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Doomsday PC-Cooling With Dual-Cascade Coolers
An anonymous reader submits "Four (4) compressors cooling one PC! Yes, it's big, yes it's heavy, yes it's loud and yes it does get your CPU and GPU cold, very cold. Is -100C cold enough for you? Cascade cooling is yet another chapter in a Finnish overclocker's neverending quest for optimal PC performance. Those things go down to -80 to -100C and can maintain the temperature. See here for the whole article with the pictures of the project."
....wouldn't they just put their computers outside to get this kind of cooling?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not cold enough unless it can offset global warming. AND refrigerate my beer.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
A Beowulf cluster of compressors on a Beowulf cluster of computers!
Umm.....
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
we just run a power and ethernet cable outside and leave the side of the case off. What is the big deal ? :)
Billy Bob, don't cha think ya got a little too much time on your hands?
Superconducting supercomputer?
Wouldn't your legs and feet get cold sitting next to that thing?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Perhaps they should consider applying this research to their webserver, which appears to be having dififculties keeping up with requests ATM...
Looks like Intel might license this for their new P4s at 4 GHz. After cooling it down, the chip is almost cool enough to run!
Keep playing around with stuff at -100 and the quest is going to end one way or another
Yes, it's big, yes it's heavy, yes it's loud and yes it does get your CPU and GPU cold, very cold.
You talking about my wife?
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
nope, that cooling doesn't work.... their server is already slashdotted ;)
How close to absolute zero would we have to cool a processor so that we could overclock it enough to handle a good slashdotting?
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
And the point of all this is what exactly???
For the money he spent on the setup and for the energy costs down the road, he could have bought and powered many normal machines.
I don't understand paying massive costs to get the last marginal increases in performance.
doesn't this mean that there is an inherent problem somewhere?!?! Maybe the architecture is flawed?
....newer, better processors came out.
Doesn't it defeat the purpose of overclocking?
I thought you did that to get more out of your CPU than what you paid for.
If you are spending more on the cooling than on the computer, then why not get a faster one, or a second one (or dual, or whatever)?
Heh, I guess there's the whole hobby "I do it because it's fun!" thing that explains it...
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
At a given clock speed, is there any benefit to having supercool temperatures?
e.g. Is 3.5GHz at 10C better than 3.5GHz at 15C?
What about -10C?
Liquid helium? Why settle for a noble gas? I think liquid hydrogen is the cooling liquid of choice for people trying to destroy parts of their neighborhood when the heat from their overclocked PC melts the metal on the cooling tubes.
I don't know much about this kind of cooling, but if the compressors are being used to cool the air going through these machines, wouldn't they be worried about physically damaging the machines by cracking them? Keeping a computer cool is all well and good, but at a certain temperature the physical elements composing the hardware are bound to contract different amounts, causing damage. Maybe this only happens at -250 degrees, and not -100, but presumably there is a reason that hardware manufacturers state a minimum operating temperature for their components.
Alphanos
If you wait and actually put the PC to some practical use, instead of modifying, you can get a faster PC for the price you paid for the original PC plus Time and Modifications.
What's the finnish word for ... compensating?
...as if having a CPU running at -100C would save them from server meltdown when the full brunt of brutal slashdotting hits them!!
Muahahahaaa.. <manical laughter echoing in the dungeon>
looks like someone is ignoring the fact that overcooling your processor will lead to early failure.
Just that - Why?
Hey, I can appreciate water cooling. Keep the chip at basically room temperature, it increases its life and the OC'ers can push it a bit. But -100? WHY??? What possible use can this serve?
It doesn't even seem "cool" at this point (beyond the obvious pun). Wasting hundreds of watts, taking up way too much room (extra-large form-factor, anyone?), needing a fork-lift to move it... How does any of that benefit the PC or user?
Some things have an upper limit to what still constitutes "bigger/better/faster/harder". This definitely crosses that line with regard to chip cooling techniques.
