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Hardware

Vapochilled Pentium 4 System At 3.3GHz 135

Posted by CowboyNeal from the cool-stuff dept.
SpinnerBait writes "Overclocking the Personal Computer has gotten considerably more elegant over the past few years and there is now an entire industry dedicated to it. One of the latest innovations is super cooling processors down to sub zero temperatures with standard vapor phase refrigeration, in an effort to allow clock speeds to crank far beyond manufacturer specifications. This article takes a look at the Asetek Vapochill, a Vapor Phase Refrigerated PC Case, that chilled a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 down to -7C and allows it to run stable in a workstation environment at 3.3GHz and beyond."
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Vapochilled Pentium 4 System At 3.3GHz

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  • More dollars than sense? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by traskjd ( 580657 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:18AM (#4536369) Homepage
    At such high speeds do you really want to spend heaps in order to go faster? I thought the general feeling was that people aren't finding much need for much faster processors. Like most /. readers I haven't read the article yet however I have seen these cases advertised and they cost a bomb. Without doing a price check it might almost be cheaper to buy several lower spec pcs if you want the overall power (say for the seti programme or cancer curing stuff). Just my 0.02c What do you think?

    • Re:More dollars than sense? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:23AM (#4536384) Journal
      You hit it on the head. 99% of the people who are doing overclocking like this aren't doing it on professional systems or work systems. And yeah, the price / speed ratio for doing something this complex is terrible. It's just the same as people who like to deck out their cars and tweak them to within an inch of their lives, etc. It's TOTALLY a status symbol within some nerd cliques.

      OTOH, some overclocking is very easy, and can add a lot of value. The first K7 chip I had, a 600MHz Duron was capable of being overclocked to ~860 MHz with the default cooler. That was good.

      • Re:More dollars than sense? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:29AM (#4536403) Journal
        The worst part is they only got this thing up to 3.3Ghz, that's 500 extra Mhz.

        Quite a lot of work, money, and mess for 17% more CPU performance. In a month or two they can probably just buy an official 3.3Ghz chip.
        • Which they will then OC to 3.8Ghz.

        • Re:More dollars than sense? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Latent IT ( 121513 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:56AM (#4536461)
          Quite a lot of work, money, and mess for 17% more CPU performance. In a month or two they can probably just buy an official 3.3Ghz chip.

          Not only that, but if they actually want to spend money, they can just go out and build multiprocessor systems. Yes, yes, not everything is multithreaded, but I think it gets you a heck of a lot more than a 17% performance gain on average. And it won't catch fire if you spring a hose! Overclocking was origionally for the cheap buggers who figured out they could buy a slower chip for $$$ - $50, instead of a faster chip for $$$, but you could make them run the same. Now it's all about the $$$ - $50 for the chip, + $$$ for the cooling system.

          On the other hand, it's a hobby. And probably a fun one. Like tricking out cars, or BASE jumping from higher hights... It's not about the sense, it's about the numbers, beating your personal bests, and quite possibly the cool noise this system would make when running. Just to say you did something a lot of other people haven't.
          • Just to say you did something a lot of other people haven't.

            Installing a manufactured product that someone else built doesn't seem to be very much of a hobby to me. I guess it's a hobby if you can call something like car audio a hobby. Spending lots of money to show off seems to be the real hobby in those cases.
            • Well heck, stamp collecting is a hobby, and there you just... buy things, I guess. IMO, it's a hobby if you enjoy it, and it passes some time. And I guess hobbies don't make a profit - then it's called a job.

              Besides, overclocking isn't the simplest thing in the world. You have to track down and compare which chip batches overclock well, find a motherboard that allows you the control you need, and twiddle with some airflow in your case. I'm sure you could just pop in a chip and change some BIOS settings, but that's asking for trouble if you just do it willy-nilly.
          • not only that, but people have been hitting 3.1Ghz on air cooling using the cheaper 2.4b chips. Link [oc-forums.com]
          • Rather, now its more like $$$+ $100 for the latest chip, then $$$ for the fan, then $50 for the liquid coolant, then...
        • Although anyone buying this case will be able to use it over and over again so you couuld say that after 3 - 5 systems, you got a good return on your investment.

          Of course, anyone buying this case wouldn't use a 2.8 GHz CPU. I imagine they could have hit similar clock speeds with a 2.4a (100 MHz FSB) or a 2.26b (133 MHz FSB) as they are far better OCers that the 2.8b.

