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."

Comments

More dollars than sense?

[traskjd]

At such high speeds do you really want to spend heaps in order to go faster? I thought the general feeling was that people aren't finding much need for much faster processors. Like most /. readers I haven't read the article yet however I have seen these cases advertised and they cost a bomb. Without doing a price check it might almost be cheaper to buy several lower spec pcs if you want the overall power (say for the seti programme or cancer curing stuff). Just my 0.02c What do you think?

Cool but

[r0t]

Isn't there problems with condensation on occastion?

Fahrenheit sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who use a real method of telling the tempreture, the tempreture is -7C/266k and NOT 17.9!

stupid overclocking and case modding frenzy

[chamenos]

gone are the days when overclocking was actually an economically viable option to get more performance out of your system for what you pay. these days, overclocking is almost no different from case modding, in that its just for posers to make themselves feel better and have something to show-off.

and is it a good sign that slashdot is continually posting articles pertaining to both case modding and overclocking "breakthroughs"? yes, they overclocked the system to 3.3ghz, but most likely in a few months intel is going to release processors that are just as fast, if not faster. see the pointlessness?

its like posting on article on slashdot about a breakthrough in man-powered vehicles, about how 200 people got together to push a car to more than 200km/h (i refuse to use miles/hour). yea sure, that was fast but is it a breakthrough? currently, the approach to overclocking processors is to up the voltage so the processor can function at a higher clock speed reliably, and then find some way to cool it down sufficiently so it doens't overheat. so they got it colder this time, and faster, via the exact same approach thousands of overclockers have been using all the while.

is this really news-worthy on slashdot?

heatpipe

[goombah99]

How come no one seems to be using heatpipe technology to cool things? THis would seem to me the natural way to extend the cooling range of passive systems. It probably wont ever have the massive effects like these acively chilled systesm but it would cheaper than thus more worth while.

the idea is simple. on top of the chip one places a vertical tube with the same crossection as the chip. The tub is filled with alcohol or propane or freon or other low boiling point liquid. The sides to the tall(!) tube are lines with air-cooled heatsinks.

when the liquid boils then the (VERY LARGE) heat of varorization is extracted from the liquid. the expelled gas molecule rapidly transferes its energy to other gas molecules and then distibutes that over then entire face of the heatpipe which condences the gas back to liquid.

the processor can never warmer than the boilingpoint of the liquid. the average cooling capacity is determeined by the requirment that the cooling rate of the heatsinks equal the heat input rate on average. One of the nice things about this as opposed to a fan or refregeration system is that although the average heat load is the same, the peak heat load can be as high as you want. the liquid has almost infinite reserve cooling capacity up until it boils dry. Thus the temperature of the processor fluctuates less than any fan cooled or refrigerated system.

So what is the heat load capacity. It should be the significantly larger than any refrigerated system with the same area of heat sink!!!

New Poll

[RiotXIX]

I often wonder how many slashdotters overclock cpu's of 500+, because I wouldn't want to blow my money buying a new processor. Therefore, I usually skip these articles. Could we have a poll on the lines of:

My CPU is overclocked:

0-49mhz
50-99mhz
100-199mhz
200-299mhz
300-4 99mhz
500-999mhz
1GHZ+
CowboyNeal stands in the corner blowing/playing a /harmonica/large HORN/ over my processor. ...or whatever is realistic.

Using a Factory Overclocked Chip

[Stigmata669]

They could have gotten much better preformance if they had used a 2.6 Ghz P4 witha 400mhz (100x4) FSB, and overclocked it. The problem with the 533mhz bus chips is that they are essencialy overclocked straight from the factory, thus making more gains much more difficult. Look on any serious overclocker website, and you will find watercool kits (not even sub-zero cooling) approaching 3.8or 3.9 ghz using 400mhz bus chips

alternate AC!

[fuzzygeek]

it gets hot in my home office. i'm rather intrigued by this thing just to use it as a secondary air conditioner. replace the six computers in here with these cases and maybe i can turn the A/C off too!

on the other hand, how loud are these things? i'm eyeing a system to use as a home theater deck (new TVs have RGB hookups. mmm counterstrike on a 65" tv at 1280!) -- but being in the main room, it'd have to be near silent. for that pc i may choose silence over temperature.

hmm. decisions, decisions.