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Power Your AMD Via Tesla Coils

Posted by chrisd on from the can't-imagine-that-passing-spec dept.

Propane writes "Here's a fine gentleman that decided to power his AthlonXP via a Tesla Coil right here at arstechnia. Looks like he has some cooling issues, he is currently looking for suggestions on cooling, maybe he can get some tips from Misson: Submersible."

16 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe I'm wrong.... by Sokie · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...but those first 2 shots of the "arcs" from his "Tesla coils" look a hell of a lot like the lightning effect from Photoshop.

    Maybe not, but with no actual details on the page...I'm skeptical. :)

    -Sokie

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    1. Re:Maybe I'm wrong.... by Joystickit · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think in the second one you can see the reflection of the arc in the coil on the left. If it is photoshopped, he did a damn good job.

    2. Re:Maybe I'm wrong.... by Anonymous+DWord · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's a hoax. That third shot (the giant fan) is wayyyy old. Still funny though.

      --
      "If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
    3. Re:Maybe I'm wrong.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I know about tesla coils - i play with them as a hobby. The tesla coils in the pic look very real. Actually it looks to me like there is only one tesla coil in the picture. The other coil is a recieving coil tuned to the exact same frequency as the real coil so as to act as an attractor for the lightning strikes.

      I don't think the lightning effects are photoshop - thats exactly what a tesla coil looks like if u photograph it in the day time.

      This is without a doubt a joke - if u really did this you would fry the motherboard without a doubt. Tesla coils produce 100,000's of v's at frequencies of around 150Khz and very little average current (though peak current in a strike to ground can momentarily become very high).

      Look at http://www.hot-streamer.com for more pics and stuff and http://hot-streamer.com/christophertelford/teslaco ils/tesla3.html
      if you want some nice pictures / divX 5 videos of a real coil operating.

  2. wow, that's fake. by dirgotronix · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wow, that has got to be the worst arrangement of misc. pictures I have ever seen. None of the pictures there are even closely related. In no way does the person show how it would be possible to link a tesla coil of that size to his pc, and in the next picture, of the pc in front of the industrial fan, it has a power supply (oh wait, didn't he say he needed to remove that?)

    Amusing for the overclocking crowd, but even more amusing if you believe it.

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    America - Home of the scapegoat, land of the Corporation
  3. HUH..... by SevenTowers · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is supposed to be a joke. is this the 1st of april? Dudes, it's a joke! but then again, this IS /. :P

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    Imperium et libertas
    Autocracy and freedom
    1. Re:HUH..... by SevenTowers · · Score: 3, Informative

      the picture with the fatass fan has been online for ages. the one of the video card too. and the rest is photoshopped. Did the poster actually believe this? what about checking out the link before posting a story, it's so damn obvious its a fake. "Hey look im running 5k Volts through my ahtlon and its at 250C.... shit, I mean come on

      --
      Imperium et libertas
      Autocracy and freedom
  4. Mysterious. by Renraku · · Score: 5, Informative

    First of all, the poster of the pictures doesn't speak very good English. Second, all he shows is a few Tesla coils in action, a computer, and some cooling devices. I do believe this is what we like to call a 'hoax'. And if he did get it to work, he should post details on how that Athlon XP could survive at the voltages required to power a Tesla coil. Give some designs or something, not just badly narrated pictures of random objects.

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  5. Very funny. by re-Verse · · Score: 3, Informative

    A very cool/funny hoax. The post says "Now it crunch a workunit within 50 minutes!!!" and "my new farm will end the seti.germany-threat forever!" I completely dig this, terribly funny... but shouldn't /. put this under the "Its funny. Laugh." category? You don't have to know too much about the way computers work to know that replacing your power suppy with a bigger beefier one will in no noticable way effect your processing power.

    The only way i could see this as a serious Slashdot headline would be to post it on April first.

  6. Hoax - Look at the image URLs by abimelech · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.datenburg.de/download/sparks3.jpg
    http ://www.datenburg.de/download/sparks1.jpg
    http://o dense.kollegienet.dk/~madsj/images/cooling .jpg
    http://www.moloch.org/pn4pics/images/laser-c ooling .jpg
    http://www.xpcshop.idv.tw/img/raymond/46007. jpg

    Looks like none of those photos are his. That giant fan looked suspiciously familiar as well.

