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Vapochilled Pentium 4 System At 3.3GHz
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."
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%.
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.
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.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
All that money and trouble for a measly 500MHz. Sometimes I question people's sanity.
Of course, and I highly suspect it, I may be talking out of my ass. -oqti
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.
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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.
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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.
Seriously, I really don't give a shit about overclocking. I don't want to block out all hardware news though.
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).
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?
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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
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.