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Vapochilled Pentium 4 System At 3.3GHz

Posted by CowboyNeal on 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."

7 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Is it worth it? by et289807 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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%.

  2. lets see... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:More dollars than sense? by GigsVT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  4. Sheesh by espresso_now · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  5. adding processors? by FaRuvius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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  6. Re:More dollars than sense? by Latent+IT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Taco! make an OC category by AxelTorvalds · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.