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For The Overclocking Junkie
wilderf writes: "Check out this site. A group of crazy overclockers decided to fully submerge a motherboard in a liquid nitrogen cooled fluorinert? bath (Fluorinert? is an electronic testing fluid manufactured by 3M? -- $500/gallon), to see how much they could overclock the CPU. Crazy." The site is pretty impressive too, if you're the sort of sadist who loves torturing hardware.
"Dude, this is seriously f*bleep*ed up right here...."
Why is it that alcohol is always involved in such insane experiments??? I mean, Mary Shelly never said that Dr. Frankenstein was blitzed when we was working on the monster... Got to be a techie thing.
Of course, they *could* just go all out and directly submerge the processor in liquid nitrogen. It's nonconductive, AFAIK.
Or at least it doesnt work. As an overclocking site pointed out fluorinert is a gel so they would have trouble pumping it. Also liquid nitrogen would freeze it SOLID making the circulation impossible. N2 on its own would be better than this idea. Not quite potato powered web servers but close..
no sig.
Mmmmm. In either event, the vapor won't kill you instantly.. but you won't live very long either.
Well, they froze that hideously expensive compound, and say that they didn't expect that. This is the first question that comes to mind!
- ------
If you go to3M's website, we read:
Key properties: typical boiling point: 155C, pour point: -57C, dielectric strength: 46KV (0.01 inch gap), dielectric constant (1KHz): 1.89.
And they tried to cool it down to -190C!!!
HELLO!!! ANYBODY HOME?
------------------------------------------
Jobs? Which jobs?
I remember some Japanese (or was it Korean) guy doing this, except he didn't immerse the whole board - he ended up building a "wall" around the CPU, then filling that with liquid N2 - he got some impressive figures, IIRC - for the CPU he was using (PPro? Can't remember) - however, the N2 boiled off rather rapidly... Maybe someone has a link...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The Flourinert is returning directly onto the CPU, so the CPU should be the coldest part. At 115 fsb, you'll have a lot of components getting toasty that need cooling off too.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Why didn't he just try to pour the liquid N2 over the motherboard? It would have been alot cheaper, and more efficient. N2 can be purchased for around $2 a gallon at some welding/gas supply stores. They'll even rent you a special container for transporting it.
The only reason I can see for using flourinert is if he was cooling it with a vapor phase system (classic compressor/refridgerant setup), or with something like a peltier. Since the Liquid Nitrogen is already liquid, why not just submerse the components in that? The lower limit on vapor phase is around -45C with R-22 or R-12, but by using other refridgerants, you can get even colder (-85C or below). You can also whack a peltier cooler on the surface of the cpu to get another -20C or so below what the vapor phase will cool it to. If designed right, you'll be able to get below -100C. The performace limit of CMOS chips doubles at -100C. So if you're getting 550Mhz outta that 366 celeron at room temp, theoretically, you should be able to get over 1Ghz at -100C, given that the rest of your components will work when you have some crazy bus speed.
One of these days, I'll get off my ass and have my http://www.peltiercoolers.com site up, and we'll have a ton of information available, plus peltiers, refridgerants, heatsinks, compounds, coldplates, and other fun stuff to fry your CPU with.
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Chilling it to negative temps isn't the answer. Supercooled items, when they come in contact with air, condense. That's why the Kryotech attempted to keep the chip closer to room temperature, which in silicon-world, is a pretty cool temperature anyway.
From what I heard from the guy who sets up the Crays here (and he should know since this building *is* Cray) the Cray 2 and the Cray T90's (the ones that are actually immersed in a bath of Flourinert) have this problem. The Cray 2 would vent the gas out a pipe in the roof and the T90 actually has a filtering system to catch it which could be where the guy got the O2 mask story from. So you're right that the CPU will not be functioning when this happens, but that doesn't mean that it's not a problem for the system as a whole which will have more than one CPU and these CPU's are hooked up to pretty nice sized power supplies...
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
goto http://www.tweak.cc - goto the links section, Dr Freeze is there with some other overclockers
* For doing this in the first place
* For getting such an image-intensive, long site linked to Slashdot
Start here, to get to where they are actually starting to cool the thing and boot up.
What's really a shame is that they went to all this trouble and expense just to run Windows on a Celeron 366. For less than the $1,000 they paid for the Fluorinert they could have bought a new motherboard and an Athlon running at the same speed as they eventually got the Celeron clocked to.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
You're thinking of CO2.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
The T90 was much later (1994 or '95) than the Cray 2 (1985? not too sure on that date) and it certainly uses that approach. See my post further up talking about what Crays are cooled in what method. Only the T90 and Cray 2 are cooled by total immersion, though a bunch of others circulate Flourinert through the system.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
Actually, yes they are in direct contact with the liquid. And no they won't explode either. While doing some low temperature physics experiments, I've poured liquid nitrogen into a glass dewar without it exploding. For that matter I've poured liquid helium into a glass dewar without it exploding. Both of them were at about room temperature. The people working in labs do this on a regular basis so what I did wasn't unusual at all. On this point, you're just flat wrong. If you want I can show you lab manuals that tell people to do this. If the offer for guiness is legit, tell me and I'll give you an address that you can send the twelve pack to.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
ProcessTree: It's like distributed.net, but you get paid.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
I imagine that it has to do with how well the oxygen circulates through the stuff. You could choke if none actually got to your bloodstream, even if much of the flourinert in your lungs was oxygenated. Breathing will push the fluorinert around some. Otherwise you might need pumps with tubes down your throat to get it to work.
;)
Also like any liquid you breath, it strips off the protective mucous coating your lungs; once you start breathing air again you're *very* prone to get pnuemonia.
IIRC they've been experimenting with oxygenated liquid breathing since the 60's. In the movie, btw, while no humans actually breathed it for real (it was pink water - Ed Harris just acts like he's breathing it) they did put the rat in matching pink-tinted flourinert.
Then they had to film several different rats to get enough footage because they all got the shit scared out of them (literally) whenever they were dunked in the stuff
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I'm suprised that these guys didn't take more time to understand the properties of the chemicals they were dealing with, especially since they paid $1000 for them. Some simple heat circuit simulations would have told them that the liquid nitrogen was not nessecary. A good ice bath would do well enough because it can adsorb a lot more heat ( in Joules ). Water has a great specific temperature. I assume that flourinert is better ( for $500, it had better be better! ). The issue isn't so much getting the parts cold as it is in keeping them from getting hot.
