Slashdot Mirror
Vapor-phase Processor Cooling
Econolinecrush writes "If even exotic water-cooling isn't enough for your processor cooling needs, there's always vapor-phase cooling. The Tech Report has an interesting review of Asetek's latest Vapochill system, an admittedly pricey cooling option, but one that manages to fight off condensation while keeping even high-end processors running at sub-zero temperatures. A little extreme? Sure, but it's undeniably cool nonetheless." I haven't seen a cooling system this intense since my organic chemistry labs.
...is that processors actually have a limit to how much they can be cooled. To be cooling it below zero is a ridiculous waste of power, money, and will only shorten the lifespan of your CPU.
To run my Cray III supercomputer in my basement.
, an admittedly pricey cooling option, but one that manages to fight off condensation while keeping even high-end processors running at sub-zero temperatures. A little extreme? Sure, but it's undeniably cool nonetheless." I
Undeniably cool? Or freezing cold?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
...Just the thing for running the latest vaporware release!
organgic chemistry!? It's one of my favorite subjects!
Hitler's in the fridge.
at last my 486 becomes useful again!
underclock. even out of the factory, CPUs are basically overclocked for all intensive purposes. I know thats not what you all want to hear. But every advance that the chipmakers make that should be able to reduce the heat coming off a processor ends up getting put into running it faster instead. I grant its good for the MHz race, but the MHz race in the long run isn't really that good of an idea.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
you got nothing
If I'm not mistaken, vapor-phase cooling is just an ordinary refrigeration cycle.
Geeks, of course, always go for the term that would sound coolest on the bridge of the Enterprise.
...
and here is the tomshardware review http://www4.tomshardware.com/howto/20030224/index. html
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Interesting nonetheless.
However, I'm guessing electro-migration is thermally activated, or at least sensitive to the temperature; does the extreme cooling mitigate the increased field strengh?
Jon.
Cool yes, but not too cold. Keep the chip in spec for stability and long life. Colder is not necessarily always better.
Yes, but what kind of cooling does the psu get when you are pulling 450 watts from a 350 watt PS? I have seen many a PC nuke itself when the power supply overheated, melted solder down which then ran and shorted vairous connectors. (A actually fused an ATX connector to the mother board this way). So, what kind of protect does a psu have?
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Meanwhile, I'm doing my own cooling with some whiskey on the rocks. Happy St. Paddy's Day, you big buncha geeks! Now go out there and get stupid.
Jason
(not the sober Jason, but the other one)
Kryotech used to have a product that provided vapor phase cooling for Athlons. They sold barebones systems with case, motherboard, and refrigeration, and you provided the rest. They were achieving clock rates of about 20% higher than you could get with traditional cooling techniques at the time. Plus, they were officially sanctioned by AMD in the sense that using the Kryotech cooling system didn't invalidate your processor warranty.
Using Kyrotech cooling, you could get a system running at 1 GHz when the fastest official parts from Intel and AMD were topping out at 700-800 MHz.
Then AMD and Intel increased clock speed like crazy, nobody wanted to pay $2000 for a small bit of clock rate improvement, and Kryotech decided to stop selling consumer stuff.
Is that cooling your CPU to subzero temperatures will neither increase its lifetime nor incrase its performance. It is the overall design of the system that matters (I.e. Motherboard, and memory) I know plenty lamers whose AthlonXP 2600+ system runs slooower than my Athlon 1 Ghz system, which is indeed pretty fucking sad. And yes, I will re-iterate that having the the CPU running below the junction-temperature is bound to cause problems. So is strapping a 5 pound heatsink on your core - and cracking it in process like a dumbass. Otherwise - I guess its cool. I can't wait to see some one gut a fridge, use the innards for cooling the computer (Use propane instead of freon tho)
21,000 lb.
why not just feed a tube to the CPU and drip liquid nitrogen on it at a steady pace...
... but what about making processors more effective instead of relying on us consumers to buy a ridiculously HUGE cooling array to go with the latest (n+1)ghz Pentium or AMD XP (N*1000)? I mean, I've got some old p2 333mhz laptop and when I do some pretty intensive stuff on it, I could prolly make breakfast on the bottom side of it. It'd be a tad raw though, not because of the lack of heat, but the battery would die before my eggs would be done :\
So where the hell is my 25, 2ghz processor which can run with a passive cooler without violating the law of physics?
Hate me!
"I haven't seen a cooling system this intense since my organgic chemistry labs."
