your real world example. I learned the hard way that the condensation actually takes place in the "indoor" half (where the air gets chilled)and has to be properly channeled, through gravity and/or suction created by the "outdoor" half of the fan, through the separating wall to the "outdoor" half (where the heat removed from the chilled inside air is released into the great out of doors, which, I suspect, is why summers seem hotter than they did years ago-more air conditioned spaces=more heat pumped into the outdoors).
  • Ever notice how those same computer gods like to wait until you blow all your current disposable income on a new part for your computer before they break one of the old ones?

  • For the most part they do suck.

    There are always exceptions though. The public school that I attended was very good. The students were competitive about grades (it was cool to get good grades). Hell, there was even a group of Japanese who visited to see how we were getting such good results.

    I learned BASIC in 7th grade (12-13 years old)and assembly language in 10th grade :) That may not seem like a big deal to some of you uber-nerds, but consider what 10th graders are learning in their "Computer Classes" at most schools these days. Microsoft Office, maybe? Corel Draw? How to use a search engine to find the best warez? :P

    There is no excuse for ignorance though. If you want to learn you can find a way, especially in the USA. There are public libraries all over the place (in which I used to spend a considerable amount of time, I might add :).

  • I run a 900 mhz Athlon Thunderbird. There are 8 fans in the case trying to keep that machine cool, and with a Thermaltake Super Orb and Arctic Silver, the processor is still running at 125 degrees regularly. I'd never settle for the factory heatsink and processor goop with temperatures like that.

    Yes, 900 mhz is the factory setting. When you have a card in every slot of your machine, it makes it harder to cool.
  • but you wouldn't have to worry about leaks shorting your machine out, since the mineral oil isn't conductive

    But what about things that can get suspended in it? That's where the trouble comes in.

  • Nice troll.

    Overclocking is just fun, for the sake of doing it. Not overclocking is like buying a sports car and leaving it stock.

  • 'sfunny - sounds a little like the Magic/More Magic story: http://tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/A-Story-About-M agic.html
  • Er, this instead [tuxedo.org] So that's what the preview button is for.
  • Maybe not, but many cases are designed with airflow in mind, and that design is assuming the entire case is on the machine.

    Remove a panel and you might overheat your processor/mobo.

  • hmm... (Score:4)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <[joelinux] [at] [gmail.com]> on Monday April 16, 2001 @08:51AM (#288329)
    Condensation? I still think that would be a major problem in something like this. You'd get water in the case. But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

    JoeLinux
  • The Super Orb's a piece of shit.. read the latest cooler reviews at www.anandtech.com or www.tomshardware.com ... (Too lasy to make those into links.. hopefully your browser will do it for you..)
  • Yay!!!

    /.'s turning into HardOCP.

    If I wanted to overclock my 1.2 athlon I'd be reading hardocp not /.
    --
    Laptop006 (RHCE: That means I know what I'm talking about! When talking about linux at least...)
  • OK, well points 1 and 3 are well taken, but in a closed system point 2 is kinda moot - that is, there won't be a problem if the system is completely closed, as there won't be any open flame, and if the oil gets beyond its smoking point, you have bigger problems with the system.

    Still, points 1 and 3 kill the idea completely anyhow (though I wonder how fast a solvent it is - if it is a good solvent, why did people immerse thier motherboards in it - ignorance?). So, the idea would be to get a fluid with as high a specific heat as water, non-flammable, non-conductive, and doesn't act as a solvent. Fluorocarbons are an answer, but most aren't very environmentally friendly, and none are very cheap. I am thinking something like Fluronert might work - but all of that gets into a realm of of chemical workings that I don't understand.

    Distilled/de-ionized water could be used instead - less conductive, anyhow...

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!