Just my $0.02. Still interesting stuff, though.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
> N_2 (as well as pure water, contrary to popular
> perception) does not conduct electricity.
While true, water tends to be a bad choice for such things. Its hard to get and KEEP really pure. Plus it had this nasty habbit...if there are any electrolytes in it at all...any two parts with a potential difference will caue a small current and, while it may not effect the equipment, it will cause water to break down into H2 and O2.
The breakdown tends to corrode parts too. I thought of water when I was making capacitors... with a whopping dielectric constant of 81 (most plastics are in the 4-7 range...mineral oil is I think 7) its VERY tempting. Of course...when you are planning on using it in a project where voltages will be in excess of 10,000 V...that nasty electrolosis habbit of water could be a problem.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Anyone remember the Cray-2? It used Fluorinert as a coolant, gallons and gallons of it.
.. wonder if they ever determined exactly what temperature that was. (Also wonder if 3M will let them say exactly what temperature that was .. they freaked out one time when some friends of mine did a GC analysis of some Fluorinert and worked out an approximate chemical composition .. heheh ..)
I was interested to see that it does have a freezing point of sorts
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
This is very interesting, and a really cool project, but man, for what they spent on parts/coolant you could get a pretty sweet new mobo and chip. That's not the point, of course; this was more for entertainment and geek-one-upping :-)
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
The brittleness would depend on how quickly you heated it up, and if you threw it on the floor right after you removed it.
/Over_simplification)
Today, people have found out that if you submerge an object in liquid nitrogen or liquid O2 then let it heat up to room temperature over the span of ~week that it actually increases the strength of the material, at least it works for metals. (Over_simplification)This occures due to the material aligning itself into a stronger crystal lattice, which will remain if the heating process is not so sudden as cause enough immediate energy to break the bonds. When the material finishes reaching room temp, if it was heated slowly enough, the stronger crystal lattice will remain, ergo making the object stronger.(
From what I have heard, disposable razors that have had this done to them will keep their edge for months.
I doubt that they waited a long enough time for that to happen. And of course, if they heated it up too quickly then the material would expand too quickly and it would shatter.
Hope that was helpful.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
There is an intriguing method of obtaining the same results, relatively speaking. The human operator is submerged in a clear liquid (say, water) while the PC remains above the surface. Due to the human movements being slowed down from viscosity, everything the PC does appears hundreds of times faster, thereby introduing a "relative constant of overclocking".
There are other subtle effects. The light slows down since it has to travel through liquid before hitting the retina. Finger movements slow down, as do mouse movements.
Water is also cheaper than liquid nitrogen, and easily available in swimming pools and oceans. Why not try this intriguing method today and see if it works for you? Oh, and you won't believe what it feels like when you're swimming underwater in Quake III. Very realistic.
w/m.
Cool project! Not sure I'd spend over a G note on fluid to overclock, but I'd say their results were pretty damn impressive!! a Celeron 366 running faster than an Athalon 600?! NICE work boys!
WURD!!
Fluorinert is really neat. It's used with computers because it doesn't conduct electricity, doesn't damage the components and (these days) isn't particularly toxic. There are rumors of bored operators drinking shots of it on dares.
;)
I think that Cray had 3m develop this stuff from scratch back in the day when they sold 9 out of 10 machines to the government.
They use basically the same stuff in medical situations (to keep your blood pressure up if no blood's on hand) and it can be oxygenated and breathed - as in The Abyss. What they didn't mention in the movie though was that it's so dense, you're not really going to be doing a hell of a lot while you breath it. Breathing it is hard work, it's so thick.
Unfortunately it runs about $500 a gallon. These guys blew a grand just on their Fluorinert. Stirring fans might help a little, but it does gel up a lot between IIRC -50 to -100 C. Perhaps they'll just immerse the whole board into liquid Helium next time
(Of course, I remember hearing about one guy once who cooled his system with some kind of motor oil)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Assuming a minimum feature size of 0.18 micron and a 1.8V core voltage fields within the (MOS) FETs channels reach 10^5 V/cm. Drift velocities saturate under these conditions and are 10^7cm/s@77K and 8x10^6cm/s@300K.
This data should apply for pure Si but could reasonably be extended to lightly doped channels (correct me if wrong)
Pag 36 fig 1.17
Now this means that the temp decrease (assuming it is uniformly distributed on the cpu) provides 25% increase in drift velocities (responsible for channel conduction)
In bipolar devices forward biased junctions have an exp(qVa/kT) (Va= applied voltage, K= Boltzmann const, T= temp in K) term that helps boost the currents involved.
Pag. 237-239
Intrinsic carrier concentrations drop @ about 100 K (p. 13 fig. 1.9) decreasing background noise (?)...
Really cool!
All refs are to:
Device Electronics for Integrated Circuits SE
Muller & Kamins
Wiley
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
But scott@b is probably right about LN2 directly on the motherboard not being that good of a coolant. Due to the gaseous layer he describes, you can hold LN2 in your hand without any damage. (Something that's not recommended for any length of time with dry ice, despite the fact that the temperature of dry ice is much higher than that of LN2.)
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
That was the "Dr. Freeze" project. Unfortunately, none of the links I can find work anymore. There was an article sometime back on SlashDot about it.
World Beach List, my latest project.
Cool!
-p.
I believe that they said in the article that they positioned the return line (with the ultra cold stuff in it) to shoot directly on the processor. I could be wrong though.
Right Now, our government is doing things you think only other governments do.
Babylon 5, epp after they declaire independence, Garabaldi resets passwords and shuts down the computer for the changes to take effect (MY GOD MS SURVIVE!!! RUN!!!!), when it comes back on some AI doobry comes back to - very simmilar :) and pretty funny
This is great...Overclocking is one of my favorite past times...Does anyone know of a little bit cheaper way of cooling off the board w/o using liquid nitrogen? (and not more fans)
It doesn't strike any of you as odd that this meathead would spend 1000 dollars on a liquid, to be cooled by liquid nitrogen,and he doesn't even check its freezing point?
I bet they're just trying to get their Amigas running in the three-digit megahertz range...
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
3M claims that Fluorinert is nonflammable. I didn't find any info about its chemical composition, but others have speculated here that it's a fluorocarbon or mixture of fluorocarbons, and if that's correct than it is nonflammable.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Wasn't this the stuff that Cray was using _years_ ago? Seems like an awfully long time for a substance to trickle down into the consumer market. Then again, Cray was a pretty good distance from the consumer market to begin with.
Or, even better, use a stainless steel thermos. Just don't lick it.
