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CPU Cooling Insanity
moonboy
writes "I saw this over at Ars Technica.
This dude submerged his entire motherboard in mineral
oil. As if that weren't enough, he then and got a
5,000 BTU (window?) unit and circulates the oil through the
coils to keep it all cool." Don't expect Gateway to be
offering these any time soon... I suspect it will a bit
more than just void your warranty. It'll probably make
motherboard engineers come to your home under cover of
darkness carrying loaded shotguns :)
Any suggestions as to what would make an effective heat-exchange fluid? Anyone know a readily available insulating low viscosity high boiling point liquid with a high thermal conductivity and high specific heat capacity? Preferably non-toxic?
My friend left his cookie on my machine. For the record, the above comment was not posted by Dovaka.
I'm not a chemist or a physicist, but the way I hear it, diamond is just about the best conductor of heat known. I'm pretty sure that it's also a good electrical insulator. Of course, there is the slight problem that coating a motherboard in diamond is just a teeny tiny bit beyond what can realistically be done. Just a smidgen.
Anyway, regardless of the substance used, wouldn't it be a bit of a pain to have to remove this coating and then recoat in order to change a card or something?
Troll? Perhaps -1, too funny to understand...
Strange, a valid reply to a +2 post gets -1... Anyways, here's my take on it (guess I'll get a -2, if that's possible :-), under the new system).
I think that when the two pieces of metal rub against each other, enough of the oil will be removed to make the connection good again. This is unlike corrosion, which takes more than a single scrape to remove... Just my opinion, though.
Water would not work better because it would freeze at 0C
Hope the guy who built that box doesn't read slashdot at level 0...
:-)
Anyways, very much agreed. I've gotten mineral oil on clothes before, and you're left with a patch of clothing that is usually just a little darker than the rest, that never gets clean again (until it's been washed a couple of times). Just imagine with a carpet, you can't run it on the spin cycle for an hour...
If it is well insulated, the heat let off when it is recooled shouldn't be much more than your computer releases. Since your computer is currently releasing its heat into the air, there shouldn't be a noticeable difference.
But electrolysis requires that the water is impure, doesn't it? I remember coating a few of my mothers silver spoons with lead while experimenting with electrolysis when I was a kid... She got rather mad :-)
Hmm, if you weren't concerned about graphics speed, you could hide your super-duper system in the closet and access it with an X terminal.
Well fans are only the half of it. Hard drives make a bit of noise too. My advice would be to get a few gigs of ram for storage. Zero noise, super performance, you can't lose.
Ditto, especially as most conductors seem to "bite" into each other to get a better connection anyways... if anything I would be conserned about the hd cables.
Sun used to have a luggable Sparc box that was convection cooled... Just had a good case design and the heat flowing out the top drew in cool air from the bottom and directed over the right components...
Of course, with today's CPUs with the amount of heat the emit (along with HDs and power supplies and video cards etc etc). I doubt that a passive method like that would work.
I knew a girl who went by the name of Rochelle, but her first name was really Dorkus, as in some biblical character. It was proudly displayed on her driver's license too. When she was underage, it was easy to get carded, but the bouncers never paid attention to the age when they saw that name.
Her parents were nice, but I thought the name was interesting for an American family. Despite the interesting name, she was pretty cool.
Dorkus, doofus, what are these names, and where do they come from?
Heh, apparently this post was from a doofus as well. I also run without my cover because I HAVE TO. See there is so much crap jammed into my mid tower that the air flow with the case on isn't near enough to keep things cool. I can run a few mins or so with a 3d accelerated application and then the exhaust from the PS feels like an oven and shortly thereafter my system starts giving me fault after fault and crashes. Removing the case and placing a couple 3" fans pointed across the MB keeps my components nice and cool. BTW adding the fans with the case on didn't help circulate enough either.
Yeah, but they were discussing what would happen if a hard drive fell in. Read back in the thread.
Why do you prefer headphones? They're more damaging to the ears. If you have noise cancelling headphones, I can understand that, but I still prefer good speakers.
But it *is* theoretically possible to increase airspeed and drop temperature in an ideal case, right?
