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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.
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.
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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.
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)
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?)
What is this limit then? As far as I could find out, about 40 K (yes Kelvin) is the lower limit for doped silicon, because the dopants 'freeze out' at that point.
I assume you mean 0 degrees celsius when you say 'below zero', so how does the freezing point of water have anything to do with the performance of silicon semiconductors vs temperature?
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>> at last my 486 becomes useful again!
I'm actully curios how much one could get out of one. Figure you could put a crapload of cooling on it, how much could you crank a 486?
>>If I'm not mistaken, vapor-phase cooling is just an ordinary refrigeration cycle.
Yep, sat through 2 thermo classes and some other supporting classes on doing this. If you set it up right you could do it with no compressor, just using natural convection loop. But that system wouldn't be very customizable.
I'm just waiting for the folks ar intel and AMD to run nano tubes through the core and pass fluid through it.
Actually, water-cooling somewhat makes sense for rackmount systems. There is a high density of machines, so you could cool multiple machines with a single installation. Run the coolant to a radiator in an air-conditioned environment (or even immersed in liquid nitrogen, if temps are too high.) With a decent valve system this would be very expandable. Watercooling IMO makes little sense for home computers, as you're buying a lot of equipment for a single system, but if you can spread the cost out among say, 72 1U systems, it would solve the problem of cooling in 1U cases (which is significant, because 1U cases can't accomodate huge heatsinks.) We may see this become more commonplace if CPUs start putting off much more heat.
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.
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.