Wah!
actually i think he spells it with two f's, dr. Ffreeze...
"Leave the gun, take the canoli."
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
This is cool, but wouldn't it short out the motherboard? Could somebody explain why this works?
Obligatory comment: I torture my hardware whenever I see the words 'Booting Windows NT' on the screen...
I wouldn't overclock my system, personally, because I wouldn't sacrifice the stability. I just went with a dual mobo instead of overclocking a single proc.
You spent all that money to find out that the liquid you're cooling will freeze before you get to the temp you want? I'm sure somthing that costs this much comes with a pretty detailed data sheet.
It's about time somebody did this! I have been wanting to do this since I first heard about overclocking, and the heat problems that accompany it. 650 Mhz from a Celeron 366? Hmmmm... anybody wanna try a 1Ghz Athalon?
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Slightly off-topic, but I could have *sworn* I already saw this site/page via a link in slashdot. It's very rare that I see something before I see it on slashdot, so maybe I just can't believe it...
...which is too bad, because liquid cools better in most applications. Now, if I lived in my garage, oooh....
But yes... amusing, but anything having to deal with a liquid is just too much of a hassle. Although I can envision future cases being water-tight and of high-quality, I just don't think the average consumer would care to have that stuff leaking in their den/office/living room.
Oh well. I work with so so many things that give off heat, and it just sucks how water always comes into play, and it always manages to find a way to leak. Bah. Stupid Murphy.
...a Beowulf cluster of these?
(sorry, couldn't resist)
--
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
Yep. There's a small number of very good jokes/comedy routines/etc. where you see the punchline coming a mile away, and yet it's still funny when you get to the punchline. This is one of those.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
yeah those guys are weak, they can't even drink the hard shit. damn good for nothing new zealander's. i'd like to see their system try to out perform my ethyl burning dual nitros injected pIII. point in short: their system doesn't ammount to jack, it doesn't even require a fuel injected starter.
In a world without fags who would use linux? "Tha Ghostfaced Penguin Killa"
hrm, ok, DrFreeze seems to have dissapeared - tweak.cc links to Http://www.accsdata.com/drffreeze/Default.htm - its a 404 now (was there recently though) - going to http://www.accsdata.com/ just says "coming soon!" - at a guess their upgrading, hopefully they will restore the DrFreeze webpage
I realize this is a troll, but it brings up a topic I've heard a bit about.
It's likely illegal for the store to void the warranty on the computer if you open it, even if you agreed to it when purchasing it. Consumer protection laws usually prevent the warranty from being voided by self repairs on hardware that contains user-servicable parts. That's why a lot of hardware (air conditioners, VCRs, etc) are labelled as not containing any user-servicable parts.
So if they try to void the warranty because you opened the case, tell them you'll take it to a competitor to be fixed and bill them, and back the bill up with small claims court if they get fussy. It'll stick and you'll have made a stand against the assholes of the world.
(This has nothing to do with overclocking. Running a CPU past its rated speed, regardless of if it will do it, will void the warranty on the CPU and mobo, unless it's a mobo from an OC-friendly company like ASUS or ABit who serve the hardware hacker community.)
For the record, my new 600E is a happy 800EB with an Alpha PEP66T cooler. A $35 cooler, but one I can keep for years. A good investment versus spending $250 more for the faster CPU. And my ASUS P3V4X is an overclocker's dream.
I mean, really, liquid cooled systems would seem a lot more obvious if you looked at the evolution of high-performance cars. As their evolution moved along, they all went from air-cooled engines to water-cooled engines, because it is a much more efficient way to disperse excess heat. Even the last remaining holdout (Porsche) is now liquid cooled.
Now, granted, you do have to worry about some liquids that would be placed around electronics, but with non-conducting liquids like mineral oils and fluorinert, you wouldn't have to worry about short circuits, etc.
Actually, with the Celeron's ridiculous energy output of something like 27 watts at the rated clock speed, I'm surprised that Intel doesn't provide some liquid-cooled systems with the stock chips.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Since they said that the Flourinert stuff ran about $1000NZ, I found that it would be about $469.018US ($1NZ = $469.018US ).
so, $1000NZ = $469.018US. okay. but $1NZ = $469.018US???? hence, $1NZ = $1000NZ??? i think i should avoid new zealand. they break the law of arithmetic. we only break the rules of grammar/splleing and such here in the us.
It is definetly non-flamable. The problem with it is that if it gets hot enough (ie, a module shorts and burns a hole in itself, which can happen) it tends to molecularly break down and turn into (basically) mustard gas, which is not exactly health stuff to be breathing in your machine room... I doubt the guys mentioned in this article have enough juice to do that, but a Cray does...
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
I have to say I laughed out loud when I got to the part about the Flourinert turning to gel! In fact, that was the main reason I kept reading anyway. I have never heard of flourinert before, but I do know that there aren't too many things still liquid at LN2 temperatures. Jeeze, guys! Nothing to do, not too smart, too much money and too many toys. An accident waiting to happen.
how bout using a container made of Aerogel?
Of course you are in hot-head debunker mode, but really, there are solutions to all of these problems, from all of your posts. just try to have a little imagination...
:)Fudboy
Afraid nobody on Slashdot, understands it's a beta
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
So it not only cost these guys NZD 1000, but it also contributes significantly to global warming. Right on, guys! Well done! At this rate, most of New Zealand will be underwater in a few more years. Now that's what I call a problem that solves itself.
Here, have some more. Let's see if we can get that 286 to play Diablo 2.
It was only limited because they froze their coolant. With better equipment than what a few hackers can slap together in a few hours, direct liquid cooling might achieve the same result for long-term use.
Got to love those old Crays though. Friend of mine and I finagled our way into the supercomputer center in Huntsville, AL once and just slobbered over their Crays.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
That's really surprising since dewars are made of glass. It's also pretty common practice to use dewars to hold liquid helium(~4.2 kelvin = -294 C). Singal 11, you should go around and warn all the low temp physicists, NMR people, and a lot of other physical scientists since they all use glass dewars to hold low temperature liquids. At the very least, they'll get a good laugh out of it.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Flourinert has a much higher freezing point than the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. it will freeze in the heat exchanger.
.^
Directly submersing it in liquid nitrogen probably won't work either. thermal shock would break things, kinda like putting hot glass in ice water.
^.
The motto of the S&M CPUs
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
Running electronics immersed in Fluorinert is an old idea. The Cray 2 was cooled that way. This was more trouble than it was worth, and no later supercomputer used that approach. But Cray built one of the coolest looking computers of all time. The cabinet had windows and the liquid coolant was illuminated. Even the Cray 2 heat exchanger was beautiful.