  • Ideas? (Score:3)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @09:33AM (#288333) Homepage
    Case Fans

    Why do people always go with the 12 volt fans? There exist same size (as well as larger) "muffin"-style fans that run on 110-115VAC, many pump 100-200 cfm (I had one that came from a DEC mini computer powersupply - had to mount it on a board to keep it from blowing away when I was playing with it). Sure, they would be extremely loud, but think of it - you can easily get that computer center droning noise you know you've always secretly wanted...

    Coolant

    Instead of water, why not pump mineral oil through the system? People have immersed thier systems in circulated mineral oil, but that is messy. Use a gas tank pump to circulate the oil (the pumps are designed to resist the solvent power of harsh chemicals, like gasoline). You might not get better cooling than water (don't know whether you would or not), but you wouldn't have to worry about leaks shorting your machine out, since the mineral oil isn't conductive (else why would people immerse thier machines in it).

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • When I put the screws back in my CD-ROM and/or put the case back on, I get all kinds of trouble, but without them everythings fine.

    Years ago, I had a power supply like that. If it was firmly fastened to the back of the case with all four screws, it'd glitch and cause the computer to reboot. Leaving it somewhat loose appeared to alleviate the problem somewhat. IIRC, I eventually "fixed" the problem by removing the upper half of the power supply case. I don't know if it was overheating or if there was an intermittent connection on the power supply circuit board, but it didn't give me any more problems once it was opened up. (It may not have been the safest setup, but I know the danger involved and nobody else pokes around inside my computers.)

  • DIY (Score:1)

    by trenton ( 53581 )
    I think they could have used more ram instead of air coolers. This is what I'm seeing at that url

    Fatal error: out of dynamic memory in yy_create_buffer() in Unknown on line 0

    Ten bonus karma points to the user that can determine the web server by this error message only. No telnet www.ocmod.com 80 cheaters.

  • Coolant, yes, mineral oil no. (Score:3)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @11:43AM (#288336) Journal
    Instead of water, why not pump mineral oil through the system?

    Three reasons:

    Mineral oil has a much lower specific heat than water. You need to circulate a lot more of it to get a given degree of cooling.

    Mineral oil is flammable.

    Mineral oil is a very good solvent. Goodbye to any plastic parts. (And to your rug if you spill any. And imagine the effect on the building.)

    The Cray II was cooled with a clear liquid - a fluorocarbon, I think. They also had a debubbling gadget in the room near the computer. Looked like an enclosed fountain made of plexiglass. Very artsy. The two Cray IIs I saw had very distinct fountains, which made me wonder if they were distinct artworks - at least at first.

  • Gee, a homemade air cooling device is pretty cool, but if you're going to do it yourself, why not spend your time making the most kick-ass cooling system you can? There are several [parrett.net] places [coolchip.com] that sell [overclockershideout.com] kits [senfu.com.tw], and lots of good [overclockers.com] information [agaweb.com]. If you're going to make your own cooler, at least do it in style!

    -Ted
  • No, youll just make it run at the speed its supposed to be running at.
  • I disagree, one being familiar with swamp coolers does not mean that one is "white trash".

    I lived in Farmington, NM for a few years, in one of the richer parts of town. Almost everyone uses them there.

    Granted, ours was different in appearance and operation than what you've linked to here, but the idea is the same: use water in the air to cool stuff down. As Farmington (and all of New Mexico, really) is very dry, they work extremely well.

    It's evaporative cooling at it's finest.

    --Psi

    Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.

  • Running a system without its case shows about as much class as driving your car around with the hood off.
    Why is venting RFI considered acceptable?
  • What kind of pinheads do we have here that this gets 4 points?
    ... white trash ... this thing was called a swamp cooler ... still used in the poorest parts of the south
    If the relative humidity is below 50% or so, a swamp cooler is much more effective than air conditioning. Go to Arizona or New Mexico - you'll see them everywhere. Go in the summer and you'll see how effective they are.
  • 1. get really long extension cord 2. go to north pole 3. overclock!
  • From the article: overclockers have grown many folds annually

    Indeed... there must be a more worthy (And physically rewarding) pursuit than sitting around a supercooled machine gettin' fat.