That would present a bit of a problem if you try adding RAM...
But this isn't intended to be practical (guy dumping motherboard in vat of oil? Get real.) But it *is* outrageous and pretty cool. Goal achieved. Somehow, I don't see this going mainstream...
No. Meet the Macintosh. Jobs insisted that the original ones not have a fan (because he felt that it was distracting). My Mac Plus is completely silent when on (of course, it also gets warm after extended use, but it's an all-in-one piece with the monitor and tiny slits (on *top*...genius design) for air circulation too). The Apple II line didn't have fans, either, BTW. Anyway, the newer-but-not-latest Macs have fans, as all those electronic goodies create a bit of heat. The G3 series (at least some of them) don't have fans, because the RISC PowerPC processor runs so cool (a tiny percentage of what my Pentium II 266 Klamath generates) that it doesn't need a fan. I don't think there's any fan, not even case fans, whatsoever in at least some G3 models, because I remember reading that if you add a bunch of hard drives, you should put a fan in the case, so that heat doesn't build up too much.
:-)
Get a Mac, put dual-boot LinuxPPC on it, and be happy.
No. My computer is way too loud. I think that magazine reviews/etc should include noise generation levels on relevant hardware (systems, hard drives).
I went out and got Linux and was disappointed in that my system is too noisy to keep running while I'm asleep. Just the CPU fan...I don't even have a case fan aside from the power supply one. My Power Mac 6100 is a *lot* quieter than my Pentium II box.
I wonder what would happen with a thin layer of cork, or that fabric stuff that goes on cubicle walls put on the inside of a computer case. I don't think that it would restrict air flow much, or increase the temperature much. I'll bet the noise level would drop a lot, though. Has anyone tried this? As long as fabric dust doesn't get in the electronics, I imagine that this might be really nice.
Seriously, you see these people with triple-fan PII coolers, and you *know* that they have to sound something like a vacum cleaner when on.
Ya! Mac -- nice fast RISC, and nice and quick!
Seriously, if trying to send back the motherboard under warrenty after a brief sojurn in oil would be funny, imagine after an alcohol bath and an unfortunate spark.
"Honest, I don't know what happened! I was just sitting there, typing a get-well letter to my poor, sick grandmother, when KABLOIE the motherboard explodes! I think I have most of the motherboard here (hands over bag of blackened components and dust). Can I have my replacement now, please?"
Heh. Your ISP is gonna kill you if they have some sort of data transfer limit. I can't even get through to your new web site. ./ strikes again!
I know... I meant to put a g in brackets, but it got interpreted as an html tag... so, how about (grin) instead...
I would like to see some stats of cpu temp, cpu usage, etc. and how long the blasted thing lasts !!!!
I've made computer cases out of both cardboard and Legos, both of which performed admirably. The only real argument against such designs is the fact that you're not shielding the radio waves that come off of it. Who cares, though? I don't live next to an airport or anything.
ROTFLVH = Rolling On The Floor Laughing Very Hard
This was the funniest piece I've ever seen here on slashdot. "my next computer is going to be a Macintosh"... Hahahahahahaha!!!
A fellow Malkavian
The grounding is really to prevent EMI and to insure more safety. The real ground voltage comes from lots of ground pins everywhere (one for each power pin).
Oops! BTW, the fan on the left is just so you can see the side. It's not hooked up.
:)
root@megami.org, who forgot his passwd he just used 2 minutes ago.
Do you mean tempest shielding plus EMF shield?
Sounds cool.. I think there should be a web page
on the effects of imersing a cockroach in liquid
nitrogen. Would kick ass compared to the Twinkie
Project and that marshmellow peep demolition
page.
As someone else said, removing the cases actually IMPROVES the airflow. But the cases are not designed maily to increase airflow. They are designed to reduce EMI. I know a good Farady cage would work too, but then you have trouble with lame scr1pt k1dd13z putting their fingers in the working circuits and fans. Besides that, cases make the box more beautiful (OK, for us geeks/nerds/hackers this makes NO difference, but some people _actually_ decides which box is better based on appearance.