What? I have been running overclocked machines for years now, and I never spend ANY additional money. I simply bought a GOOD fan the first time out (a good idea even if you DON'T overclock) and I use a good motherboard.
I ran a P-II 333 at 416 for over a year. Now I run a Celeron 366 at 450. The Celeron cost me LESS than the P-II. I use an Asus P2B motherboard and a SIIG fan.
The whole POINT to overclocking is to NOT spend extra money. Buy a chip in your price range, and oc it. If it doesn't run at a higher speed, fine, run it the rated speed.
Oh, and as for your comments about instability, if you are experiencing instability, you should reduce your clock speed. Not all chips overclock well. (Which is why I run my 366 at 450, and not 500)
(was I just trolled?)-CZ
A CPU being run at rated speed, even in a hot room, even at 50 C (136.4 F) permanently failing anything inside of a decade is quite unlikely. Everything else (hard disk, etc) will have probably died of old age by then, and the system will be too slow compared to what you are trying to do by then for it to matter.
I run my system at rated speed, 24/7. Don't expect the CPU to fail ever. Power supply fan bearing is getting noisy tho - I'm going to need a new power supply at some point - preferably with a fan monitor output if I can find one...
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You're right, definitely give it a minute or two to completely stiffen and so that all of your nerve endings are giving off a distress call to your mind.
Fruit flies like bananas... Time flies like the wind...
Liquid nitrogen is not "very expensive" it's actually cheaper then bottled water! There are plenty of places that use this method to cool things, just get a regular delivery via a truck, and let the nitrogen plant run the refrigerator - it's way cheaper then running your own refrigerator if you need teperatures that low.
-Ariel
BIG BANG
Really cool. Goes quicker if you throw it in a pond too. Put it on a leaf covered piece of ground and you get a blast radius. Ideal for getting unsuspecting passers-by to call you f**king a***holes. Don't forget to look nonchalant when the campus security guard walks unawares past your creaking, lightly steaming coke bottle while you pray it doesn't go off *just* yet.
But seriously, I worked in an NMR lab and played with (and occasionally worked with ;) ) this stuff all the time. Yes, we carried it about in dewars (basically thermos flasks without the neck) and I did actually transport it around in real thermos flasks for some of my stunts. No glass ever broke or shattered.
BTW, chocolate at -100C is pretty cool (no pun intended)
Rich
At K5 you don't see noise like this. The signal/noise ratio is almost perfect...
From a code standpoint, it is much more stable than slashcode IMHO, and it has been open from the beginning. People are activly developing it.
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
I can certainly understand not worrying about it if you just buy a new system every couple of years, but for those of us who try to keep every piece of hardware for as long as possible, even after upgrading, it does make sense to squeeze out as much life as possible by taking simple precautions such as extra cooling or even underclocking. Hell, I still have a TI Silent 700 data terminal, an 8086 system and a little 286 that still run perfectly fine (well, the ink ribbon on the Silent 700 is pretty dry, so it prints VERY light :)), so I understand the value of taking care of my equipment. It just depends on whether you want to have the CPU be usable in ten years. :)
Deosyne
The Cray-2 fully immersed all components in the nert, which flowed cold into the bottom of the tank and was taken hot out of the top. You could watch the bubbles flow upwards and it was extremely cool. It was fun to watch operators top off the nert reservoir occasionally by glugging a gallon into the inlet.
Later machines (Y-MP, C-90, T3D, T3E) ran the nert through channels in the modules, and some had air-cooled versions for smaller configurations. The "LC" or "AC" in a T3E machine designation refers to "liquid cooled" or "air cooled".
On the Cray-3, we ran the nert through a fuel-injector-like nozzle to spray it as a vapor on to the chips. A bunch of other schemes were tried.
Disclaimer: I'm a software guy, not a mechanical engineer.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
No, LN2 is at 77K (which is -273C+77C=-196C) at STP. Your lack of understanding about absolute and relative temperature scales disturbs me....
Try learning/thinking before talking/posting. People will respect you more.
andy
$1000 US (that would be about $1000 US)
Impurities in the fluorinert tend to collect at the point where the fluid boils. That tends to insulate the hot spot from the coolant, making it even hotter.
Thermal runaway.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Secondly, if you store liquid nitrogen in a Thermos flask, DON'T SCREW THE LID ON
There was a guy going by the name "drfreeze" who did the same thing (in general) with mineral oil. Sadly, his page, which I stored the URL to, is currently defunct. But if someone mirrored it somewhere, it would be a safer alternaive.
I want to use a mini fridge to build a system, but I need a way to keep condensation out. A desicant might work but I have my doubts. Another option is to cut some holes and drain the water out(that also may defeat the purpose of the whole thing).
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
Kuro5hin SUX!!! WANABEEEEEE!!!
I guess this should be followed with a HOT GRITS DOWN MY PANTS!!! or some other nonsense. Is it just me or does anyone else have a distain for Kuro5hin?
I don' even know where this rant came from.....
As a physics major, I get to do all sorts of cool experiments which require systems to be super cooled. Vacuum systems for instance use pumps that need to be cooled with liquid nitrogen. Sure, fantastic, 77 Kelvin. There's something that's even more fun. Liquid Helium. 4 Kelvin. Can we say that putting your hand in this stuff and then smashing it on a wall would be cool? Well we could say that, but you'd be in a lot of pain. :-)
Nonetheless, I know that they talked about the non-conducting fluid becoming a gel at low temperatures. That definitely stinks. So, why not find something else? Better yet, go to a chemistry lab at any fine institution (University of Virginia for example) and ask them for such a solution. I'm sure that the graduate students would love to actually apply something that they know to the real world.
Okay, so you have that solution, next get the helium.
My guess is that you could get a Celeron going faster than the 600+ MHz that OCTools talked about.
Fruit flies like bananas... Time flies like the wind...
Where do you come up with this crap? When you karam whore, you might as well try to get your facts right instead of fooling moderators into (+1 Informative) with garbage.
It is not enough for the Fluorinert to catch on fire or be next to a fire. What one does have to worry about is thermal decomposition; this will require extreme heat (according to the Material Safety Data Sheets, on the order of 1400 degrees). For comparison, a paper/wood fire burns at most about 700 degrees even with a significant fuel source and a CPU (the "Cray" that you allude to in your garbage anecdote) will not even be able to function with junction temperatures even close to a thousand degrees. You will not achieve thermal decomposition short of heating the Fluorinert on a laboratory burner or sticking molten metal into a beaker of the stuff. You must really misuse and torture the stuff to get anywhere near that point.