          I spent more money than necessary on setting up a water cooled system and yes, it is one hell of a status symbol (until this thing came along) but I will be able to highly overclock all of my future systems using this setup. Plus it's just so damn quiet.
    • At such high speeds do you really want to spend heaps in order to go faster?

      Only reason I can see is if you wanted to develop software for the capabilities of next years games hardware. Only reason for having a fast machine these days is to play tombraider.

    • I disagree (Score:2, Informative)

      by Sepherus ( 620707 )
      The general feeling is indeed that there isnt much need for faster processors.
      This article, however, has nothing to do with the general computer user. Its about having the fastest available chip on the market and running it faster than everyone else. While there isnt really a practical use for this, some people enjoy it (myself included. I tend to stick more to the "budget" end of things though ;))

      I could use a car analogy here, but thats been so overdone I'll spare you.

      Phase - Change cooling systems such as the one used here typically only cost around $700. Thats less than twice the cost of a high end graphics card and it can be used to supercool any processors released using the same socket system. In short, its not such a huge/useless investment as you make out.

      This is my first post on slashdot, so apologies for any mistakes.

      ~Laurence Wood
    • From the article:
      "As of the date of release for this article, you can get a base Standard Edition Vapochill System, without power supply, for $469 USD. Drop in a decent 400W supply and you are looking at a total chassis cost of about $570."

      So yes, slapping together a few more machines is feasible, but I wonder how much of the processor speed/memory you are then devoting to overhead of the base system, etc....
      Depends on how much those extra few hundred MHz mean to you....
    • Yep! I have to laugh now, at those people who spent loads on the big Cryotech cases to overclock their PIII's to the then unheard-of speeds of 1Ghz or so.

      I mean, just how many months of use did they get out of those before faster CPUs came along and equalled their CPU power with no refrigerated cooling necessary? 6 months, maybe?

      "Wow man, that sure is awesome! You've got this 75lb. case with a refrigeration system in it, sucking down electricity, so you can rival the clock speed of this new chip I cool with a $19 fan!"
    • But considering the price premium that Intel charges for an extra 0.2GHz at the top of its range of processors, it might just be economical to get the expensive cooling system and a slightly slower-rated chip.

      This is another way of saying that the prices charged for the very fastest CPUs are silly. But given that some people seem prepared to pay that much, a group of equally silly people would benefit from extreme cooling.
    • Doesn't anyone see an advantage here to buying this
      cooling system once and then reusing it?

      Think about it. You could buy a fairly
      fast CPU - maybe the second to best on the market and
      overclock it in your super cooled desktop.
      6 Months down the road you could sell your CPU and
      get another second to best CPU and overclock it.

      Wouldn't this save money? This scenario seems
      like a wise investment to me.

      -J

  • Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by et289807 ( 311853 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:21AM (#4536377) Homepage
    Is the gain really worth it anymore? I still have an old 1ghz laptop. I use an ancient 333mhz desktop. My server is an extinct 133mhz. I'm all for the "I'll do it because I CAN" attitude, but wasn't overclocking originally for serious benifit? Like 100 - 133mhz? Thats a 33% increase. 2.8 - 3.3 is only about 2%.

    • Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Informative)

      by SagSaw ( 219314 )
      100*((3.3-2.8)/(2.8)) ~= 17.9% >> 2%
    • What is fascinating to me is the amount of effort people put into cooling their system to achieve a couple of hundred more mhz of power. I understand that it's more of a hobby than anything else - it's not like the owners are running nuclear detonation scenarios and the +100mhz allows them to finish their work 1 month sooner. And I respect that - I've hacked my TiVO and my SonicBlue audio receiver 'because I could'.

      But what is pretty funny is that in 1 year, a 3.3ghz chip will be for sale out of the box. It must be kinda frustrating (maybe?) to put all this work into vapochilling your processor, installing a water-based cooling system, drilling blow-holes in the case, etc to achieve a N + M mhz processor (N is what the processor should run at, M is how much overclocking has been achieved) when an N + M mhz processor will come out in a year.

      I suppose what's more remarkable is that the processor makers are able to produce faster and faster chips so quickly.

      What a great time to be alive.

    • Thats a 33% increase. 2.8 - 3.3 is only about 2%.