So is this just for fun or is there some sort of practical use for super cooling your proc. I mean its cool and all but really who could actually afford to use a system like this in real life. I mean you cant be telling me that the amount of cycles gained by super cooling the proc can offset the amount spent to keep the proc cool. I didn't get to finish the article cuz it took about 2.3 seconds to /. the site, good work on that by the way. All I am asking is can someone explain the practical use for all this is there is one.
This seems all well and good while the machine is running. What happens when you boot it up or shut it down, though? In the summer, you could be dropping or increasing 130 degrees C. Even if the cooler can normally regulate this, what happens if the machine loses power? (no, I couldn't rtfa, it's slashdotted)
when you have an accident with liquid nitrogen you lose a finger. when you have an accident with liquid helium, you lose parts of the neighborhood.
You're thinking of liquid hydrogen, not helium. Liquid helium is damn cold, yes, but it won't explode.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
when you have an accident with liquid helium, you lose parts of the neighborhood.
Why?
All processors that come off the production line needs to be _tested_ before shipped off to the customers - this includes die probing (no way in hell you'll find a heatsink there), and then final test after packaging.
ever wonder how they cool them chips during the final test phase, WITHOUT a heatsink?
fyi, major semiconductor manufactures do license some exotic cooling techniques for this phase of their process, because designing handlers that will slap on heatsinks (applying thermal compound and all that silliness) is simply not economical - besides you don't get to test your processor at different temperatures, which in a necessary requirement that the processor don't fail after sitting in a case that has all its airways blocked by dust for two years.
Posted anon for obvious reasons.
Thats so cool (pun intended).
In my book, 'optimal PC performance' involves consistant operation over a long period of time. This ignores the fact that the processor may be capable of more speed because of the nature of MHz ratings, but in the long run, this is 'optimal'.
This is interesting, and impressive, and admirable as an engineering exercise, but not exactly in persuit of mainstream 'optimal' performance characteristics. (Unless I RTFA and find that the processor does indeed last a good long time, and not burn bright and die out as I imagine it to under these conditions).
Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
I don't think you could do that. Liquid nitrogen is diamagnetic, meaning it is slightly affected by magnetic fields. In other words, the coolant could possibly conduct enough electricity to cause damage the hardware.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
I don't suppose he considered, oh, say, a dual/quad xeon/amd-64?
AMD 64 bit dual rackmount boxes are about $2.5k these days with low-end disk, and they'd probably kick the crap out of whatever he's got.
Or he could go for some really big iron.
I personally can't wait until he gets his electric bill- refrigeration units are VERY power hungry.
Please help metamoderate.
someone will be able to play doom 3 on doomsday
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Lets face it, there are far more destructive ways to waste money than by attempting to make the fastest Home PC on the Planet.
Why climb the mountain? Because it is there.
Doing it just for the sake of having done it is enough, if that is what you want to do.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
Summary: Four (4) compressors cooling one PC! Yes its big, yes its heavy, yes its loud and YES IT DOES GET YOUR CPU AND GPU COLD - VERY COLD - EVEN DAMN COLD! Is -100C cold enough for you?
Forget the cold feet, it's going deaf from the noise all that cooling generates that is your real problem. What's the point of having a PC that's so loud that you need to wear ear mufflers to be able to use it or else risk losing your hearing?
Being able to hear yourself think while you work or hear the in-game audio while you play is a good thing.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
helium is a noble gas. that means is is inert fool.
Parts of the neighborhood will absorb the helium and float away into the sky.
no, no, liquid plutonium is far deadlier
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You can pour liquid nitrogen on someone and it will do them no harm. It evaporates that fast.
don't try this with Liquid Oxygen however...
(with apologies to Inigo Montoya)
Wah!
Yes, it's cold, fast, and heavy, and I'm sure there were pretty pictures, but could someone who actually got to the article mention how fast he got the thing going?
Thanks.
I can't remember how low we went with the Transputers but they ran damn fast dunked in liquid helium. The processors did not reach the level of the helium because it was constantly evaporating.