    It's still funny :)

  7. Tesla coils are dangerous! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    We have seen a lot of cool pictures of tesla coils recently on slashdot, but I have not seen a single word about the dangers of high voltage! It should be reminded, that tesla coils are extremely dangerous and they are not toys. You can get killed if you start playing with them.

  8. Bogus by Colonel+Panic · · Score: 3, Informative

    OK, so exactly how is a Tesla coil supposed to make your Athlon run faster?

    Tesla coils produce high voltage (1000s of volts) but not much amperage. This kind of voltage would probably zap your Athlon into oblivion...
    And as someone else pointed out, there's no mention of clock speeds - a processor won't run faster just because you feed it high voltage.

  9. The point? by lpret · · Score: 2, Informative
    Whether or not this is actually real is not really the point.

    I'm trying to figure out why this is even on Slashdot to begin with. Is this some ingenious way of modding a system (Quickly becoming the computer equivalent of "rice rocket" Civics)? No, it does not:

    Improve the system's performance - as one poster has already mentioned, other bottlenecks exist which would more efficiently improve the system.

    Look cool - call me crazy, but his setup looks like my old Pentium 100 I can't bear to throw away. I've seen some really great case mods on /. and this doesn't even qualify. Now, is this a new way to power a system? Perhaps, but usable -- never! What purpose does this serve to anybody? Do we learn anything? Not really.

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that Slashdot needs to have a better criteria for what is being posted. Clearly updates on the newest version of Mozilla is acceptable as we are, for the most part, users of alternative products (non M$), yea even the claim of the third moon affects our intragalactic geography. But a Tesla Coil powered system (that looks completely fake)? C'mon, this has no relevance to anybody.

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  10. sorry but... THIS IS A FAKE by youngerpants · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is a fake;
    1) If you check the URL'ds of the images, they are coming from different sources.
    2) The Lightning coming of the coils is a photoshop effect
    3) The Tesla Coils are not Tesla Coils at all. If you look at the bottom of the structires, they are being held in place with plastic plant pots. These wouls melt in seconds
    4) Everyone on the board over at arestechnica is laughing at us

    At least we gave them a few hits...

  11. Re:Doofii by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    No it's not. A Tesla COIL looks like a Van De Graff from the outside, since they both have a big dome capacitor on top. However, a Tesla Coil boosts A.C. voltage by high-frequency resonance effects, a Van De Graff boosts charge by static charge transfer effects. A Tesla Coil outputs massive sparks of alternating current, a Van De Graff smaller sparks of direct current.

    However, the Van De Graff sparks can kill you more easily, it's a bit harder to be killed by the Tesla sparks, due to the "skin effect" of high-frequency A.C.

  12. Just a few reasons why this is impossible by Nephroth · · Score: 2, Informative

    Telsa coils produce massive amounts of voltage in order to cross their gap and although you are looking at greatly decreased amperage, you are still producing a hefty amount of wattage... now I will bypass stuff that can be argued such as the origin of the pictures and the like, we can't prove that but as usual we can use science to prove all... Reason why it's a HOAX #1 Now an experiment for the kiddies: Take one of your numerous AOL CDs and toss it in the microwave for only two seconds... what happens? you vaporize the aluminum inside of the CD. Now the wires on a PCB are a lot thicker than the tiny layer of foil in the CD however they are still rather thin and would be exposed for longer than two seconds. You would do immense damage to the wires of the mobo itself. Now take into account all of the basic circuits on a mobo. Run line voltage through one of those resistors and it explodes, run that kind of power through them and kiss them goodbye. Not to mention all those far more sensitive things like processors..... why this is a HOAX #2 Telsa coils are made to arc electricity over fairly long distances (as far as electricty is concerned anyway) if you run that much power through a motherboard with tiny (less than a millimeter on a board) spaces between the wires and what have you? a massive mess of electro-magnetic trash. You'd have electricity arcing from wire to wire, solder joint to solder joint, in other words, not a useable computer at all at best all it is a massive waste of electricity and a fire hazard. Lastly, I'd like to say that my warm feelings for slash dot have been harshed a bit by this, as if postings for porn pages showing up in the forums wern't bad enough... Really, slashdot is supposed to be about science and computers, not ridiculous ideas like using a tesla coil to power a computer (which btw, a tesla coil doesn't produce electricty, but I figure you all know that much). Granted, it's funny, but it IS a joke, if you thought it was real, I have some beach front property and a perpetual motion machine to sell you.

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