Moreover, what you really have to worry about is perfluoroisobutylene instead of hydrogen fluoride vapor. HF's thresehold long term tolerability is about 3ppm and it's LD50 is a lot higher than this. It will take more than 1 breath at any conceivably acheivable concentration to kill you. In any case, even a lethal dose will take more than 30 second to take effect upon intial contact or exposure (I've seen toxicity figures of about 10 minutes for exposure to hydrocyanic acid vapor, significantly more lethal than HF). Perfluoroisobutylene, on the other hand, will inhibit oxygen uptake by selectively binding with the -heme analogues in red blood cells much more efficiently.
Basic summary: Signal 11 is talking out of his ass again. You can mostly ignore his dramatics (but please consult your materials handling and safety staff if you plan to use Fluorinert) if you exercise reasonable prudence and care in using Fluorinert. "EXTREME CAUTION" is not neccesary, in the sense if one were handling certain organic mercury compounds or some other fluorine/chlorine compounds. Oh, and the oxygen masks: they're there so that any person unfortunate to be stuck in the machine room and who cannot reach the hold-off switch will not sufficate from oxygen displacement, not for poisoning (which would require a directed positive pressure system, instead of a mere supplementary oxygen mask).
A friend and i were looking into OCing his dual celery system and we also came across fluroinert. We call some local shops that were listed to have it and almost wet our pants when we heard the price. 27USD/lb didnt sound bad, but then the kicker came in. Minimum order: 20 pounds (which is also 1 gallon, so this stuff is really dense, more about this later).
:). They said they had to ship it ground, because for some reason, the FAA wont let in an airplane. Lo and behold, a few days later, a well packedged box arrived from 3M Industrial Specialty Fluids. Inside was a 4oz glass bottle of the stuff.
We decided that we, being two high school students, couldnt afford this, so we did the next best thing. We called 3M Industrial Specialty Fluids directly and asked for a sample (for a science project
We knew this wasnt near enough for what we wanted to do (submerge an enitre system) so we left it in the bottle, and to this day, it still sits in my room, unopened.
This sutff is pretty neat. Inside the bottle, you can tell it flows almost as easily as water, yet weighs about 3 times as much. Also, the reason its so expensive is that the manufacturing process is very dangerous. Before another chemical is added to neutralize it, it gives off very posionus, flammable fumes. Also, if you heat it to is boiling point (293-473K) it puts off those same fumes.
Mark Duell
To be just a bit clearer, the article (if you read it) said that one gallon of Fluorinert costs $500US. That would be about $500 in US dollars, surprisingly enough. It was in US dollars (strangely enough, 3M is a US company, and probably would accept $US more than $NZ...).
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
What did they do for afters, build a potato powered webserver or overclock a 486 to 247mhz using a fridge full of alcohol (a la totl.net)? Am I the only one who doesn't quite believe this?
Seriously though, if these guy really pulled this off I'm impressed. They put in an huge amount of work and money for what, by todays standards, is a pretty slow processor, but the sheer lunacy of it all has to be enough to impress anyone...It really was quite an achievment.
And I like how they say "practically non-toxic". Yeah, crayons used to be too. :)
Standard I/O Error. Incompetent/Operator.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
The list of things they want to try for next time include using "liquid CO2" for the cooler. I think that's going to be more expensive than the Fluorinert stuff!
(CO2 goes from it's solid "dry ice" form directly to gas, it sublimates, if I remember the word correctly)
Naaa, liquid nitrogen is indeedy around -190 degrees centigrade. Maybe you're thinking of dry ice? A dry ice bath (ethanol and frozen CO2), which is very cheap, runs around -70, bit be prepared to keep stocking it up every few hours!
But you see, if you did go with a setup like this and could keep the Fluorinert from evaporating (easy -- just create a closed system), you would be able to use this for all of your future computing needs. (maybe just topping off the Fuorinert once in a while....)
Why develop switches and 1GHz Ethernet?
Why even bother having computers in the first place?
Okay, so maybe liquid nitro overclocking isn't very revolutionary, but it falls under the same umbrella that the above topics do. Curiousity + [moderate] intelligence + interesting subject. "What would happen if..." You know?
As far as "why overclocking" in general... well, I just bought a Celeron-II 566 for $80, put it on an Abit SlotKET !!! and a Golden Orb, flipped a switch and BINGO an (albiet crippled) 850MHz Coppermine for about $100, $110. That's more than 8MHz on the dollar. Compared to a Pentium III 700 (which has about the same performance) for $250 or $260 (again, including slotket and cooling fan). With the money I saved I bought a GeForce.
Morals... I'm a happy owner of an 8088, an 80486SX, and a Pentium MMX, so I have plenty to get Intel back for.
As an aside: The BX chipset overclocked to 133MHz FSB (it officially only supports 66 and 100) is still the top-performing platform out of the Apollo Pro 133A, the Intel i815, and the Intel i840 w/ Rambus. Overclocking helps here, too.
Nerds buy the newest components so they have a fast machine. If they can have a fast machine on the cheap, so much the better. If they have some extra cash to spend and they want the fastest machine in the world, they buy flourinert and LN2. What can I say? It's cool.
Alakaboo
Why blow up perfectly working celeron cpus and bx motherboards trying to goose that celeron 366 up over 450 when you can buy a celeron 500 for dirt cheap! Hell PIII600s are under $400. That's cheaper than having to replace a motherboard and a cpu.
Fluoroinert??? Didn't they used to cool the old supercomputers (crays) with those?
Why not just go to a butcher shop and put the box in the meat locker? Or one of those big freezers?
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Nope. Nitrogen boils at 77 degrees Kelvin, or -196C.
The -190C quoted in the article is 83K.
The problem with this, though, is that that liquid N2 is going to boil like nobody's business, so you'll need quite a bit of it, and you'll definitely need ventilation to get rid of the extra N2 gas.
I have found peace of mind at 450mhz/30 C vs 500mhz/50c. Not only have I underclocked the processor, but I have also been able to reduce the voltage to the core. Since this is not a gaming system or a workstation and merely serves as a proxy/firewall machine the savings each month I would of spent on prilosec I can now spend at the electronic store.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Except that LN2 boiling doesn't take as much energy as most room temp liquids do. Plus once the gas layer is in place the liquid is somewhat isolated from the heat source, which then gets a lot hotter. If you can have boiling while keeping the hot surface mostly covered with liquid, boiling is a great way to remove heat from things. Some of the liquid cooling schemes used a region with lots of sharp points to help induce boiling there, and keep the hot stuff down under a few cm of fluid for the slight rise in boiling point incured by a bit of increased pressure.