      I thought they fixed that floating-point roundoff problem a long time ago.
    • I do a lot of VHDL at work, and let me tell you, it sure as shootin is worth it for me. Large FPGAs take forever to synthesize, even on mighty big hardware. The industry (at least where I work :) is moving away from Solaris to Linux & Win 2k solutions. The reason is largely bang for the buck and speed..

      So, I have a watercooler on my PC. I upgrade the CPU every couple months. That watercooler always lets me eek out another couple hundred Mhz of speed where I couldn't before, and it does make a difference. 10 minutes here and there does add up.

      It isn't as signifigant as it used to be, but it is still definately worthwhile. My machine is also much quieter without the 60mm turbine on top of most CPUs.

  • Ugh (Score:4, Informative)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:22AM (#4536380) Journal
    You also are instructed to fill all the pin holes in the motherboard socket with thermal grease as well.

    What a mess. Just don't try this with arctic silver.
    • it should say 'dielectric grease' or something similar.

      usually vaseline in the non-pro..

      why? nothing to do with thermal transfer, but to prevent condension happening down there.. (and yeh it does happen).

      btw, most people do things like this for fun, not for any real gain. it's not like that you want to own a speedfreak hotrod to really get from point a to point b reaaally fast, you just want to have it for the occasional track/strip-day.
      • Do you know what a dielectric is?

        http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_ gc i211945,00.html

        A dielectric material is a substance that is a poor conductor of electricity, but an efficient supporter of electrostatic fields. If the flow of current between opposite electric charge poles is kept to a minimum while the electrostatic lines of flux are not impeded or interrupted, an electrostatic field can store energy. This property is useful in capacitors, especially at radio frequencies. Dielectric materials are also used in the construction of radio-frequency transmission lines.

        Do you really want tons of stray capacitance in the pins of your chips? (Hint: You don't, unless you like signal ringing).

  • lets see... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:23AM (#4536385)
    1. expensive motherboard...
    2. expensive CPU
    3. moisture on both

    No thanks... Interesting, but I don't have enough free spending money to attempt this with such a risk.

  • A coworker and I, where discussing overclocking and case mods and toying with building a PC in one of those compact refridgerators, maybe with a little modification to the smaller freezer element. It's probably been done, tho. :-)
  • Less than $500 for the kit so long as you don't need to beef up your PSU, and I believe most OC'ers will have a fairly decent one to begin with.

    I remember a couple of years ago someone in the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips newsgroup paid $5000 to get a Kryotech system that allowed an Athlon 7-800MHz to be overclocked to run at 1GHz. Madness!

  • Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by espresso_now ( 219443 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:32AM (#4536412)
    All that money and trouble for a measly 500MHz. Sometimes I question people's sanity.

  • adding processors? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FaRuvius ( 69578 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:33AM (#4536415) Homepage
    at this price point, shouldn't people be thinking about adding additional processors, instead of overclocking 1 processor?
    That seems like the better path to follow from a price, performance, and stability standpoint.

    • Dude, for these people it's not a question of if they should do it (is it sensible, is there a better alternative), but if they can do it. See if it's possible. Scientific curiosity!
    • at this price point, shouldn't people be thinking about adding additional processors, instead of overclocking 1 processor? That seems like the better path to follow from a price, performance, and stability standpoint.

      Yeah, if you want to run a 500W power supply and push that much heat (and noise) out of your case into the room.

      Don't get me wrong, I think we're heading in the direction of multiprocessor systems, what with all the recent talk of hyperthreading, but we're not quite there yet.

  • Fahrenheit sucks! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those who use a real method of telling the tempreture, the tempreture is -7C/266k and NOT 17.9!

  • Just in time for halloween! (Score:5, Funny)

    by EvilStein ( 414640 ) <spamNO@SPAMpbp.net> on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:42AM (#4536430)
    "Titanium" case with cool LED blinky-ness... now if they could get the thing to have a built-in fog machine, I'd be happy.

  • Refridgerators are for sissies (Score:3, Funny)

    by Subcarrier ( 262294 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:43AM (#4536431)
    Anyone know where I could buy a cheap a gas turbine engine?

    I've always wanted to know how just far you can get with basic air cooling.

  • Diminishing returns? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by darkov ( 261309 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:43AM (#4536436)
    As lovely as it would be to have a compressor running in the room while you're using your PC, isn't this only going to give you only limted benefit - besides the wank factor of runing at 3GHz or whatever? Unless you're overclocking your memory as well, your P4's going to run out of gas no matter how fast it's turning over. And I don't see an fridge adaptor for your memory.

