New Dual System PC

An anonymous reader writes "ExtremeMhz.com has released an article on how they designed and built a PC containing dual systems. One system is a supercooled Intel and the other is a water chilled AMD. This PC features Dual SCSI storage subsytems also. Looks like some crazy stuff." Now if only they could put a mac and a PC in one case ;)

Comments

Mac in a dual case.

[SN74S181]

Well, there have been PC cards for Macintosh machines for a long, long time, so I guess you can cram an expensive 'PC' (we'll call it 'an IBM' for the old time Mac Zealots) in a Mac case.

It's possible because the PC is an open architecture.

I can imagine the screaming and sputtering and legal injunctions that would stream out of Steve Job's office, though, if someone tried to implement and market a PowerMac on a PCI card that could be plugged into a PC. It's closed hardware, you see.

Re:Mac in a dual case.

[mithras the prophet]

You can buy this PowerPC on a card.

Combine it with Mac-On-Linux, and you can run OS X Jaguar on your PC.

Or so I imagine - I certainly haven't tried it.

Siamese did this

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm not mistaken, there was a range of computers built by (or called) Siamese. They had amiga, atari, mac and PC, and any combination of many others all in the one system, all used through the one monitor and keyboard. I'm not sure about sharing drives however

One question

[prichardson]

I understand this has some coolness factor, but does it have any purpose at all? One might as well just grab two cases and duct tape them together. The only time sharing a case would be cool is if they could share other components as well (monitor/keyboard don't count).

When I first heard about the PC and mac combo I thought someone might have found a way for two computers to share components and was wildly disapointed. I'll start getting interested in this stuff when the computers can share a hard drive or a video card. Otherwise it's merely a case mod.

Sharing? what a waste.

[pyrote]

Asus and many others already do this, it's called dual CPU motherboards. if you want 2 environments, VMware is out and MSoft is planning a similar software built in.

I thought about this myself, not impressed with it's technical feat, I choose to just run a 2ghz machine and a dual monitor system.

Usefull if you can't afford/aquire another case, but I can't see how this changes the world any more than putting a computer in a 1920's taster case (which I'm trying to do now anyway). I hope I don't wind up on slashdot frontpage.

Why is it so big?

[panurge]

A rough calculation suggests that a flow of no more than 1.5 litres/min should be needed.(Water is an extremely effective heat removal fluid). This is very small indeed. So why is the equipment so big? The wall of the tubing is given as being 3mm thick. I would have thought that 5mm bore 1.5mm wall tubing would be more than adequate, with the result of much lower stresses on the heatsink, and much easier pipoe routing. The convector ("radiator") only needs to be large because the temperature differential between air and liquid is tiny and the design is extremely inefficient.

As for conformal coating, if you want to try this heed this well meant advice: use the brush on stuff. It is much less likely to get into connectors from BELOW (masking doesn't cover the holes on the board side of the connectors) and it is easier to apply around devices that have heat sinks or just need some air exposure.

I may be wrong but I am going to hazard a guess that a lot of this water cooling stuff is far bigger than necessary in order to look impressive - but that does not improve the performance, neither is a thick walled tube less likely to leak than a properly sized thin walled tube. Computers do not have high levels of vibration and cables and pipes crossing one another or rubbing on metal like they do in the more badly designed cars.

Pardon me if I'm not impressed

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

As huge as that case is, I don't see how it would be difficult to put two complete PCs inside. If it were the size of a standard full-tower (aka, not a doublewide, like it appears to be), or were something engineered along the lines of the Mini-ITX form-factor, I would then be impressed. With how they have it, I'm not.

My old DEC Alphaserver 1000a is smaller than that, and if I took out the raid array section and replaced the power supplies with standard size supplies, I could easily fit two motherboards into the case. I can't see why I'd want to.

If someone is really interested in having an enclosure with multiple PCs in it, I'd recommend getting one of those equipment units that musicians have for sound equipment (one of the deeper ones), and going with 19" rackmount stuff. It's more durable, more standardized, and at this point. the cases can be found from anywhere between $60 and $100, depending on how fancy you get. If you want more than that, get a standard 19" telco cabinet, and put all of your systems, network equipment, etc, in there. It's not difficult.