    ---

  • 90% of the time it is cooler with the case open. That's probably because the average person doesn't have some fancy $150 case that was "designed with airflow in mind"...more than likely they have a $50 case designed with the bottom line in mind.
  • Your mirror appears slashdotted as well.

  • I knew it. (Score:4)

    by TheReverand ( 95620 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @08:46AM (#288347) Homepage
    Looks like the pentium article was all a scam to sell a bunch of DIY air coolers!


    J'ACCUSE!

  • ... and nobody uses seatbelts anyways, hence highway fatalities, so they'd never go near a 5 point harness...
  • Funny, when loading C64 games we had to sit absolutely tight and not talk at all, lest the cassette-trolls would pay a visit and load errors either screwing the load completely or making the graphics more blurry.

    Pixies, trolls, gnomes and elves commonly visit and plague low-tech equipment. You gotta know how to appease them, especially when programming. I only wish someone could devise a cool religion for this, so that our problems might go away.

    - Steeltoe

  • What should happen if my memory of the psychrometric chart is right is that room temp air is drawn in and cooled. At this point the excess water will begin condensing out. The ductwork immediately after this should be built to allow this excess water to drain away harmlessly before it exits the cooling aparatus. The cool air enters the case and is warmed up by the parts. It could actually pick up some water at this point because it is moves below 100% relative humidity as it warms.

    The interesting thing is that when the cold air hits the warm air in the case when the whole aparatus first starts up, then you could get some condensation inside the case no matter what you do. A good exhaust fan for the case and a gradual cool-down when the system starts should help this though.

    My point is that a well designed system can be made so that the condensation happens in a place where it is safe rather than inside the computer case where it is not.

  • Re:hmm... (Score:5)

    by Life Blood ( 100124 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @09:56AM (#288351) Homepage

    I haven't looked at the design, but in general your going to get condensation where the air is cooled, not where the cool air is pumped. When the air temp drops in the chiller section it will cause any water above and beyond the new lower temps saturation level to condense out. Provided the system is designed well though, this condensation should remain in the chiller section and should be gone by the time the cold air exits the chiller unit. As the air warms up passing through the case it will actually get drier in relative humidity terms and so less likely to cause condensation. So the condensation should be at a minimum as you can keep the two separate. For a real world example, notice that the condensation in air conditioners comes out the back of the unit while the cold air exits the front.

  • The link looks slashdot'd so i couldn't tell you the design, but from the look of a picture i was the cooling unit is seperate from the computer case. So any condensation would be safely away from the CPU.

    Also I recently got into this [howstuffworks.com] site which has a good explaination of how air conditioners work [howstuffworks.com] (or refrigeration in general). They also have good "for dummies" type explaintion of damm near everything, for instance the difference between turbo chargers and super chargers, water cooling systems in cars, etc...

    -Jon

    Streamripper [sourceforge.net]

  • Back around 1980, the University of Alberta had an experimental microcode machine that got too hot... To run it, you generally had to stick it in the freezer. You had to open the freezer and pull the machine out to get at the front console.

    When the winter weather got down around -30C, it probably would have been worthwhile to build a ledge outside someone's window, and put the microcode machine there, but nobody realy thought about it then.

    (un)fortunately, I now live in Vancouver where it rarely goes below freezing. This means that I can't use the weather to help overclock my machine. Such is life.
    --

  • I ran a real cold garden hose over my brother's head when we were young and he got a huge headache out of the deal. Maybe there is more to it.

  • Sounds more like a grounding problem to me.

  • That's what I was thinking.

    Personally, I believe that the computer gods smite you if you put the cover on after installing hardware before you even test it.

    If you want to be really sure that new card will work, you'll not screw it in completely until you know it is fully functional.

    They will punish you for your audacity, and you will find that you *accidentally* knocked out your IDE cable when you were mucking around in there. You will not know until you get the non-system disk message.

    Be fooled not. It was the computer gods, and they are laughing.