  • stupid overclocking and case modding frenzy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chamenos ( 541447 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:48AM (#4536444)
    gone are the days when overclocking was actually an economically viable option to get more performance out of your system for what you pay. these days, overclocking is almost no different from case modding, in that its just for posers to make themselves feel better and have something to show-off.

    and is it a good sign that slashdot is continually posting articles pertaining to both case modding and overclocking "breakthroughs"? yes, they overclocked the system to 3.3ghz, but most likely in a few months intel is going to release processors that are just as fast, if not faster. see the pointlessness?

    its like posting on article on slashdot about a breakthrough in man-powered vehicles, about how 200 people got together to push a car to more than 200km/h (i refuse to use miles/hour). yea sure, that was fast but is it a breakthrough? currently, the approach to overclocking processors is to up the voltage so the processor can function at a higher clock speed reliably, and then find some way to cool it down sufficiently so it doens't overheat. so they got it colder this time, and faster, via the exact same approach thousands of overclockers have been using all the while.

    is this really news-worthy on slashdot?
    • Can we get a consensus or perhaps a poll that shows: 1. A minority of slashdotters are case modding and/or overclocking. 2. They/we would all be happier if they could exchange their thoughts in the privacy of their own little 'mods' section. Or at least fast-track them directly into hardware. These stories are largely redundant and lead inevitably to the same bunch of threads. Furthermore, eaking a 20% to %30 speed improvement from your P4, only to be outpaced by next month's offering from Intel -- to incur all that wasted-time, money, and risk, makes about as much sense as pinning neon tubes to your box. I'm going back under my bridge now.
    • actually, the car analogy would be more accurate if 200 people got together and pushed a car and then claimed that it had been able to acheive 200 miles per gallon.
    • "gone are the days when overclocking was actually an economically viable option to get more performance out of your system for what you pay. these days, overclocking is almost no different from case modding, in that its just for posers to make themselves feel better and have something to show-off."

      Are you kidding me? Ocing is for posers? What planet are you from? First of all Case modding has NOTHING to do with Ocing. Have a look at the P4 1.6 and P4 1.8 which ARE ECONOMICALLY VIABLE options of getting huge performance increases for free. Why wouldn't you Overclock those cpus?

      The same goes for the XP 1600 and the Rev B Thoroughbreds.

      "see the pointlessness"
      Umm, No. Who are you to say that someone getting the most performance possible out of something they bought are posers or showoffs? So people who work on their cars are posers? How about people who tweak their kernel to make it go faster? How about anyone who has ever attempted to improve the performance of anything they have ever bought? Oh I guess your the arbitor what is appropriate to improve and what is "Cool".

      Lastly, why is someone who mods their case a poser as well? What is personal expression is verboten? And people should be "happy with what they got". You don't like bright colors?

      Interesting philosophy you have.

      You may be right that its not "news-worthy" anymore, but your assumptions about people who improve the speed of thier cpu or work on their case are flat out wrong and biased.

  • heatpipe (Score:4, Interesting)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @08:52AM (#4536450)
    How come no one seems to be using heatpipe technology to cool things? THis would seem to me the natural way to extend the cooling range of passive systems. It probably wont ever have the massive effects like these acively chilled systesm but it would cheaper than thus more worth while.

    the idea is simple. on top of the chip one places a vertical tube with the same crossection as the chip. The tub is filled with alcohol or propane or freon or other low boiling point liquid. The sides to the tall(!) tube are lines with air-cooled heatsinks.

    when the liquid boils then the (VERY LARGE) heat of varorization is extracted from the liquid. the expelled gas molecule rapidly transferes its energy to other gas molecules and then distibutes that over then entire face of the heatpipe which condences the gas back to liquid.

    the processor can never warmer than the boilingpoint of the liquid. the average cooling capacity is determeined by the requirment that the cooling rate of the heatsinks equal the heat input rate on average. One of the nice things about this as opposed to a fan or refregeration system is that although the average heat load is the same, the peak heat load can be as high as you want. the liquid has almost infinite reserve cooling capacity up until it boils dry. Thus the temperature of the processor fluctuates less than any fan cooled or refrigerated system.

    So what is the heat load capacity. It should be the significantly larger than any refrigerated system with the same area of heat sink!!!