The limit to overclocking is highly processor dependent. Some designs will simply end up in a race condition because some parts of the chip will work much faster than others and you end up missing the right edge of a pulse. Basically you give yourself a whole new region to discover timing errors in the design.
I don't think that the physical process is going to be a fixed limit, clearly this will be very dependent on the physical packaging. Chips are sent into space to face some pretty unpleasant temperature ranges.
Depending on your material there is a point when your band gap goes all wonky and things start breaking down. Most times what you are worried about is the effect in the high temperature region, but there are equally wierd things in the low temperature region.
This is definitely not something that is recommended for most applications. There are a couple of oddball ones, like cryptanalysis where it is really hard to get a result but once you get one it is trivial to check. I would not be surprised if GCHQ has a swimingpool sized machine for brute force key cracking dunked in some type of cooling liquid. The NSA would just chuck money at the problem.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I dare you to try pouring some of it on your jeans (while wearing them
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
And when you're done overclocking for the day, you can line up the old women in the neighborhood and freeze off their old warts for a modest sum. And they said military gear had dual-uses!
liquid nitrogen is extremely cold, but you can stick your finger in it, or pour it on yourself, etc. i have done this in various physics labs. the idea is that it boils at such a low temp that it wont be able to freeze to your body, or let alone touch it, because your body heat is warm enough to boil it quick enough that there will always be a layer of N2 gas around your skin. so your finger will feel a bit cold, (actually warmer than it would if you put it on a block of ice) but you will definately not lose any part of it. i also had a physics prof who would swallow a piece of dry ice and burp up the smoke-looking gas.
But what is that in F?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
The temperature around here will go down to -30 centigrade during the winter. This being the case, can I achieve significant performance gains by putting my PC outside? I can access it over my 802.11b network. How fast do you think I can overclock my 1.0 GHz Celeron at these temperatures?
Simple, they are enthusiasts and love what they do. Sure they could go buy a faster cpu for the money they spent on doing it, but the idea when you goto such extreme cooling isnt enlarging your "e-peen" it's pushing the envelope to the next level.
Example: A rig with a barton 2500 (pre the multiplier locking bs AMD pulled) comes stock at 1.83 ghz.. with a good hsf you could probably get 2.5ghz but not much more than that becuase the power you need to pump into it, if you can get that processor running at -c you can push it way beyond 2.5ghz maybe even 4-5ghz range (barton 2500 was a very nice stepping core, almost as good as the tbred B 1700 JUIHB) now sure, I spend 89 on a new 2500 + the money I spent on a new watercooling and peltier I could have gotten a much better proc and went air cooling, but the joy of overclocking, pushing the envelope is what drove my decision. Someone who buys a high-end retail processor and uses that stock POS hsf would never know the acomplishment I would feel seeing that 3.5ghz mark outa a $90 Processor. Also realize that the cheap processor and the cooling rig is a one time fee, if another sweet processor (high scalability) comes out cheap I can just grab that new one and stick it in my rig and boom, another huge OC for me and the satisfaction of it aswell.
______ Eagles may fly but monkeys don't get sucked into jet engines.
Prefect testing conditions, for a Windows(*) box !!
(*) windows may or may not be a registered trademark of a certain software company, depending on the results of current litigation.
even your letters are shivering
for a 3 ghz processor... It would have sounded so much better back in the day if he pulled 350 mhz out of a 200 mhz processor? The photos weren't THAT pretty...
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
maybe when this can be used to replace my LG internet fridge i'll get some cold beer
So, he was able to obtain somewhere around 4.4 GHZ on a 3GHZ Pentium setup, with XP to boot [blegh]. Not bad, but give me a year and I'll have the same thing at not such an inane temp. and size. Admirable project, nonetheless.
Use Minidisc? Join the Minidisc.org forums.
The Slashdot effect strikes again! Dang, and I wanted to see the article too :(
I prefer liquid antimatter.