  • Yah, theres a nerve on the roof of your mouth which causes icecream headaches.

    if you ever get one, try rubbing your tongue on the roof of your mouth to try warming it up, it might help.
  • Mommy, I won't go to hell for just overclocking once will I? I sweat I won't do it again!

  • Sure this is off-topic but I have to support Hemos' assertion that PCs run off fairy-dust. Where does fairy-dust come from? Why, Asia of course! After all, my local computer retailers are all Asian and have no problem getting any hideous combination of hardware functional. Me? I try to replace a hard drive and smoke starts billowing from my GeForce.

    Now I'm a reasonably intelligent man, yet it seems every foray into my PC case ends up in boot errors, bloody knuckles, and the invention of new and creative swear words. You may contend that most PCs are incapable of engaging in sexual relations with their mother, but you wouldn't know it to hear me yelling.

    I'm a decent web developer, I can code in PERL, I've administered Linux and MySQL. I know the difference between baud and bps and have dabbled in Assembler. But am I the only geek who can't open his case without dropping a screw into the power supply? Help!

    PS - Does this mean Thomas Pabst is actually Asian? He's all a-glitter in pixie dust...


    ---
  • No, that was one grammar mistake- "then" should have been "than". the "I" is correct, regardless of how much more natural it feels to say "me". The trick to remember is the implied verb. Here's what I mean:

    Maybe you'll have better luck than I (had)

    see - that's correct. If you use "me", you change what the implied verb is:

    Maybe you'll have better luck than (you'll have) me.

    Not only is this not what he intended to say, it also doesn't make any sense. This is a common mistake. Just remember, when you say something like "There's no way you want to have hot steamy sex with Natalie Portman more than me", you're actually saying ..."more than (you'd like to have hot steamy sex with) me".

    --
  • Me, I think that if I open my case the magic pixie dust that runs my computer will fly out, and my bad hardware karma will ruin my machine, but hey, maybe you'll have better luck then I.

    Funny, my comp at home doesn't work with the case on! I swear! I think it has to do with the CD-ROM player, since I also removed the screws from it.

    When I put the screws back in my CD-ROM and/or put the case back on, I get all kinds of trouble, but without them everythings fine. I suspect something to do with heat...
  • Why is this modded up to three? Obviously you run your machine with the cover on to prevent things from getting inside it. Like dust, loose screws or change, orperhaps a spilled beverage.

    One of my brilliant friends discovered that his computer had temperature monitoring capabilities, and installed Motherboard Monitor or something. Then he freaked out because his CPUs were running at 100F, so he took the cover off his case to keep it cooler. A few days later he knocked a can of Mountain Dew off the desk, and it fell right into the case, spilling everywhere, nuking the entire system.

    The worst part? 100F is actually pretty cool for a CPU.
  • Instead of water, why not pump mineral oil through the system?

    I'm working on a case idea along these lines, for environmental sealing. The whole computer sits in an aluminium tank, with intrinsically safe connectors to the outside world. The PSU sits outside (for electrical safety, but it could be seperately oil-cooled). A Volvo fuel injection pump and Volkswagen external oil filter and cooler deal with circulation (the cooler can be mounted outside).
    Drop the card frame in the tank, fill with oil (I had planned to use something quite light but not volatile, somewhere between 0w/30 and diesel), seal the top, and overclock all you want.

    Silent, too.

  • Mineral oil isn't than inflammable.
    Try setting fire to a bucket of Castrol GTX. Won't burn.
    Pour some on a fire. Burns quite well, but only if it's a fairly hot fire.
    The oil itself doesn't burn. It's the vapour that burns. This is why empty petrol cans are potentially more dangerous than full ones.
    Bear in mind that engines use oil as a coolant to remove heat from internal components. The water jacket only cools the cylinders. In this application, motor oil is good for up to 80 Centigrade, possibly more.
    I think you'd be safe enough using diesel as a coolant. Certainly it burns, but (like motor oil) it's very hard to light. In diesel engines, it ignites only at hundreds of degrees C and about 25 times atmospheric pressure.
  • ... but I think this fluid goes for roughly $2500 a gallon.

