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MSI Wind U100, Overclocked With Liquid Nitrogen

Posted by timothy on from the it's-a-free-world-baby dept.

james writes "What do you get when you combine a MSI Wind U100 notebook with liquid nitrogen? The new Intel Atom frequency World Record ... and some damn cool pictures! A large copper pot is used, sitting on top of the GPU and chipset, and cold transfer through the original heatsink plate to the CPU. This was cooled down to about -20 C to achieve the new world mark. (Intel Atom N270 @ 2315mhz) For more information you can check out the original forum thread.

6 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. All this shows is that Atom is clock limited by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All this shows is that Atom is clock limited by design. A 700MHz speed up - less than 50% in this case - from using liquid nitrogen? And all to get a CPU that's about as powerful as a 1.5GHz Pentium M or a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo ...

    Atom is reasonably neat, but I would have been more impressed with under-volting to half power consumption. Or designing a better chipset.

    1. Re:All this shows is that Atom is clock limited by billcopc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I say it's not cheap enough.

      What does an Atom processor and board cost ? $75 or so ? What does the cheapest Core-2 processor and board cost ? $90

      Somehow, I'm not impressed by those numbers. Bring the Atom kit down to $30 and we'll talk. Building it into $300 subnotes is not what I call impressive, they just scored because people are magpies and they like the cute little paperweights.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    2. Re:All this shows is that Atom is clock limited by Dare+nMc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      underclocking/volting is a massively overlooked aspect.

      on a chip like the atom with a high emphasis on dynamic clock gating, I would assume under-clocking the CPU would only make the system less power efficient. Under clocking a dynamic clock CPU would only limit it's peak performance, when your system is waiting on the CPU, but not affect the low/average power draw of the CPU at all. (I realize your likely under clocking the memory, and everything else so that would help some.)

  2. side-effects of mod cooling? by v1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've always wondered why things like this don't cause physical problems related to thermal expansion/contraction - why doesn't the processor package crack due to the temp differences? Or condensation form in bad places etc? There's gotta be a whole list of bad side effects to worry about when supercooling one part of your computer...?

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    1. Re:side-effects of mod cooling? by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not really. you cant get condensation because there is no air with moisture anywhere near the motherboard. All that nitrogen is displacing the air faster than the air knows what to do. Same with overclocking with Co2.. No condensation.

      Now supercool it, then yank it out of the cooling bath, yes it will grow frost faster than anything. I killed my first K6 processor by using a over sized peltier cooler. I cooled it faster than the processor could create heat... I frosted the motherboard for a 3 inch circle around the processor, something melted some of the frost and it shorted two power pins and it went POOF.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. Where's the ka-boom? by DrogMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's generally not a good idea to keep liquid Nitrogen in a closed system - it expands by something like 700 times when it goes from liquid to gas, so either you need to keep it cool - hard to do if it's sitting on a hot-plate, or make the pot extremely pressure proof... And then you still need to keep it cool. Best to just let it boil away and top it up...