Do you mean organgic chemgistry?
i still don't understand why people buy into this type of (dont want to say crap, but kinda silly products), immersion cooling is more efficient, and even, as not only do you cool your cpu (on the top specfically), you cool all sides of it, and the rest of the motherboard. You can use something expensive like pure h2o, or that plasma type liquid they used in one of the Crays. Or something as cheep as oil. They use oil to cool power transformers on telephone poles. You can't forget either tho, how cool a case with a window and immersion system would look, as evertying would really glow, and you might even be able to put fish in it (depending on the type of liquid used, and if the cpu fans are in use too...sushi anyone?)
The Cray X1 is a Very Neat machine.. It employs phase change cooling.
Cray has a very nice 45 minute video with lots of good clips of the fog spray, etc:
http://cray.com/company/video/x1.html
even if you dont care about cooling your processor. He gives a very nice and lucid explaination of the laws of thermodynamics. I found it interesting.
I'm surprised that no one has applied this to video cards. Now there's something that really could use it.
...to GTFOOD (Get The Fsck Out Of Dodge). -1 Way off topic.
Hey guys, am I missing something what? Just move down here to Alaska. I can put my PC outside and POOF! Instant cooling. I have to leave the case off, but the winds are pretty good. Be sure to have a cage aorund it though, trouble with staic electricity via animals is kinda bad.
Jolan Tru. (If you know what this means, you're a tru geek)
PICARD: Data, what is our damage status?
DATA: All shield, weapons, and propulsion systems are offline. We are being drawn into the nearby star Jhi-Quwo IIV. Hull temperature is reaching maximum tolerances. I estimate destructive hull breach and core detonation in 23 minutes...22:59...22:58...
PICARD: Geordi! Is there anything we can do?
GEORDI: Well, Captain, there is one possibility...but there may be risks.
PICARD: We're in a risky situation now! What is it?
GEORDI: I've run some analysis and we may be able to slingshot around the star and get to a safe distance -- if we can survive that long. Currently we will be unable to withstand the heliosphere of that star. But there is a chance...
PICARD: Yes?
GEORDI: One of the crew members has a vapor-phase cooling system installed on their workstation. If we can utilize a tachyon pulse modulator in combination with the vapor-phase cooler and route it through the warp core and to the shield arrays, we just might have a chance...
PICARD: Make it so! Who has this vapor-phase cooling system?
GEORDI: Well, sir, uh, *cough*worf*cough*
PICARD: What? Worf?
WORF: Grrrr...(string of Klingon insults and scowling) 0v3rc1o|<3rz r00l!!11!
PICARD: *head in hands* I guess this is it. Send a message to Starfleet, and tell Dr. Crusher to meet me in my ready room.
...
Another good review of this unit can be found here:
HotHardware.com - Vapochill Pentium 4 System Review
....why not just take your computer and stick it inside a min-fridge? Seems to me to be a whole lot simpler than this whole business ;).
you mofo.
you mofo-burger.
orgasmic symmetrixy. Much more fun.
Do you mean organic chemgistry?
Hey, oxidants happen.
I think you are overreacting ;)
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
Unfortunately, reliability is exactly what the Vapochill does not provide. When it comes to reliability, there is often no replacement for simplicity. I never worry about the 486 I've got in my firewall because it doesn't need a heatsink or fan. I can be fairly certain, however, that the fan on my workstation processor will seize up someday and the chip may self-destruct.
These guys can't be more wrong about the reliability. This thing may shut itself off if it overheats, but if reliability were the number one concern, I'd underclock a new chip so that even if the cooling system does fail, it's not a catastrophe.
Reducing speed in itself does not change wattage in any way. However, with a lower speed, you can also use a lower current (less "driving force" to change from 0 to 1 and vice versa). Notebook chips have circuitry that lets them change their power drain on-the-fly, something desktop processors can't do (or I think the PIV can, but only if overheating, not software controlled).
The base power gain is equal to the square of the voltage difference (That is, 90% voltage = 90%*90% = 81% power use), which in turn will allow you to reduce fan speed etc.
As for how far down you can underclock, that's a good question. The problem is timing, because even if all operations will go slower, the speed of pulses do not (about 2/3rds of c). So, if you underclock too far, the signals might actually arrive "too soon".
What the actual limit is will depend on the core of your specific processor, so you won't really know. Of course you can underclock down to the slowest processor speed with that core without risk, but then why not buy the slower version anyway?