    2-3 fans start looking real good. ;^)

  • Why can't you people just use regular fans? (Score:5)

    by atrowe ( 209484 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @09:00AM (#288366)
    There is no need for fancy coolers or super large heatsinks in personal computers as a properly clocked processor works fine with stock cooling solutions. Overclocking is a dangerous and immoral way to improve performance, and should be avoided at all costs. Overclocking processors wastes electricity, can damage components, and provides only a modest performance gain with a high risk factor. Both AMD and Intel have warned that overclocking will void your warranty and cause irreversible harm to a computer. However, the risks of overclocking don't stop at hardware damage. It is a well known fact that overclocking processors can cause unreliable and erratic performance. This can lead to corrupted data, and if the overclocked machine is connected to a network or the Internet, it can cause unexpected problems for innocent users who have properly clocked machines.

    Some users overclock their computers so that they can run SETI@home or other distributed clients faster. This irresponsible behavior can not only damage that user's computer, but can provide flawed data that could possible ruin the entire distributed project. Please, I urge you, don't follow the herd, don't overclock your computer. If performance is that important to you, go with the reliable solution and buy a faster machine.

  • Actually Swamp coolers are not reserved for *poor* people. Growing up in the southwest we had a swampcooler because of it's inherent effectiveness in arid climates. For those /.'ers that aren't familiar, a swamp cooler works through a process of evaporation, however once the relative humidity reaches a certain point the swamp cooler fails to be efficient. My point is that swamp coolers are not a "ghetto cooling solution" but rather an inexpensive and effective method to cool things. If saving money designates somone as whitetrash....then hell...I guess I have no teeth and watch WWF.
  • Wow, trying anything that drastic on my machine would result in it reverting to its origional component atoms... I, like Hemos, have horrible computer karma. I think the pixie dust in his computer and the little magical gnomes in mine work for the same union or something. In the past year I have fried the following parts of my computer:

    1 RealTek Network Interface Card
    1 GeForce 256 Graphics Card
    1 Western Digital 10gb HDD
    1 PCI fan card
    2 Hard Drive Fans
    1 Floppy Drive

    Those disasters happened entirely independant of each other, and I know power isn't an issue as I have had the power supply looked at and I've had the machine plugged into different locations when parts went bad.

    Moding my case with something like that would cause my bad karma to manifest itself physically into Murphy himself to smite down my poor machine!

    -Z

  • Yeah, the small chapel at MIT is surrounded by a moat with vents that blows air into the chapel cooled via this method. From what little information I have seen on the net about this school, I gather they are far from poor white trash. Too bad they didn't let me go to their school or I could have demonstrated this effect.
  • A combined cpu and cooler that produces heat *and* water. I see a possiblity here: A Pentium Coffee maker! Now that's an Internet appliance!

    "Damn fine coffee, and overclocked!"
  • It may not have been the safest setup, but I know the danger involved and nobody else pokes around inside my computers.

    I hope so. The sound and smell of chips exploding and blowing divots outwards in the epoxy of every chip is quite memorable. (A loose dangling 125v wire from an arcade game harness, and a tricked-out Apple ][ Z80 emulator and arcade board, and it wasn't me! Ah well, it was long ago and far away, and besides, the computer is dead-dead.)

    I used to faith-heal my Atari ST floppy drive by laying hands on the eject button. Just enough faith and pressure would read an iffy diskette.
  • True, true.

    Then let's stick the tubes in his mouth!
    Or, we could just squirt the chemicals in his mouth and cause poisoning (I hope).
  • Great! Now we'll be able to torment CowboyNeal with supercool tubes running across his head, giving him a major ice-cream headache!