I wonder if that was what that first message was all about. Post some total crap at the start of the forum and waste the moderators points... This way we can have some free speech back... :-)
I think you're talking about ions... Ionized water, or heavy (H3O) water maybe? I (almost) failed chemisty, so don't flame me if I'm wrong (but feel free to -1 me, moderators >:-).
That's right, the PPC G3 displays temp. on the desktop and mine runs 10 c. hotter without the cover.
Well...unless you got it REALLY cold, the ice would melt around the warmer components of your system... When I say really cold, I mean REALLY cold! Another issue would be the fact that water expands when frozen, basically crushing all of your components if not done properly (sticking in a bucket and freezing won't work...). The best way to do that would be to spray an ultra fine mist on it and freeze it layer at a time (like you are building a hailstone ;). This would take a LONG time, but may actually work. Assuming you could keep the system cold enough to prevent minute amounts of thawing. Maybe coating the entire motherboard in some sort of thin resin to water proof it first would help too.
I think a better system would be to just simply actively liquid cool the heatsink of the CPU and other real hot components to 50 deg F or maybe a little below that. Any colder and condensation would become a problem (unless the entire system was completely sealed and filled with near zero humidity air or something...). Maybe a sealed system with normal air, but a plate inside the system that gets much colder, quicker than the heatsink setup. This would cause all of the water in the system to condense on the cold plate first...
Everyone else is thinking of hydrocarbon or lipid based oil.
AND THIS GETS A NON NEGATIVE SCORE????!!!!
While *almost* every other one line coment gets a -1.
Mods, if you behave stupidly you force all the rest of us to view everything at -1, and have to put up with "I got the first post people."
Redundant?
What the heck.
Its really easy for the motherboard and the air to get the water to become inpure.
you can use "water wetter" an anyifreese like substance that works better than water.
Space isn't really absolute zero is about 3 degreese k.
Umm, dude, I think you've got things mixed up.
Evaporation is endothermic (i.e. it requires energy for it to occur). Otherwise we'd be in a bit of trouble, since the oceans would have evaporated ages ago.
Condensation, OTOH, is exothermic -- that's why steam burns suck so much more than hot water burns; first the steam condenses and puts a pile of heat into your arm (say), _then_ you've got to deal with this nice hot water sitting on your arm...
It's been a while since I took chemistry, but IIRC steam puts out an awful lot of energy when it condenses (energy that had to be put into it to make it steam in the first place)
From some projects I have done, I believe that mineral oil, as available from supermarkets has at least 5% water in it. I was wanting to do something similar to this but I decided I would need kerosene because it can be obtained more pure than mineral oil with respect to polar (i.e. conducting) impurities. Obviously I don't want an ignitable coolant, etiher. the only other thing that came to mind to use in this situation is carbon tetrachloride (can be obtained from dry-cleaners), which has it's own risks (and i believe is still flammable).
Well the main trick is to KEEP the water distilled. There are alot of chemicals that are put on by the manufacture on the PCB. I belive that things such as reseins from the epoxy and so on would cause SERIOUS problems.
I am wondering what you are meaning by pure water too. If ya just
means those Hs and Os then the system would not only need a case but
would need to be sealed with no headroom since CO2 (among other
ubiquitous gasses) is absorbed by water (enough to shift the pH a
volum of otherwise "pure" water to around 5).
I can verify that my machine runs hotter with the case closed. I have an over clocked Celeron with 3 Case fans and a Glacier 4500 CPU fan. When Playing HalfLife with the case closed, I'm lucky to last 5 minutes without a hard crash.
With the case open, I can play all day. Go figure.
To lazy to log in, but....
I used to work in HV electronics - Mineral oil works great, but if you REALLY get worried about low temp flow, and hot spots, there is a chemical called florinert. Great stuff, high dielectric, good flow, better heat transfer. Of course, it's a bit more expensive - the ultra high dielectric versions run well over $600/gal!
416 Mhz on a celeron 333 afriend of mine get 500mhz using a celeron 333 5* 100 with no additonal cooling just the normal fan and atx case
and a abit BX motherboard
cya l8r neuek
Don't know where you get found liquid HE for that price. I work with liquid HE and N and the cost is about $4 per liter of HE and $0.65 for N.