The point here would be to go below that, but unlike overclocking I don't see how this could in any way damage your processor, so it's just to try and fail. Probably the best thing would be to try until it fails, and up it a notch or two. You really wouldn't want a boarderline unstable system out of it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
liquid cooling + boredom = faster 486
It's "intents and purposes," not "intensive purposes." Yeah this'll prolly get modded -1 Offtopic, but I feel like being a bastard. :)
It may be cool, but it brings new meaning to the term "vaporware...."
shave 15 seconds on the povray test. not bad but adding an additional probably would increase performance more.
I believe that if the packaging of processor chips was made of this material, processor manufacturers could immediately forget all about heat, heatsinks, fans, and all that other BS.
To counter arguments against NASA, they always say that space exploration has furthered technology here on Earth in ways that benefit us all. I believe that this is something they should figure out how to manufacture less expensively in order to eliminate heat problems from multitudes of electronic products and save time to market since engineers won't have to worry about this anymore.
Give it a try, you'll see.
So, how loud and annoying is it to have a fridge running on/under your desktop compared to a bunch of fans?
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Personally, I'd prefer to see a whole lot more work going into silent computers. Processors and video cards are at the point right now where overclocking only yields benchmark improvements - bumping that chip up 15MHz only gives you a few points in 3DMark, or UT2k3.
For actual use though, it doesn't make any difference. 150fps, instead of 130. Or 0.5 seconds faster load times. Does anybody really care any more?
I'd be a lot more interested in spending money reducing the noise output of my machine. Give me passively cooled power supplies (instead of these 3 fan monsters). Cases designed purely for better noise reduction (Antec Sonata is heading in the right direction).
Having a frozen CPU running 20% faster than it was meant to might win you a few brownie points at a LAN party, but does it actually make any difference? I doubt it.
*shrug* each to their own. I'll be impressed when I see a 3GHz P4 or Athlon running without any noticable noise.
It's called the Carnot (Car-no, silent t)cycle, after the Frenchman of the same name who published a book on the effect as it related to steam engines, I think...
- Sig
If an increase of magnatude is possible with liquid N2, how long till somebody has a p4 running @ 3THz or so?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
--I have a few of the camping style ammonia vapor refrigerators, they run either electric or from a small propane flame. No compressor, perfectly quiet.
If you want a used one for a project, try some place that has wrecked/used RV's. You'll still have heat to exhaust from the room if you need that though, but your computer would stay pretty cool inside one.
u guys ever actually know anything before sprouting off? or what?
a CPU is not a resistor, so don't expect the power-drain to be similar to be a linear thing like a resistor.
CMOS process (read about how they work) forms a channel for one of the two transistors, and to form the channel the power needed is in the nA (nano-amp) range. to maintain the channel, similar.
but when CMOS drains power is when the pair switches - i.e. both transistors are partially ON. current flows from power to ground through a relatively low resistance channel, wasted as heat.
so, for a modern processor, (or SRAM, or whatever based on CMOS), the steady-state power is negledgable, but scales pretty much linearly to frequency - you can count the number of transistors transisting to be another factor (so 100% usage of FPU at 3GHz is different power consumption than the same of the integer unit), but it's not worth the trouble.
Conclusion? yes reducing speed reduces power MOST EFFECTIVELY, besides process (manufacture) changes.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
buy the 2GHz chip.
off the same lines the processors are the same (same number of gates, same manufacturing process, etc), so the speed is affected by the frequency. a 2.5G system running at 2GHz will not get you any less heat than a 2GHz chip running at full speed.
use better fans on the money you save from the 500MHz you give up, though.
or buy a laptop. they are plenty fast.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I thought most fridges can only sink a couple of hundred watts of heat. Don't forget you have to share the room with the computer and which ever method you use you will get hot instead. Might be better to buy an AC unit.
Who modded that 'Insightful'?
Tomshardware had a very good article about this months ago. It must be hard to be at the top and find a consistent supply of dust gathering news to fill the day.
If you are going to have a new, custom designed, super-efficient cooling device, then it allows you to design a computer chip to take advantage of it.
You guys have heard of super-conductors haven't you? While I am not in any way saying this device will let you make a superconducting computer I am pointing out that at lower temperatures, properties change in a a way that is favorable towards computing.
If we have really good cooling devices, it can open up new concepts in chip design that will take advantage/need the low temperature creted by the device.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Not Pretty.
Between this comment and Andrew's (the author) description of how the cooling occurs ("...the liquid immediately vaporizes LOSING heat....". Someone send TechReport an old high school physics text.