Summary: Four (4) compressors cooling one PC! Yes its big, yes its heavy, yes its loud and YES IT DOES GET YOUR CPU AND GPU COLD - VERY COLD - EVEN DAMN COLD! Is -100C cold enough for you?
Intro
If you are an overclocker you know that keeping things cool is the key for big clockspeeds. The cooler that comes with the CPU ain't going to get you very far. It must be replaced with better cooling if you want to get really high clocks out of your hardware. But what is good enough? Even the biggest and baddest heatsinks won't get your temps much colder - in other words they wont give you much extra in terms of MHz. Watercooling is a nice option cos it has huge cooling capacity but does it really give you a big gain in CPU speed? Usually no because it can't get colder than the air cooling the water. So what can you do if you really need to get more speed out of your system??
Vaporphase cooling is the answer here. Vaporphase cooling is what keeps your freezer and ice cream cold. Vaporphase cooling is what 'all the xtreme-overclockers' are using nowadays. Several people have noticed that going from +40C to -40C makes quite a difference in CPU overclocking potential (talking about 200-600MHz here). There are even commercial solutions that go all the way down to -40C and even a bit colder. If you feel that you must get one of these just go to nVentiv website, check who is your local reseller and get one
But what if you are a real speedfreak and -40C ain't cold enough for you?? Well there is always dryice (-79C) or Liquid Nitrogen (-196C) or even liquid Helium (-268.6 C) for you but the problem is that its not really possible to get constant CPU cooling with these. LN2 and helium are actually too cold for your little CPU - it just wont operate properly at such low temps.
But you know those low-temp freezers they use in labs? Those that go down to like -80..-100C and can maintain the temperature. Good temps for CPU cooling eh?
These are cascade vaporphase coolers. They are called cascades because of multiple cooling stages (normally two). First stage uses 'normal' refrigerant like R404 or R507 and cools down to around -40C. The second stage uses a special low temp refrigerant like R23 or SUVA95 or R1150 and can get the temperature down to -100C level. The first stage evaporator is cooling down the condenser of the 2nd stage - this makes it possible to use a refrigerant with very low boiling point in the 2nd stage. Normal cascade design uses two compressors - one per stage. This also means that it is not a very compact cooler.
Here is a picture of such a freezer (the door has been ripped off):
Cascade cooling is yet another chapter in my neverending quest for optimal PC performance. I've tried quite a few cooling solutions already (waterchillers, peltiers, R404 vaporphase, dryice, ln2 etc.) but cascade vaporphase was something new to me.
This time I was lucky enough to locate not only one but TWO cryofreezers - both were supposed to be broken - so I got them for free.
The first one (the one in the picture on page 1) had problems with the system fan and because of that the owners decided to send it to the junkyard. True, there really was a problem with the fan. It didn't blow any air at all - but then again no power was coming to the fan powerconnector. I made external power input for the fan and it started to work nicely. With the freezer door closed it would get the inside temp down to -91C.
Obviously it would do nothing for PC cooling in its original form so I had to convert it to a CPU cooler.
Testing cascade stage 1 - its charged with R404 refrigerant and it went down to -40C.
2nd stage parts installed - CPU cooler is ready for a test run.
Its working! First test run got it down to almost -100C with no heatload. Pretty good with R23 refrigerant (boiling point @1bar = -82C).
Here is a picture of the evaporator installed on P4 motherboard. I was using a 3GHz P4 CPU here and it would clock to around 3.6-3.7GHz with good heatsink. W
What's the difference between -0c, +0c, and 0c? Is it "d"?
those servers are getting hot by that slashdotting. time for those dual-cascade coolers!
For all those wailing "Like, WTF?" and "This isn't worth it!" I'll say this once:
Well duh. Do you think we don't understand the value of time, space, and money and can't do an investment/return calculation?
This is cool because they can do it. It's on Slashdot because lots of us think it's nifty to turn a 2.2GHz processor into a 4+GHz processor.
Yes, it does cost more, take more space, and more time to set up than two 3GHz machines, or even a dual processor 3GHz.