Yeah, Scroll fans are quiet and last forever (well a long time anyways) I have never seen a scroll fan that small do you have a part number etc. on where it can be aquired?
mailto: jam@ruby.ocn.ne.jp
They do have fans, but they on;y turn on when they are needed.
The powerbook (copper chip) g3's don't have them, I think.
Don't move to sothern california.
A slight tremor could shatter your board.
Alcohol cannot hold very much heat.
If you use evaporative cooling, alcohol would work, but if you circulated it, it would not work.
love it, a Crumb fan on \.
That seems like a lot. It's closer to 1.0E-15 molecules per mole.
Don't some nuclear reactors use mercury for cooling purposes? I don't really know, can anyone provide more information?
What kind of Quantum do you have that is so quiet? Bigfoot, Fireball, then the XX after that name? I'm guessing it's not SCSI. The Bigfoots look like they'd be quiet just because of the 4,000 RPM.
On-topicness: Is it oilproof?
LinuxPPC doesn't work on iMacs yet. And there is (at least on the "C" models, 333mhz) a fan that is always on, even in sleep mode. The CD drive stays on for a long time after it is accessed, at least using MacOS, making more noise than the fan.
I imagine it would absorb it pretty quick with the way its dripping off the evaporator and condensation forming all around. But even he just puts the evap straight in the oil and circulates it there's still a pretty large surface in contact with the air.
Silent Computing.
there was a thread on this a while back.
Basically, most noise comes from harddrives and the CPU fan (on my system at least). The guys at silent computing offer a (from memory) 20db CPU fan. That's more than silent enough. They also have power supplies, and most importantly, sound insulating covers for the harddrives.
In my system, most of the noise comes from just the drives. When I want some peace and quiet I just kill update and spin them down.
Anyways, the moral is that if you want a silent system, all you need is conventional technology done right; passive tech is cooler, but not necessary.
Johan
Why don't you try this:
sink your motherboard + components in mineral oil in some sort of sealed container.
then put it in a freezer.
that will stop condensation, plus it should keep it really , REALLY cold...
Sorry, correction, it does. I was the original poster, and last time I checked, it hadn't.
ARM CPUs are extremely low power too... does a Netwinder even have a fan?
Note, this doesn't answer the original question.
Is 3 degrees kelvin low enough to turn the circuits on the motherboard/chip/etc into superconductors? Then there would be no heat to radiate...
Isn't there a special mega expensive 3M or Dupont liquid thats actually designed for submersing PCBs in?
This is a problem?
("Damn CPU's starting to overheat, time to make some more coolant.......")
Ice floats on water because it is less dense than water. It will float even if there are no air bubbles in it.
Wow, I've only been here a few months...I'm sorry.
All the good things die tho, it makes them more fondly remembered. besides, what's the point of living forever? It just makes life less valuable.
took me a while to figure out the mod stuff, not registered, I don't know you, you don't know me, who needs to know? I read it all when my pc lets me (seems my banshee drivers like to crash my browser a certain sites, this occasionally being one of them, but new HD is on the way and linux is one step closer!) wow, all this crap is definetly off topic.
Won't the oil cause problems when you remove a jumper and put it back in other position? Won't it insulate the current via a thin layer of oil in that case?
One of the things you can do with mineral oil is to use it as a dielectric in high voltage capacitors, so yeah, it's an insulator.
Wouldn't really work very well. Since there is only vacuum out there, there will be no heat transfer through convection, only through radiation.
/Sam
Others have pointed out that a vacuum is a pretty good insulator. Maybe you can use the asteroid as a heat sink. Of course, there's still the problem of cosmic radiation. You might be able to use the mass of the asteroid to shield the computer from one direction, but you'll have to bury it to shield it from every direction. All in all, that's a lot of trouble. In any case, the space station would probably have some kind of central cooling system to take care of everybodies heat problems. Provided your computer actually produces much heat that far into the future, it would probably be hooked right to a vent of the station's cooling system.