Some CPU's are much more tolerant to overclocking than others. You didn't get lucky, I know how that is. Fortuneately for me, I got lucky when I bought my Celery 400. I spent $0 on stuff to use to overclock it. I have it overclocked to 500mhz. It's runs just as stable at 500 as it does at 400. I have no extra fans or anything, and it runs fine sitting in a hot room.
Anyway, my point being, buy the CPU at the speed you want, and maybe you'll get lucky and be able to run it faster without spending extra money.
Overclocking sure is fun though...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Actually, they'd probably still win. Superscalar pipelines, more cache, etc. make up the 2.5x frequency difference. Although you have to factor the memory system in there somewhere, so maybe it would be a little closer.
Had they followed the link on their own site they would have found a handy little list of all of the boiling / gelling points of Flourinert. It's 3 links from thier own site. It turns out they make one flavor (FC-87) that goes down to -101 deg C. That should be more than cold enough . . . stick with dry ice and your temp shouldn't go below -90 dec C, if I recall. And why not use a CPU that could go even higher, if you're going to thow a grand $ into heat transfer fluid. We all know you can O/C to ~500 mhz, I wanna see 1000+!
--
Cherish. Live. Dream.
Use a storage container with a pressure valve and a pipe to feed the liquid into the apparatus.. it's safer, it's more efficient, and most important - your nitro isn't exposed to the atmosphere. Very important detail, that.
And there is a problem in that LN2 tends to condense oxygen from any air that it comes into contact with. Thus tanks of LN slowly become liquid air, then LOX. And liquid air or oxygen tends to make things burn well, things such as you motherboard. It's better to have some isolation.
Note that DEC did do LN cooling of their LSI11J processors, years ago. That let them run at 3-5 X the rated processor clock. The `J was in a ceramic package.
And, no, LN2 isn't cold enough to make very many things superconductive. Most materials take liquid helium ranges. A NBS document lists Si as going superconductive at 6.7-7.1 degrees K at 120-130 kbars pressure ( 118-128 atmospheres) I don't know what effect teh doping has on it.
I've addressed your issue about thermal decomposition toxicity in another comment. Fluorinert has a rather low viscosity, but this does not affect its volitility, vapor pressure, or molecular weight (which are what determine the tendency of the vapor to diffuse out of confined spaces). For your information, since you seem to be so concerned, here are the relavent figures (looked up in a MSDS three rooms down):
Boiling point: 215 C
VP: 42 mmHg @ 20 C
Vapor density: 14x air Evaporation rate: 1.7 (Butyl acetate=1)
Viscosity: 14 centistroke @ 20 C
CAN THIS BE ACHIEVED???
Of course it can be achieved, it says in the title that you made the bloody thing!!
Sensationalists. I'm surprised their site is faring as well as it is, I guess not too many /.ers are checking it out.
Wah!
Alot of people have used liquid nitrogen to cool their systems, this is not unusual for hardcore overclockers. What is unusual, however, is using the florinert(sp??) - not only does it have an incredibly low viscosity (something that was air tight could still leak a *ton* of this stuff), but it's also extremelly dangerous if burned. Well, like most coolants, actually.. but still, this one is worse than usual.
BTW I think mineral spirits will do a very similiar job, and alot cheaper then flourinet.
Correction: insert a decimal point in 42 mmHg (it should be 4.2 mmHg).
The liquid nitrogen was clearly a bad idea, being colder than the gel point of Florinert, but the basic idea is sound. A small refrigeration unit cooling a small amount of Florinert to the temperature that worked best for them might be practical for normal use.
You don't need to cool the whole motherboard. If you can just get the main chip, the memory, and the video accelerator chips (and the other chips you need to make them talk to each other) into a tiny sealed case of the stuff, this could be in every high-performance home-computer.
Hell, they doubled the rated clock-speed with a decent liquid cooling system for about a thousand bucks. A mass-produced, much smaller, equivalent system could probably be as reliable as a CPU fan for under a hundred dollars, and make 900 MHz systems run at 1.5 GHz.
Dork!
--
I thik that if you moved the intercooler into the same tank as the mobo and allowed the Fluorinert to gel it seems like YCBO Supercondutors would work on the motherboard. Just Submerge the entire motherboard in Fluorinert and run the intercoolers around the motherboard. I think YCBO superconducts at just shy of -200 C.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Wow, thats' a neat pictorial about ultracold overclocking. I'm not into overclocking, but as an experiment I'd be interested to see somebody just get a motherboard and dump the whole thing in liquid nitrogen and try it. The main danger will be getting some parts of the board colder than others during cooldown and causing thermal stresses that will crack things - parts, traces, etc. I've done some work with liquid nitrogen and slow cooldown of what you put in it is very important. If you get a nice thick layer of liquid nitrogen in something like a styrofoam cooler and put the lid on, you will quickly get nice stratified layers of undisturbed air that get progressively colder the closer to the surface of the liquid ntrogen you get. If one were to mount the mobo on four fiberglass rods and stick these up thru the styrofoam lid, one could slowly lower the mobo closer and closer to the surface of the liquid nitrogen and get it progressively colder. After it had equalized in temp just above the surface, just plunge the mobo in. If you try this with a cheap mobo first as proof of concept, what have you got to lose? If somebody tries this, email me at rickyjames@email.com and let me know how it went. Better yet, tell Slashdot.
I wonder. Does Flourinert destroy the ozone layer like Freon? If it contains flourine, then I bet it does. That's probably why they don't sell it to just anyone. If so, it should never be exposed to the open air as in this experiment.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
I remember seeing online somewhere (link unknown right now) about a guy who made a special case and filled it with mineral oil, then used a pump to pump some of it up onto an air-conditioner's set of coils only to have the stuff then fall directly onto the CPU and get mixed in with the other mineral oil... pretty neat.
Wheeeee
"Men, I know the task ahead is difficult. I know that some of your bank accounts may not survive, but we must forge on. We will make this PS/2 play Quake!"