But it's like my high school instructor telling me 10 years ago that making a microcontroller controlled light dimmer is non-trivial. I did it then, and it requires fewer than 25 lines of assembly code on a simple microcontoller. Was I geeked when I finished? You bet.
People are constantly trying to break records, and this is no exception. The higher the record is set, the more effort and resources must be put in to beat it.
-Adam
Why is it becoming harder to post on slashdot? 4/5 of the time I get an incomplete page when I press submit or preview.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
how about liquid mercury. oh never mind.
darn! I was going to make the obvious relation of the slashdot effect to the performance boosting.... but you beat me to it. You're right though- they may get optimal CPU performance, but not even that can withstand the
SlashDotEffect!
*cue the cool music!*
Esoteric reference.
I'm not sure it will ever end...
Check out this this Slashdot story about a motherboard submerged in liquid nitrogen cooled flourinert.
The manufacturer specs on my machine clearly indicate a minimum operating temperature of 0 degrees C. IAMNAHG (I am not a hardware guy), but the CPU is only one part of a computer system, and it won't do much good to overclock the CPU if another vital system component freezes to death.
Go easy on her, it's on my ISPs web space. Wait a minute, I'm still upset about not have truely unlimited access so on second thought: bag on it! ;)
Uh, 3y3 managed to get my 286 working @ 52.491GHz thanks 2 supercooling. WTF r u on ab0ut? Ch1p5 don't run on l1te!!
and they still can't wring out enough power to avoid being slashdotted...
What's up with all the bad moderation tonight?
> Liquid nitrogen is diamagnetic, meaning it is slightly affected by magnetic fields. In other words, the coolant could possibly conduct enough electricity to cause damage the hardware. This is not true. That it is diamagnetic means it slightly repels magnetic fields. This has no impact on its electrical conductivity.
I can't find the link but I recall something about two Russian guys placing a 386 mobo in their icebox/freezer, next to the vodka*, in order to overclock it to play Quake 3.
Or something like that.
* pronounced "wood-ka"
Their server is cold now.
Dead cold.
Alas, mates, looks like we burned it :-(((
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
I don't use my freezer a whole lot except for ice, So, I made a partition in it and fit a miniitx into approximately half of the freezer box (the network cable comes out of a hole in the freezer lid). Nothing fancy there, I did it just so the whole thing can run fanless. And also because it's something neat to show off to classmates (the dean said I was nuts, but that's the same thing he said about when I said I wanted to build a solar powered boat)
The first thing I thought is this is too complicated. A single LN2 compressor, some insulating tubes running into the box, and a heat exchange instead of a heat sink, you could easily chill that baby to 150K. The compressor would not even have to be in the same room. You would even have to charge it often if you kept the N2 clean.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
With all that was spent on the cooling he could have bought a new processor instead of overclocking his 386 to 4Ghz.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Absolutely. I mean, you'd get a lot more performance if you just ran Gentoo and optimised everything specifically for your machine!
no, no, liquid plutonium is far deadlier
...but not very cold.
... probably still worked with the same cooler.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
this?
(Affected by magnetism) != conductivity
Of course theres few direct paths like that across the die. Because of design considerations, signals take a somewhat circuitous route (pun completely intended). Because of this, they build flip-flops in wire to buffer the signals between clock ticks.
If your clock is running high enough that the longest distance between buffer flip-flops is too far for the signal to reach, you'll have unreliable stability, obviously.
And since intel, amd et al. never intended this particular class of chips to reach 15 ghz, or even half that, you can bet they didn't bother putting extra transistors and complexity in to create the necessary flip-flops to handle 10, 8 etc ghz speeds reliably.
In fact, theres a fair bit of research a professor of mine has published about diminishing performance when you start putting too many buffers in-line. Its one of the many current design issues processor manufacturers face.
-
Pour liquid nitrogen on your hand and it will just evaporate from your skin without doing damage. To lose a finger you need to put your hand into the nitrogen container and keep it there.