    • HP uses these with the PA-RISC chips in the N and L class machines I believe.
    • Twinhead [twinhead.com] laptops use a heatpipe. I've got one. It works just like you say--and the laptop runs fanless, which makes it very quiet.
      • Suddenly I became very interested, since I have been looking for a quiet x86 Laptop, and I was really impressed with Apple Powerbooks - no fans to speak of.

        However, nowhere on the Twinhead site I could find information on this technology. Do they actually sell fanless P4 laptops? Where can you find more info on this?

  • Taco! make an OC category (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AxelTorvalds ( 544851 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @09:06AM (#4536484)
    So I can add it to the blocked list, like Katz.

    Seriously, I really don't give a shit about overclocking. I don't want to block out all hardware news though.

  • New Poll (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RiotXIX ( 230569 )
    I often wonder how many slashdotters overclock cpu's of 500+, because I wouldn't want to blow my money buying a new processor. Therefore, I usually skip these articles. Could we have a poll on the lines of:

    My CPU is overclocked:

    0-49mhz
    50-99mhz
    100-199mhz
    200-299mhz
    300-4 99mhz
    500-999mhz
    1GHZ+
    CowboyNeal stands in the corner blowing/playing a /harmonica/large HORN/ over my processor. ...or whatever is realistic.

  • Everyone knows how to make your CPU faster... (Score:5, Funny)

    by El Camino SS ( 264212 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @09:15AM (#4536505)

    Just put a tiny "Type-R" sticker on it, and be done with it.

    Sheeesh.
  • Overclocking isnt supposed to be a "useful" thing to do anymore. Chip speeds are increasing fast enough and are frankly fast enough already, that there is no actual NEED to do it. Is there any NEED for people to supercharge their cars? Do they do it anyway?

    It's basically the same thing. These are just people trying to push what they've got as far as they can. The point isnt the cost, or even really the gain. They're just trying to see what they CAN do, and how to do it. You may think this stuff is worthless now, but wait and see how long it is before these radically overclocking cooling techniques become commonplace in home PCs (once scaled down a bit).
    • Overclocking isnt supposed to be a "useful" thing to do anymore. Chip speeds are increasing fast enough and are frankly fast enough already, that there is no actual NEED to do it. Is there any NEED for people to supercharge their cars? Do they do it anyway?


      It's not the same. When you supercharge a car you are getting performance that you usually cannot buy and will not be able to buy (for that model). With CPUs, it's just a matter of waiting a few months and that 2.8GHz CPU @ 3.3GHz is out-paced by newer processors. I wish car manufacturers could figure out how to apply Moore's Law to their engines. We could have 1000hp sedans by now :)
  • It seems to me that if you wanted to overclock something the logical choice of CPU would be a G4 not an intel or athalon. Seems like one would have more head room for potential improvements since these things run cooler to begin with. THey are also smaller chips and thus would respond better to advanced cooling techniques like this that can focus the cooling capacity into a small area.

    Can someone explain to me why it makes more sense to do this with pentiums for piddly improvements in performance.

  • Electric Bill? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Frank of Earth ( 126705 ) <frank&fperkins,com> on Saturday October 26, 2002 @09:25AM (#4536548) Homepage Journal

    Cons:
    Still somewhat pricey but cheaper than similar competitive solutions

    Motherboard tray can be hard to work with

    Retail channel for product is still somewhat limited

    Shouldn't one of the cons be the electricity needed to keep it cool?

  • Waste, waste, waste (Score:3, Informative)

    by floydigus ( 415917 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @09:29AM (#4536561)
    This kind of balls-to-the-wall turbo-charging is not only un-necessary, it's wasteful too.
    Most PC's are pretty power hungry as it is, without introducing a whole new load of cooling equipment. Although it appears to make the processor perform more efficiently, actually it makes the whole box a whole lot less efficient in terms of power consumption.
    Much more encouraging is the recent trend to making silent PC's. These tend to be pretty energy efficient as well as nicer to have about the place.
    • I just built a 2.4GHz P4 system and I am impressed with how quiet the Intel-designed "Thermal Solution" is. It's a whisper compared to the Valcano 5 on my old 1.4 T-Bird. Kudos to Intel! Or, if we hate Intel today... Bad Intel!
  • Is there room for it to keep beer nice and cold? For about $500, it should.