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
Some of the Cray's were water cooled, which really isn't that revolutionary, except for the fact that they didn't care what water you ran through them. I saw a post once from a Sys Admin from one of the big oil companies that was laminating how Cray was going downhill and didn't build their systems so robustly anymore. Reason was that they want supercomputers out on oil rigs so that they can do data analysis right there on the spot. Unfortunately, oil rigs aren't usually built with huge, air conditioned computer centers. The water cooled Cray's were great, he said, becuase they could just drop a hose down to the ocean for the water intake and let the water output just drop back down to the ocean. He said the salt build up in the cooling system got pretty bad after a couple years, but that was about their service life anyway.
Sounds like the best war to cool the flurinert would be to run it through a beer line - you know what they use to get the beer from the keg in the cellar up to the public bar in the pub, & cool it right down to about 3 degrees Celsius.
OK, yeah, they did it for the challenge, and all that, but wouldn't it be easier to spend the $1000+ they spent for the equipment to buy a faster computer?!?!?
Liquid nitrogen is not "very expensive" it's actually cheaper then bottled water!
yeah but you can't break your hand off after pouring bottled water on it. There have to be some safety concerns when dealing with the consumer market and supercooled processors. As well as feasability, commercial refrigerant is much cheaper in the long run (refill ever 2-5 years if your system is relatively leak free vs. weekly or daily if the styrofoam container were used). BTW, there are plenty of commercial refrigerants that can cool a space down to -101 take a look at www.grainger.com or www.carrier.com or www.rheem.com for the more commercial solutions.
I'm curious if there is any application for cooling a CPU below sub-zero for anything other than overclocking (ie- since you are dissapating the extra heat energy, x electrons can get to point y faster). I have no idea what the benefits are but it would be interesting to know.
Hammer of Truth
I don't moderate, so I'll reply...
/. haiku I've ever seen!
That was the best
--Threed
The Slashdot Sig Virus was foiled before it could spread.
If anyone is interested:
I'm curious if there is any application for cooling a CPU below sub-zero for anything other than overclocking (ie- since you are dissapating the extra heat energy, x electrons can get to point y faster). I have no idea what the benefits are but it would be interesting to know.
Link: http://www.electronics-coo ling.com/html/2000_may_a1.html
Of interest: Researchers identified the advantages of operating electronics at low temperatures. These advantages include: faster semiconductor device switching; increased speed due to lower electrical resistance of interconnecting materials; and a reduction in thermally induced failures.
So basically, lower resistance = faster processing speeds, I know I'm stating the obvious here but it's nice to see that there is a more "scientific" approach to this aspect of computing going on.
Hammer of Truth
I think this should be the standard benchmark. I'd like to see all those speed freaks with 800 Mhz computers having a benchmark program compare them to a 2Ghz 386 being cooled by liquid nitrogen...
It's just a shame their coolant started to solidify.
Ya know, I seem to remember that there were a bunch of Crays (T90's?) in one of the NSA basements that were liquid cooled with Fluorinert. They had little windows in them where one could watch the Fluorinert waterfalls over the insides. In fact, I think one whole floor (or section of the floor below) was devoted to refrigeration equipment specifically for these Flourinert cooled machines. So the idea has been around commercially for quite some time, the real issues here are obviously cost. (Something that the NSA has only VERY recently had to be concerned with)
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Check out the Extreme Use of Nearly Universal Cooling Hardware for a sample of what real overclockers can overclock!
These guys really are insane:
* For doing this in the first place
* For getting such an image-intensive, long site linked to Slashdot
Mirrors, anyone?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
This stuff is perfectly fine IF it does not catch fire. If it does, it forms gaseous hydrofloric acid - one breath and you'll be dead within about 30 seconds.
set HUMOR=1
If you computer catches fire, HF(g) is the least of your problems, burning pcb will kill you much faster, unless the hot gases toasts your lungs first. Not to mention the entire building crashing down on top of you.
/das Ix
This is my sig, show me yours
CP
That's not the point in this case. Obviously, spending USD1k on your coolant isn't more cost effective than spending another USD150-200 on a CPU with a higher speed rating.
It's a geek thing, you wouldn't understand.
I've seen less extreme examples of supercooled MoBo using refrigerator coils and mineral oil. These got down to -20C or so. Is Fluorinert so much better that it justifies the staggeringly huge capital outlay? I overclock because I'm too cheap to buy a faster/newer CPU, but maybe that's just me.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Wow, those are some crazy twits with too much time and money!
Spending $1000 on an non-conductive liquid cooling agent that you didn't even bother to check the freezing point on is just STUPID. I'm a regular old dumb guy and even I would have thought of that. End rant #1
But other than that little rant, it was a crazy cool idea! Great idea and a very kewl setup. Worth the 10 minutes I spent scanning the site. Too bad some of the pictures with really interesting captions didn't exist.
Oh, I am gonna say one more thing, if you have $1000 to spend on a cooling liquid that you didn't really even research, shouldn't you have a little money to put into a decent monitor? IMHO it's the most essential part of the PC because it's what you have to look at the most. End rant #2
Not a bad idea guys, just think some more before tossing around money like that!
The first Cray super computer to use Flourinert was the Cray 2, circa 1988. Instead of using a liquid nitrogen intercooler system, the flourinert was circulated to a refrigaration unit mounted outside the building. This made it one of the quietest supercomputers ever. Also one of the prettiest! (Looked like a giant Xmas tree bubble light.)
For more pictures and info, go to Cray.com's gallery. In the picture, the C shaped tower in the center is the computer. The two red and white boxes at the rear are pumps for the flourinert, and the clear tube at rear center is a recirculation system.
Who are you? Where are we going? And why are we in this handbasket?
3M's Flourinert
my colourless liquid gold
this shit's expensive
Wah!
The only thing I found flawed with the experiment is that the energy source for cooling is non-renewable... meaning that to keep -101C for any extended length of time (which ironically is the point where FC-6003 solidifies), you have to keep pouring in liquid Nitrogen as it evaporates (very expensive, unless you keep it compressed). The great thing is that you are cooling an inert liquid, so you don't have to worry about ice crystals, humidity, etc.
That said, why not just throw your computer in the freezer? Or in a more realistic environment, create a zero humidity (or close enough to it) cooler using commercial refrigerants to get the temp down to -101C or whatever is necessary. If I really wanted to, I could go put my computer in the A/C duct right next to the air handler and have it running at 68F, but humidity would be a problem (as water vapor cools it turns into liquid, bad for PC, grrr). Remember when you are doing heat exchange (which is all an A/C is after all, moving the heat in your house outside) you have to move the heat SOMEWHERE, so why not just patch into your existing A/C to get the job done. Now that would be cool.