  • Man, now they tell me that building a chiller is cool. I actually got into a fight in high school over the refridgerator that I built out of the upper shelf of my locker... That pretty much burned me from building coolers..
  • "Overclocking is a dangerous and immoral way to improve performance . . ."

    Overclocking may push the hardware up to or past its design specs, but it's "immoral" now? If Moses had overclocked his tablets there would have been room for that eleventh one, "Thou shalt not overclock thy CPU." :-)

  • Actually, how about dumping the entire thing in
    a bath of Fluorinert [3m.com] (an electrically inert hydrocarbon (IIRC?) liquid)
    as used for cooling the Cray C90 [ucar.edu] amongst others.

    This is *immensely* neat stuff - I once saw a television (operating) dumped in a tub of this stuff, incredibly weird sight.

    Ah. In checking back through my bookmarks, I see something similar has been mentioned Here [octools.com]

  • Looks like a lot of the stuff that went bad was in some way fan-related. Too many fans are almost as bad as not enough. If you get enough suction going, you'll end up pulling air through any available orifice [penny-arcade.com], say, a floppy drive slot. And that will tend to make the slot (floppy drive, in this case) go bad as well. Those "disk coolers" are infamous for doing that. If you are going to be sucking a lot of air, best to leave some card slots open for the air to enter/exit through. On another note, the thing about a lot of fans is that, unless they're very expensive, they won't last. Their bearings are cheap and will give out in a year or so. Also, I won't say anything about Western Digital that would get me in trouble, other than that I've seen about six WD Caviars go bad, from 340MB-10GB.
  • The same thing that applies to prestone applies to your CPU cooler. In other words, you wouldn't run 100% ethylene glycol in your radiator, because it has a low specific heat, at least, lower than water. A good balance is 50/50 water/glycol. I would think that a system, like the ones on ocmod.com, which use water and aluminum blocks and radiators, would be much better at cooling, especially with a peltier device, than what these guys were doing (essentially unscientifically) when they dunked their boards in mineral oil cooled (rather sketchily) with condensation-nightmare windowmount A/C units. As Ungrounded Lightning hints, a fluorocarbon-based solution (R-134a?) would be best. I think Methylene Chloride even works, although It's a known carcinogen, but at least it's liquid at room temp and higher!
  • Actually, that's the proct of chemichals that are produced when cold runs through your mouth...

    Although someone wouldn't feel good with cool tubs running over their head... Mm... frosty hair.

    Which is a common occurene where I live. (take a shower, go outside)

  • Give the guy a break. Obviously he just got his first piece of ass, and now he is all in love.
  • 4. melt north pole
  • Homophones are everywear. The words aren't spelled the same, and one has a different meaning then the other. Its knot so hard to figure that out, and ewe are suppose to learn that in elementary school.

    --

  • In speech, I say that something is greater "than", or less "then", although I'd spell both instances t-h-a-n. I think part of the problem is that lots of people learned to read phonetically, and it poisoned their ability to spell later on. For a similar reason, I continue to stuggle with C -- I learned programming with BASIC.

    A larger issue is the fact that "th" exists in the first place. It's not a natural phonic, because if it were, that sound would appear in many more languages...

    --

  • There is a reason for the Preview button. Why didn't I use it? Fragments of the comment make sense, but they don't convey my points, and they don't come together. It looks like I'll be turning myself in to the grammar and composition police... In any case, what I was trying to say is that those two words are homopones -- sometimes. :)

    --

  • HAHAHAHA! Sure, tell that to the NASCAR folks. Their multi-billion dollar sport evolved from taking stock cars and attaching all sorts of parts that I'm sure the manufacturers didn't want on their cars at the time. Change your login id to atrowllllll!
  • Oh yeah, forgot to put this in my above post. I highly doubt the car manufacturers condone modifying your stock engine because *gasp* it might explode killing you and countless others!
  • I've modified my Eagle Talon (not street illegal yet) and I am still allowed to drive on city streets. What's the difference between that and overclocking my computer? There's no regulations that say it's illegal to run software with a computer that is overclocked to twice it's rated speed is there?
  • I've got the files if you want them... am sending them to your hotmail acct.
  • /me kicks hotmail in the jimmies .
  • I apologize if I offended your sensibilities, I was unaware of the non-poor using them, and didn't know they were used in the southwest at all.
    I claim geographical and sociopolitical ignorance. (although the term "ghetto cooling solution" made me laugh, so I suppose I should claim insensitivity)