So, turn on all the computers you want, it won't matter one whit, in the cosmic scheme of things.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If they can make PC case big and put a door in it, it can be used for long-term food storage. 'Internet connected refrigirator' anyone? :)
On the other side, with freezing turned off, you can cook food on CPU, which qualifies it for 'Internet connected owen'.
Useful thingie. And a computer too!
-- grmbl woz heer
which would be 2.5k$ more(the refrigators seem to have been free for him) and much less fun(it's quite obvious that macci isn't doing this for profit, if you don't count advertising - he seems to be affiliated with a finnish pc shop).
depending on what he heats his house with the bill might be ridiculous though, though i'm guessing the use for this rig will mainly be for short oc record runs(and as such might save a bundle as he doesn't need to get dry ice or liquid nitrogen for those attempts anymore).
such records as "I've been able to push the AMD Athlon64 3200+ 2GHz chip thru the SuperPi 1M test at 3049MHz! As far as I know this is one of the highest if not the highest A64 2GHz clock on the planet.
FYI - using the max. voltage the motherboard allowed (1.6V) this particular A64 chip would run at 2270MHz with high quality heatsink. With voltage of 1.7V it would just hit 2400MHz and that is about the limit with aircooled solutions. So the cascade gave a nice 600MHz boost here. Link to screenshot.
(click for better view)
You can find some more results from the 'Current Records' section. Currently The highest 3DMark03 score in the World (9529Marks) can be found from there too "
so, with just 2500$ he couldn't have done those things with store parts, pure long run number crunching is a different issue though(but that's not the system was/is for).
-
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
What's the reason to -80C cooling, anyway? It's really far from superconducting temperatures (which probably will make things fater) and not very comfort for home use.
I suppose +20C will make absolutely same effect and is much easier to achieve.
-- grmbl woz heer
But slashdot just fried their server.
A: nothing. Parent is not Informative.
Go mod ~up~ some real comments, dumbass moderator.
"Doing it just for the sake of having done it is enough, if that is what you want to do."
Have a kid.
Liquid paper and accidents are often found near each other, I find.
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
What UPS? (Bzzzt....)
..when it's dark for 20 hours a day for 5 months..
-1, Pedantic
(no, I don't claim to have made it up)
Ok, I know I'm a late post to the story, but I did RTFA, and he didn't say a word about condensation.
When he temp-tested the main die, it was covered in frost. Now obviously, this setup was only done to set records, so he's not running it for more than a few minutes.
What do other sub-freezing cooling systems do about the frost?
--
hmm. so to be absolutely safe, you either wear a parka while working with liquid N2 or go buck naked. That sounds like a reality tv show right there.
I propose connecting your cpu and beer to a huge cooling tower that radiates to space from the dark side of the planet... wherever that may be at the moment.
Anybody want a peanut?
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
I never meant for it to be this way - I was only trying to make a funny, honest!
Wah!
Yea it's a humorous use of one's time - but is there anything coming of this work? Is the only benefit to making your processor run faster at home the bragging rights?
-shpoffo
Although liquid helium is the coldest known substance, it has a very low, ah, what, 'heat of vaporisation'. Meaning it takes a very small amount of heat to raise a given amount of liquid helium to its boiling point. So that, even though it's very very cold, it makes a rather inefficient refrigerant.
I'm going back 35+ years for this, back to the days I was a kid interested in cryogenics and spilled a whole thermos bottle of dry ice and alcohol slush on my hand. Screw that, I took up model rocketry (launched parallel to the ground.)
"You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia.' But only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against Slashdot when bandwidth is on the line. Ha ha ha ha..." PFFT.... host not found...
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Didn't warm me when biking to work at 12 minus Celsius "warmth". Nor did my comp stay cool enough. So much for the ambient temperature.
(damn hackers btw...)
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
They get cold as hell, are much cheaper, more effecient, much quieter, much safer, less moving thingys to go boink.
http://www.stirlingengine.com/
You lose a finger only in the case you actually soak it in the liquid. If you just dip it in, nothing happens. I've tried...
