Slashdot Mirror


Ultimate Cooling System

OCGeek writes "This should be interesting for the overclockers as VR-Zone has an article up on building a cascade cooling system that cools chips down to -110C. The guide shows you the components that are required for the cascade cooling system such as the compressors, condensers, refrigerants, evaporators, heat exchangers, oil separators etc. and the tools you would need. It allows hot chip like Prescott to reach over 5.1Ghz and ATi Radeon 9800 XT card to reach over 660Mhz core."

21 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. They should of started by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..by overclocking the server

  2. Standard response to the "why bother" crowd. by baryon351 · · Score: 4, Funny

    1. Because it's possible
    2. It's kinda cool (literally0
    3. It keeps overclockers off the streets
    4. It gives us something to do
    5. It's just interesting
    6. Performance!

    1. Re:Standard response to the "why bother" crowd. by danamania · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This has me thinking. Sometimes I do that =)

      But seriously. Anyone seen sites with info on overclocking ancient CPUs? I remember once seeing a 486 overclocked well over 100MHz, perhaps into the 200MHz range, through refrigerated cooling. To me, that's as interesting as getting 5GHz from a brand new CPU.

      Any 50MHz 68000s? A 300MHz Pentium I? 250MHz from a PPC601?

      A 50MHz Commodore 64, even? :)

    2. Re:Standard response to the "why bother" crowd. by eclectro · · Score: 4, Funny

      1. Because it's possible
      2. It's kinda cool (literally0
      3. It keeps overclockers off the streets
      4. It gives us something to do
      5. It's just interesting
      6. Performance!


      7. Because liquid nitrogen is "so yesterday".

      8. The angst of our inability to get a date is so great that we do not limit ourselves to one form of technology anymore.

      9. We won't be happy until we force our CPUs into Bose-Einsten condensate so we can laugh in the face of the uncertainty principle and thereby squeeze another 3fps out of quake.

      10. We want to have intelligent discussions with our computers like on the Starship Enterprise (see #8 above).

      11. When our friends and family ask us to fix their computers, we'll be able to take care of their fridge and air conditioning too.

      12. Human Cryogenics should not be limited to rich people and baseball players.

      13. So we can have our own sperm bank, not so much for future generations but so future scientists can map our DNA to understand us.

      14. Blue screen of death??? HAAAA!!! Blue screen of COLD!!!

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  3. Re:Why? by dealsites · · Score: 5, Informative

    In a controlled situation, you wouldn't have any problems with condensation. I imagine when they turn the coolers off, they would want to bring the temperature back up to room temperature via a controlled sequence. You will get condensation if you go from that cold to warm rather quickly.

    --
    Real-time deal updates from all the major deal sites.

  4. ??? Profit? by fuzzy12345 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There's software guys, hardware guys, and now, HVAC guys??

    This seems a little complex and extreme for the home builder. Maybe a specialty co-lo opportunity, though? "Icebox netbox"? No good for gamers, of course. But for others who need MIPS for problems that can't be parallelized...

    --

    Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
  5. Re:Blasphemy! by LordoftheFrings · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For the ATI radeon overclock, no. For raw CPU power, probably, but a video card (generally speaking) needs to be fast on its own. I don't think you CAN piggyback a whole bunch of video cards to gain such speed improvements. Hell, I bet with a 660mhz core, that card could run Doom3 at 3 fps! That's INSANE.

  6. Google Cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:M3MveYmm8lQJ: www.vr-zone.com/%3Fi%3D618%26p%3D1++site:www.vr-zo ne.com+cascade&hl=de&ie=UTF-8

  7. Re:Why? by Hi_2k · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Zero degrees isnt enough. The lower the temprature, the easier electrons move and the faster gates switch. If you were to try to get a prescott to run at 5.5ghz normaly, it would result in errors as the gates wouldnt switch fast enough to keep up with the clock. With this level of cooling, it's no longer about heat concerns, but the speed of the logic gates.

    --
    When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
    Sluggy Freelance.
  8. Michael's computers... by YahoKa · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds suspiciously like they stole the technology from Michael's computers...

  9. Re:Why not overclock other things? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Or you could just upgrade to a 100Mbps network. Or, 1000Mbps. Much easier than trying to overclock.

    The bottleneck is usually not the network card, it's the internet connection, or the rate at which you're going to utilize data (say when streaming.)

    The only time overclocking helps is when you've identified a processing-time-related bottleneck.

    Incidentally usually a 10baseT network maxes out at about 8Mbps with no collisions. Many of the older 10baseT devices were only capable of pushing a megabit or so. So, just getting a more efficient network card and somehow prioritizing up network traffic will already provide you more bandwidth.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  10. Re:Why not overclock other things? by DrunkenTerror · · Score: 5, Funny

    Woohoo, that's hilarious. Awesome post my friend.