    Brant

  • White trash solutions (Score:3)

    by banuaba ( 308937 ) <drbork@hotm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday April 16, 2001 @09:57AM (#288391)
    Caveat: The site is /.'ed, so I'm basing my comments on interpretation of what others said and on the signal free original story.

    Now the guy who did this little thing has *got* to be white trash (I speak as one of the chosen myself) When I was growing up this thing was called a swamp cooler [thebugbox.com] and was used to cool cars and homes in the deep south.

    These things are suprisingly effective at cooling you down, and are still used in the poorest parts of the south (central Florida panhandle, f'rinstance)


    Brant

  • My solution (Score:3)

    by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @11:10AM (#288392)
    I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Look on a map for North Dakota, and keep going up. In the winter it averages -40 degrees at night (C or F). All I do is bundle myself up, and open the window - I've played Quake3 on my old XT a few times. Hard to hit all the buttons with those thick gloves on though...

    Oh, and just to ensure a (0: Offtopic) mod, if you've never done it before, I highly recommend spending a day browsing /. at -1. My personal desire is to see 2 threads - everything at 4 and 5 for when I'm thinking, and all the 0 and under for when I want a good chuckle during a long and boring work day.

  • Am I the only one who read it as "maybe you'll have better luck then I (will have some better luck)

  • This is a completely redundant article rendered nearly impossible to read because of miserable grammar. Plenty other websites [hardocp.com] have more detailed articles [anandtech.com] about far more effective and inexpensive ways to tweak your system. And they take the time to edit their work, do benchmarks and such.
  • That is precisely why it is illegal to drive race cars on a public street. They're dangerous and pose a risk to themselves and other nearby cars.

  • No kidding. And what about the electro-magnetic noise! These things are encased to prevent polluting of the airwaves with EM noise that may interfere with other people's communications or reception.

    I know this example was ages ago, but when I was young if the C64 was turned on in the house, the TV reception got a little fuzzier. That was with the case on! Yes yes, everybody uses cable. NOT. And there are a hell of a lot of other things out there besides broadcast TV.

    At least put a faraday cage around it, ok boys and girls? (a grounded mesh screen, preferrably copper.)

    BTW: I have a friend who opens his case in the winter and wraps his curtain around his box. This is Canada, so -20 degrees Celcius inside-case temperature, no fuss, no muss.

  • When there is condensation, water drops onto the pc board and causing all sorts of problem. That is why you have to flip the pc board upside down so that the cpu and the cooling mechanism is below the board. So if condensation occurs, it drips away from the pc board instead.
  • I have a friend who is thinking about some unique ways to cool his case. Since he was worried about condensation, we talked about how you might seal the case and then pump it full of CO2, both non-flammable and perfectly dry...
  • ugh.
    Mirroring it as fast as I can get it here [f2s.com]
  • I love my links. I would never do any harm to them.
  • From what I've read, P4's run at half their speed most of the time because they are overheated. If I build one of those air-chillers, can I make my P4 run at twice it's speed?
  • Something I always wanted to do, living in northeastern Quebec, and it being somewhat cold up here most of the year, was hook up some air hose to my window from my computer case, and an air filter w/fan, and cool down my CPU in that manner. No fancy peltier pumps or uber-huge heatsinks with 1000cfpm fans, just really, really cold air from outside, for maybe $10 in hose and a small fan. Saves on power, too. Now if there were a good, cheap way to catch some of that cold air for the summer (when it is really hot, oddly enough), I'd be set.

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