  • Old and outdated (Score:3, Informative)

    by Analysis Paralysis ( 175834 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @10:52AM (#4536813)
    Asetek's Vapochill system has been available since 2000, has been extensively reviewed on dozens of hardware lists (get a list here [google.com]) and Asetek themselves have redone their website so that it will only work with browsers claiming to be Internet Explorer (lamers).

    A better overclocking solution is the Prometia from chip.con [chip-con.com] (whose server seems to be down at the moment) which cools the processor down to -40C rather than Vapochills comparatively tame -20C. Get a list of reviews comparing them here [google.com].

    C'mon Cowboy Neal, this is a waste of space.

  • Using a Factory Overclocked Chip (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stigmata669 ( 517894 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @11:01AM (#4536837)
    They could have gotten much better preformance if they had used a 2.6 Ghz P4 witha 400mhz (100x4) FSB, and overclocked it. The problem with the 533mhz bus chips is that they are essencialy overclocked straight from the factory, thus making more gains much more difficult. Look on any serious overclocker website, and you will find watercool kits (not even sub-zero cooling) approaching 3.8or 3.9 ghz using 400mhz bus chips

  • alternate AC! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fuzzygeek ( 557065 )
    it gets hot in my home office. i'm rather intrigued by this thing just to use it as a secondary air conditioner. replace the six computers in here with these cases and maybe i can turn the A/C off too!

    on the other hand, how loud are these things? i'm eyeing a system to use as a home theater deck (new TVs have RGB hookups. mmm counterstrike on a 65" tv at 1280!) -- but being in the main room, it'd have to be near silent. for that pc i may choose silence over temperature.

    hmm. decisions, decisions.

    • Here's a tip: you can't "create cooling", only move heat. These refridgerated cases move heat from the CPU to outside the case. If you replace all your standard cases with these, your room temperature will not decrease one bit; in fact it will increase because the additional energy dissipated from the compressor overhead. The only way this could possibly work is if you placed the evaporators outdoors and ran the tubing through the walls or window.

      It's the same mistake as placing a window air conditioner anywhere but in a window (such as sitting on the floor in the corner.) It will do absolutely nothing to cool the room, and will likely increase the room temperature, unless it can somehow vent the heat to the outdoors.

      Finally, remember that these cases can handle a heat load of roughly 150 Watts or so, which really isn't squat -- it's about 500 BTU/hr. A typical window air conditioner might be 10000 BTU. Estimate A/C needs at something around 30 BTU per square foot or so.
  • Oooh you mean I can get another 15% performance is I install a fridge in my PC? Why don't I just wait a month and buy the next version and save the money, hastle and electricity.
  • No, I don't think I will ever change my machine for a steam machine
  • These phase change coolers have proven themselves to be somewhat destructive to P4's in the long term though. After a couple of months of use, the chips mysteriously die. Now typically when chips die in overclocking its due to electron migration from rediculous overvolting (and this is more true with .13u chips). However several people have had thier P4's die with only nominal (~1.6 volts, most p4's defaualt to 1.5) overvolting while useing these phase change coolers. Turns out, Intel only specifies these chips for operation to temperatures down to 20 F, and what happens is the supercooling causes the chip to become so brittle, that even slight virbrations can cause damage to the chip, thus killing it.

  • With an Athlon XP 1800+... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Saturday October 26, 2002 @02:32PM (#4537783) Journal
    All my games run.
    All my software run. I still have to add a little more RAM but windows boots quickly enough (read line 1 for reason why I'm running windows not linux).

    I *could* overclock the chip. In fact my motherboard is made to allow this to be easy. But the question is this... "if it's not slow, why risk making it a coaster?"

    All you overclockers, we read a new overclock story every 2 weeks or so. It's not really that cool anymore. In fact, many of us just find you wasteful and silly.

    Find a way to build your PC into a car, or a robot or something, then we'll pay attention.

    Recognition is about doing something new or at least out-of-the-ordinary
  • I have my P4 Celernon 2.0 Ghz clocked at 2.9 Ghz with the OEM fan on it, nothing else. 3.3 from a 2.8 is not so great.

  • If you did this with a p4, it would
    achieve consciousness.
    For a coupla minutes;

    http://totl.net/Eunuch/

    Pah, I spit on your puny -7C
    and minescule performance increase!
  • But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a
    brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and
    lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the
    phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where
    it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's
    greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company.
    Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit:
    the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then
    immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is
    the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.

    This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of
    electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few
    customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the
    last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937;
    the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is
    why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.
    -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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