99 bottles of beer on the wall... take one down, chug it a-down 98 bottles of beer on the wall... 98 bottles of beer on
-100C? Ha, that's NOTHING. I'm waiting for when they get to -300C.
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
Anyone found any Liquid of Mass Destruction (LMD) yet?!
AT&ROFLMAO
We need to cool this PC or we're DOOMED...
moo.
... and AMD/Intel will bring out a processor with that clock speed anyway! And he'll look a bit stupid when his friends have their 4 Ghz desktops and
he's got his 4Ghz , err , industrial freezer!
Actually, it is not a problem to bring your skin into contact with liquid nitrogen for 1 or 2 seconds. Between the skin and the LN2, a thin layer of gaseous nitrogen will form which will act as a thermal insulator. I've done that many times (I won't take responsibility in case anyone else tries this at home). After a few seconds, the skin will have cooled down sufficiently for the gas layer to disappear and only then you will get frostbite.
The gas layer also prevents the LN2 from sticking to surfaces. It will just roll of the surface, similar to water droplets that float on a very hot surface (e.g. a hot plate in the kitchen). Hence, if you spill LN2 over your body, you will probably not suffer any damage, unless you are wearing shoes/clothes that can act as a reservoir.
Liquid helium is not very dangerous either: because of its low temperature (4 K), nitrogen and oxygen in the air will immediately start condensing, thereby increasing the helium temperature and forming gaseous helium and liquid air, to which the same comments as above apply. LHe can only be used in closed circuits for this reason.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
I can't help stop thinking that this is pure madness :p
From a geeky point of view I think it's quite cool but damn... Trying to think like an ordinary person I constantly think: -Madness!
I assume it can also maintain the temperature with a running PC inside.
Sindri Traustason.
At least for me it is.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Ahem, you obviously did not read the article. You're saying that you could run a 3GHz chip at 4GHz at 0 celsius, the article on the other hand said that in fact he had to go all the way down to -100 celsius to go that one gigahertz. 3 -> 4 and 2 -> 3, for a couple of chip types he tried. He also implied that at around zero you would only be able to go a few hundred megahertz at the most.
The advantage is that all you need to do is put the plutonium in a compact position...it'll melt itself. :)
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with standard case fans. Pulling air through a long tube is harder than pulling it out of the surrounding ambient air in the case...
You need a lot of liquid nitrogen for it to have any kind of effect. The temperature difference between the liquid nitrogen and your finger results in the liquid which comes even close to your finger to evaporize. you get a layer of gas around your finger which keeps the liquid of - for a while. and even afterwards once the actual liquid touches you the effect is that of a medium severe frostbite. To actually deepfreeze your finger it takes a damn lot. trust me, ew played around with that stuff in the lab all the time freezing backpacks to the ground, splashing that over others labcoats and whatnot. It really isn't as dangerous as bad scifi movies want you to believe.
For the cost of all this, they could have easily put the cpu in liquid nitrogen and paid for enough nitrogen to last for years...
That will be cold enough for this and the next generation of AMDs, but what about after that? :) Or will computers double as space heaters?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That's because the stuff immediately vaporizes around your finger, creating a nice insulating layer of gas.
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then Intel could apply for a trademark on "Intel outside"
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
there is almost always a little ambient moisture in the air. wouldn't condensation form on the heatsink and thus threaten the stability of the whole system.
it's awfully cool--pun intended--but are below freezing cooling systems necessary.
granted, haven't gotten my hands on doom3 yet.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
"Thank God for cold fusion!"
Love that game!!
Sorry for the spoiler *wink*
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
OK, guys, getting your CPU too cold is just as bad for it. In my college days I worked in the Military Test unit for a fab. One of the things we had to do was cold soak test the chips. We used LN2 to bring the test machines down to anywhere from -80 to -170. We had a significant failure rate once we got much below -100.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.