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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."
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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!
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
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)
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
Because the colder you make a processor, the further you can push it.
If you can keep a chip at 0 celsius (as you can with many PC cooling units out there), you can get at least another 1GHz out of your chip, meaning your 3GHz PC is now a 4GHz power house.
And so it goes with the lower you go. At -100C you could probably keep your 3GHz PC up at around the 14GHz area, which is way faster than anything on the market. Isn't it worth the money on cooling to experience a slice of tomorrow?
mogorific carpentry experiments
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.
No, but with the right materials and time to develop a Pentium with superconducting transistors, they are only 13 K away from being able to use a "high temperature" superconductor. -100 C is 173 K, and according to my link, one of the highest temperature superconductor they have found works at 160 K. Not that I RTFA; it was /.ed at 50 posts.
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 electrons won't move anymore?
With all due respect (since your actual point is correct), you're certainly wrong in regards to electron 'movement'. Unless you're talking about absolute zero (which I doubt, considering the simpleness of your statement), the stage where extreme cooling creates a problem would be when we reach the superconductive state. At this critical temperature, the electrons exhibit the Cooper-Pair phenomenon and exhibit a total spin number of zero. Since they no longer have the same spin, they are exempt from most principles (Pauli's in particular) and so can all drop down to the 1s orbital.
In short, the electrons don't stop moving. In fact, they drop to such a state where they can theoretically move with zero resistance (although drift velocity and the randomness of their wave equations would come into play here).
What you should actually be pointing at is the design of the chip, which may not simply be able to do more, regardless of how much heat is dissipated due to consumption (generating lattice fluctuations and increasing resistance). As well, quantum tunneling becomes a major issue, but this isn't as important as the sheer limit of the architecture.
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?
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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!