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Cooling Down Hot Processors

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the feeling-hot-hot-hot dept.

DonnaMai writes "Face it: the only scorching hot thing you want with a chip is salsa. Any other overheating is potentially counterproductive, and can be downright damaging to the microprocessor -- or other components. This article uncovers potential ways to chill the chips."

10 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. cool chips by Luxifer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What we really need is a spare, low-power, mimimal processor without all the fancy extensions that you can switch to when you're just, say, reading a webpage or email, or such.. you could integrate this right into the motherboard and completely shut down your processor when you're not using it for real stuff. IMHO... maybe an engineer will give me a reason this is unreasonable.

    1. Re:cool chips by detritus` · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Because configuring a MB for 2 processors is going to be a lot more complicated than the switching frequency model they use now (ie. Athlon XP-M and Pentium M chips). This method is a lot less complex than attempting to use 2 processors, one for high load and one for low load. (imagine trying to determine what's considered high load? after all web browsing actually takes a fairly high CPU while rendering some pages, especially with the more complex XML and (ick) flash pages that are out there). I'm typing this on a Athlon XP-M laptop right now and it actually stays quite cool until the CPU load goes above a certain point and it jumps fromm 533Mhz to 1.74GHz, at which point if its sustained it almost gets uncomfortable for laptop use.

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      drunk chemists
    2. Re:cool chips by Dracolytch · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Dude, 90% of the processor power IS only used when playing a game. I have my system monitor open, and as I type this on my development computer, I'm at a steady 8 to 11 percent. 5% of that (half my CPU load) is running the flash animation on the top of this page.

      CPUs today are bored 90% of the time. Doing word processing and stuff, your CPU use is probably below 10%. The sluggishness has almost NOTHING to do with CPU speed. The big thing is load times, which is correlated to disk usage. RAM really is virtually unlimited, and the only time I've hit the limitations of my CPU are when I'm doing things like writing programs to breed multimedia files.

      If you're talking about lack of responsiveness, you sound like you don't need a faster processor... it sounds like you need a 1Ghz machine with 256 MB of decent RAM and a 10,000 RPM SATA drive. 512 MB of RAM if you surf with multiple windows and work with spreadsheets at the same time. Swear to god, that'll knock most of your lack of response time to near nothing.

      ~D

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  2. Razored processor architecture by Raul654 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Dr. Trevor Mudge (U. Michigan) came to give a lecture at my University last year. He had an interesting proposal which I suspect is probably going to end up being used in nearly every architecture. The energy usage of a procesor is proportion to the square of the voltage - so dropping it as much as possible is desirable. The only problem is that once you get too close, you start getting bit level errors. He proposes to use a shadow register to keep track of values as they pass through and detect bit errors automatically, and route around them. If run at the optimal voltage (1.4 volts) a razored process will see a dramatic drop in energy consumption with a virtually-nonexistant hit to processing power.

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    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
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  3. Liquid Nitrogen, of course by tajmorton · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As reported on /. a while back. "Record Attempt: The 5 GHz Project"

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    Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
  4. Overheating vs. High Operating Temps by BenBenBen · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The original poster makes the very common mistake of confusing hot chips with overheating chips - just because 90degC is hot to us meatbags, doesn't mean that it's dangerous to have ICs who run at this temp.

    There are many, many ICs that run happily for years at high operating temperatures (Blaupunkt's Digiceiver digital RF processor being one I'm familiar with).

    Saying this, I do run a 12" G4 PowerBook and can appreciate the delights of a 20degC chip...

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  5. What about by LukaFox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    a liquid cooling system that is also a conversation piece http://nobispro.com/aquatank/?

  6. Ducting by kavachameleon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I first got my Prescott chip, it ran *way* too hot. Realized that the stock thermal pad was just acting as insulation, so I scraped it off and replaced it with Ceramique. It still ran warm, so I superglued a piece of 3" PVC pipe to my case fan. Now air blows right onto the processor area, and the CPU temps are great. I highly recommend the ducting. Cheap, easy, and oh-so-geeky.

  7. Re:Better than water cooling by Blue-Footed+Boobie · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I built one of those a while back...

    Here it is in the "mostly finished" stage:

    Picture 1

    Picture 2

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    DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
  8. Re:Laptops by LurkerXXX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Someone needs to figure out an efficient way of makeing use of the huge surface area on the lid of a laptop for cooling. When in operation, it's facing away from you, so you wouldn't feel all the heat from it. The problem is tranferring the heat to a part that has to hinge away from the area that's making the heat. Plus there might be problems if it transfers too much heat to the LCD screen rather than to the air on the surface away from the user. It just seems a shame not to be able to take advantage of all that surface area.