Hammer of Truth
You know, that's really a surprise, not using thermos to transport LN since the glass will shatter. I wonder what Dewer bottles are? Oh, that's right, glorified thermos with a reflective coating to prevent heat via radiation transport. Glass will not shatter when cooled to very low temperatures IF you don't do anything stupid with the thermos bottle, such as dropping it on the ground. Not even a liquid-hazmat-transport container will save you from your self (such as leaving one on the trunk of a car, putting said car in reverse, and running over said container). So what do you suggest, in your infinite wisdom, to transport LN? You've eliminated glass and plastic. Presumably, you would suggest transport containers made of metal. [sarcasm]That should solve everything!!![/sarcasm]
It was pointed out to me by a coworker that on some of the temperature display readings shown in this article the motherboard temperature is hotter than the processor. We cannot come up with any reason as to why this would occur. Everything is great once cooling and overclocking starts until we get to submersion15.html, where the motherboard has suddenly become hotter than the CPU. There, at 610 MHz, the CPU is -1C and the MB is at 7C. In the next picture, the CPU has dropped to -6C but the MB has risen again, now at 12C. I do not see how the MB temperature could be higher than the CPU temperature nor do I see why the CPU temperature would be going down while the MB temperature goes up.
Big pimpin' Floody of proftpd fame pointed out this oddity.
badtz-maru
Use the power of open source to fix it.
Hell, I underclock for the following reasons;
1.It's summer here in sunny Sunnyvale CA and albeit it does not match my former city (phoenix) in the good old heat index it does get hot enough during the day withtout A/C to push my little AMD to about 50 degrees celsius.
2.It extends the cpu's life, and as it is primarily a proxy server/firewall this is a very good thing.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Not Netscape's fault. They have Spaces in their filenames. IE translates it. Save the source, fix the links with %20, and you're good to go.
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Overclock the Chips Using 3M's Fluorinert Allow it to gel Do not Overclock Even at one Gigahertz Windows does still suck My CPU runs Quake at 90 FPS Software rendering Natalie Portman With a big bowl of hot grits Boils the Nitrogen
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Everytime I want a wee bit of performance from my overclocked PIII 650, I flash him a pic of Jenna Jameson making out and viola!!... there he goes on a 700 mhz spree.. pity that it lasts only for one hour..before he ejaculates and sputters..then he needs to sleep for a day before I could boot him up again.
:)
I am looking at new alternatives to this method. Have anyone tried anything better ??
When in doubt - RTFM
Rapid Nirvana
This has been in moderation at Kuro5hin all morning...funny how things tend to repeat themselves...
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
Well, don't use a thermos
Why not ? Using a Thermos is a well established and perfectly safe lab procedure (I've sloshed more LN2 around over the years than you've guzzled under-age Bud round the back of the 7-11). "Real" lab ones just have push-fit stoppers though, not screw-on.
BTW I think mineral spirits will do a very similiar job :)
Err mineral oil I mean
Actually, mineral spirits sound much more interesting...
User: ls
Computer: I knew a girl named Ellis once. She was a reeeeeaaaaal looker, boy, and had the biggest damn...
User: ls
Computer: I heard you the first time, big shot! What, you think I'm stupid, can't understand you the first time? Huh?
User: kill -9
Computer: Oh, so you think your better than me, huh? Let's you and me throw down. Come on ya big pansy!
At K5 you don't see noise like this. The signal/noise ratio is almost perfect...
I dunno. Kuro5hin sounded interesting to me when I first heard about it. I'd always thought that Slashdot should allow readers to choose stories to post. My sense now is that CmdrTaco was right all along. Sure Kuro5hin allows you to moderate stories -- and all the discussions are 50-70% about whether the story is worth posting!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I have no specific reason to disbelieve that the person you spoke with did in fact used to administer a Cray supercomputer. He may well be correct that certain precautions were neccesary to handle difficulties that arose when components of the machine caught on fire. What I do have problems with were the blatant inaccuracies and panic-mongering in your original comment (production of HF vapor upon ignition of Fluorinert would cause death within thirty seconds). I have no problem with you personally (I just picked this user name as a joke; you can see the comments I've posted in the past to see), just with the content of your post. If I did seem to have a bone to pick with you as a person, I do apologize for that.
They said in the article that the flourinert gelled up, and that they had to stop the pump after a minute or two.
So yes, you're correct, but they also pointed this out in the article.
Err mineral oil I mean :)
Actually, the NSA (not NASA), does exactly this. However, they submerge entire rooms with this stuff and cool it with lots of water. The Discovery Channel had a special on this a few years back.
They need as much power as they can get for Echelon. Of course, it doesn't prove if this is cost-effective. They are a government organization, you know.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
They went through all that trouble to keep the CPU at 4 degrees C? Put the damn thing in a refrigerator. All they are doing is trying to remove the heat from the CPU as fast as they can, not trying to cool the CPU down to -190C. I don't think these guys know anything about science.
A metal wire from a heat sink will draw a lot of heat away if you keep one end cold! You of course have to watch out for moisture, but it's better that this science project (train wreck).
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
... fluorinert? bath (Fluorinert? is an electronic testing fluid manufactured by 3M?) ...</i>
Everyone seems? to be complaining? about the question marks? in this story?. But I don't? see it?. Sheesh?! What's? everyone mad about??
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Since they said that the Flourinert stuff ran about $1000NZ, I found that it would be about $469.018US ($1NZ = $469.018US ).
I can understand that people want faster, better and if possible, at a cheaper price that they can afford. Hey, I want that too!!! And apparently, o/c-ing achieves those goals. But it's only apparent. Granted, by submerging the mb in liquid nitrogen, the CPUs could be o/c-ed very far. It's also probably very impressive.
:)
BUT I DON'T THINK SO!
In my own case, I'm running a Dual Celery 400 o/c-ed at 500... I know it's no big deal, or anything, but in order to achieve that speed, I had to spend a _lot_ of money for new CPU and case fans, thermal grease, etc. I also have to make sure my room doesn't get too hot. And all sorts of other problems.
Soon after I did this, I wanted to push the CPU's even higher. But I realized that I'm spending so much money it wasn't even worth it. All the stuff I bought for o/c-ing cost me much more than the difference in price between my 400s and the 500s.
That's when I realized that I'm doing something silly. I'm spending a lot of money so that I can have an unstable, warranty-voided, pretty fast computer, when I could have a stable, still-under-warranty, just as fast computer, for the same price. So that's when I decided that o/c-ing is not worth the trouble.
But hey, for those who can afford it, it's certainly cool!