Anyone else watch TechTV? I just started watching it the past few weeks, we got it with our new digital satellite service.
One of the awesome shows is The Screensavers, all about computers. It’s an hour and a half long. I realized it was going to be one of my favorite TV shows when last week they did a full 1/2 hour on IDE. (Maybe they should’ve called it “GeekTV” instead of “TechTV”, lol).
The other night they did something super cool (multiple meanings). They overclocked a P4 3.06ghz chip by more than 50% to over 4.09ghz! It was running Windows, and it was stable! They cooled it with liquid nitrogen. It was so cool… they welded a 2" wide copper pipe on top of the heat sink, and just started pouring styrofoam cups full of the juice in the pipe. Here’s the link, Cooling with Liquid Nitrogen. When you’re done reading, check the related articles on submersion cases… they did that on an older show I never saw, but it looks awesome. Essentially, they built an aquarium for the mobo, cpu, etc. and filled it with a liquid called hydrofluoroether (HFE). It has a high rate of heat transfer, and doesn’t fry electronics. Then just use a pump to run it out and through some copper tubing in another reservoir, then throw dry ice or some other cooling agent on the tubing.
I guess none of this is really practical for your desktop, but it’s still freaking cool.
People have been doing that for a long time, with various gases and liquids. The refigerant, Freon, was being used until it became “illegal”…and then it was replaced by a chemical substitute…I do not remember the name offhand. Something like R2e…
Anyway, I don’t understand why anyone would want to overclock badly enough to risk frying their system. Must be a gaming thing.
People trying to push the envelope, I guess… best description is the “Tim Taylor syndrome”, hehe… MORE POWER!!
Though, I would like to see a study of what types of chips are being overclocked… whether they’re the newest, fastest available, or older, cheaper, slower chips… probably both, but I dunno.
Though, I did have a really interesting Idea for a new custom case. First, buy a mini-fridge, then build a submersion case onto the side of it, along with a dry portion to hold your power supply, drives and such. Then cut holes so you can run the HFE cooling tube into the tiny freezer section of the fridge and back.
Get it running, and stock it full of your favorite caffeinated and alcoholic beverages, and it’d beat the pants off that Coffee Pot case posted in the forum a couple months back, hehe.
Tom’s Hardware did a similar overclocking to 4.1GHz, but didn’t use liquid nitrogen. Instead they use a compressor which is supposed to be more stable than liquid nitrogen.
You can find all the details here:
One thing Tom’s Hardware forgets to mention is condensation. That’s why peltiers have not become more popular- When a cooler’s temperature drops below the current dew point, water starts to condense and can ruin a processor. Newer peltiers come with a add-on card with temperature and humidity gauges to automatically keep it from cooling below the dew point. But the compressor can bring temperatures down to -52 degrees celcius when the processor’s idle! I just saw that the Screensavers did mention this. Good job.
Looks cool, but what are you talking about peltiers? I didn’t see them use one in that setup, it was a compressor (like what’s in a fridge or AC)… actually, it looks very similar to what the Screen Savers did with their UGM 3.0 (Ultimate Gaming Machine), just a different brand.
Right, Tom’s Hardware uses a compressor, not a peltier. For those of you who don’t know, when peltiers have a lot of electricity going to them they become very cold on one side and extremely hot on the other. Heh I read how someone put the peltier on BACKWARDS and fried his CPU in an instant heh:)