    "...and I got my harddrives up to 21.2K rpms. You should hear her boot up, man... It's like something out of a freakin' movie... and I uped the voltage on the monitor, too. I gotta wear welder's glasses to freakin' check email, d00d... It's the best," said the greasy yongster between mouthfuls of pizza.

    "Hey, did you up your typematic rate on the keyboard yet?" his friend asked excitedly. "One guy on the forums got his up to 1200 csp. That's uber as shit..." His words trailed off as the nubile 17 year-old waitress passed the geeks' table.

    "..." remarked Pete, the greaser.

  11. Re:Why not overclock other things? by Tandoori+Haggis · · Score: 5, Funny

    How do you overclock the user?

    --
    My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
  12. Why not use backside thinning by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These techniques seem like brute force schemes to deal with the thermal resistance of chip packages -- you have to cool the heatsink to -110C in order to keep the "intel inside" at less than +60C). Why not use backside thinning. to bring the hot circuits of the processor within microns of a high coolant flux chamber. Backside thinning could get the coolant to within 10 microns of the junctions. If the CCD people can thin a massive 2k x 2k CCDs (the die is bigger than 1" square), I'm sure an enterprising overclocker could thin a Pentium.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  13. Re:Why not overclock other things? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Coffee

  14. why bother? by attonitus · · Score: 5, Funny
    For cheap cooling for 6 months of the year, just move to Winnipeg and stick your PC on the porch.

    Won't work in the summer, but you'll be too busy trying to scrape mosquitos out of your cooling fan to care.

  15. Re:Why not overclock other things? by arazor · · Score: 5, Funny

    >How do you overclock the user?

    I believe they attempt this in Florida and Texas a lot it involves something called "old sparky.
    To date all overclocked users end up dead though.

  16. Tom's Hardware reaches 5.25 GHz by deja206 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now this is the ultimate cooling system... =)

    The last part of the video (the flower thing) is even scary!

  17. Beyond design limits? by Leomania · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While I don't work at a microprocessor company, I do work on the physical implementation of mixed-signal ASICs and I'm surprised these CPUs can work at -110C. As I recall even military limits only go down to -50C (at the maximum allowable voltage, usually no more than +10% of nominal) for design timing closure; beyond this (higher voltage and/or lower temperatures) the flip-flop to flip-flop paths may get fast enough to result in a "hold-time violation" . This is when the signal from one flip-flop reaches a downstream flip-flop so quickly that it is registered one clock-cycle early (basically, it is captured on the same clock edge as it was launched). This is most critical on timing paths with no combinational logic (occurs often in shift registers and cross-clock domain synchronizers) and is further complicated by clock distribution networks that take advantage of "useful skew" to borrow time from one timing path for use on another. I'd be surprised if even CPUs were designed with enough hold-time margin built-in to handle -110C.

    The other variable is the fabrication process corner, so assuming the CPU isn't on the edge of being "fast" there could be some hold-time margin on a given chip to allow this kind of cooling to result in a working processor. Still, I'm kinda surprised it works at that temperature with any reliability.

    - Leo

    --
    You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
  18. Re:Blasphemy! by ophix · · Score: 3, Informative

    your eye has 2 parts, rods and cones.

    cones are the colour receptors (iirc) and do have a "refresh rate" of about 30fps.

    rods, on the other hand, are the b&w receptors. the rods "refresh" at closer to 60 fps.

    this is why most people can see a flicker with a 60hz monitor but not with 75hz and up. its also why people can see the flicker from flourescent lights.

    your eye has a higher density of cones near the center of your vision, but a higher density of rods near the peripheral. this makes your peripheral vision more sensitive to flicker (one of my old bosses cant see 60hz flicker if he is looking at it, but can if he is looking beside it).

    honestly i would say that if you could do 75hz refresh on the monitor with a video card capable of doing a consistent 75 fps throughout the game (which currently is not the case) then you would have about as perfect of a look at the game as you can get.

    i can see a big difference between 30 fps and 60 fps, but beyond the 60fps i cant hardly tell anything different at all (even with 120hz refresh)

    60 feels ALOT smoother than 30 (was tested using a game where keeping 60fps was not an issue given the hardware that was being used) but both are playable.

    a bigger issue is probably the fact that on a modern game if you peak at 30 you hit lows of 5, so peaking at 150 would give you a low of higher than 30.

  19. Overclocking a modem by avij · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was a sysop for a BBS back in the dark ages before Internet, and one of users once asked me if it was possible to overclock a modem to get higher speeds. I promptly answered: "Do you have an external modem? Good, just replace your current transformer with something that gives you more volts for your modem." He thanked for advice and logged off.

    He never called back.

    Why yes, I do like reading BOFH stories, why do you ask?

    --

    Follow your Euro bills at EBT