Sealage (not real word I know) is generally a relative term, you can only seal something so well, underenough pressure anything will break. But oil is rather thick I doupt that it could break the seal anywhere around sea level
That's really cool. In engineering liquid cooling systems are known to be more efficient than air ones. Even Porsche now realizes this. In electronics liquid metal cooling of speakers' voice coils has been known for years.
I think this is a very valuable experiment and the hardware manufacturers sooner or later would have to start offering systems based on liquid cooling design. I still wounder though: what happened to the super-conductor based chips taht were promised to us more than 10 years ago?
Alex Aitouganov
Epoxy also used to be one of the insulators used for deep sea cables.
Several commercial computers are N2 cooled, but I'm not sure if the circuitry is immersed in it. Crays spring to mind...
It seems like all that oil has to eventually cause contact problems on the PCI cards and SIMMs. How about using alcohol instead? It has a low freeze point, doesn't conduct, but best off has a low boiling point. That means after DrFreeze gets tired of his experiments he can take it out of the bath and dry it out in a few hours. With mineral oil his MB is never going to be the same.
Ken
Semiconductors are rated for a range of operating temperatures. Above or below that range and the circuit start to behave erratically.
I'm sure the machines that are cooled with N2 normally, like a Cray, are designed with that cooling method in mind.
Surely mercury will conduct the heat away quicker??
I don't see what is wrong with going below the freezing point of whatever liquid you use. Sure, it will freeze, but is that actually a problem? E.g., if the motherboard is embedded in a block of de-inozed ice at -40C, won't that work?
If you replace the methanol with a flavored ethanol solution, and collect the evaporant rather than returning it to the system, you just described a still. We're talking bitchin hi tech moonshine machine! Of course the concentration of alcohol remaining inside the case would diminish, slowly surrounding the motherboard with water-laden goop and ruining your computer forever, but that's the beauty of having booze as a by-product...
Nope. Ever picked up a bottle of mineral oil? Heavy stuff, compared to a similar volume of water.
Uh...to all the people taking this seriously, I sorta think he's joking. Doesn't mercury conduct electricity *really* well? Y'know, mercury switches and the like? Probably would do unpleasant things
Damn moderators the man says something humerous and you -1 him.
Jokes unless they are spam shouldn't be moderated lower than '0'.
Way tooooo many moderators.
Frontpage....
eeeek....
I hate front page.
(please -1 this post)
Oil most definatly floats ontop of water,.. Think of oil spills,. how do they clean the oil from the water? Scrape it off the top :)
But then again,.. this is a DIFFERANT type of oil,.. perhaps mineral oil is heaver? (shrug)
I can't stand this anymore.
.0862 g/mL
For the record, i am a chemical engineer and have worked around petrolium based items alot.
Mineral oil, as listed in Aldrich's Chemical Handbook:
density=
(water is about 1.0 g/mL)
And since everyone has mangled the topic i feel the need to set it straight.
It IS true that heavy chained hydrocarbons are in fact denser than water. Take road tar for example. the density increases as the polymer chains get longer because the molecular weight gets so high. There may also be an effect with
chains become more intertwined, taking up free space (and thus increasing the density). However this is negligable for smaller hydrocarbons (if memory serves, mieral oil is around 25-35 carbons length).
my bad, i missed the decimal
It's a big plus in the fact it cools everything and not just the CPU (memory, video, bus chipsets) and may allow for systemwide overclocking. However I think engineers wouldn't adopt it for a few reasons.
Computers would have matinence like a car, with changing the oil, etc. People don't like extra work, so sales may decline on that note alone (remember, most people that use/buy computer are not "power users"). Bear in mind this is also ecologically unfreindly.
Once empty PCI, memory, AGP slots are covered with non-conducting oil. I don't think you will be able to add a new one without painstakenly removing the oil film from each of the connects in the slot you are adding to.
Cooling system leaks would be bad and messy
It's just simpler to use air cooling.
TEMPEST is a milspec for identifiable eminations from classified equipment.
Take a look at This page for more details.
Hi,
:(
I am a part/time moderator. I just wanted to let you know that it isn't all of us. I only moderate up, I won't moderate up past 3, I usually only moderate -1s and 0s back up to 0 or 1. It doesn't seem to help though
Many motherboard makers clean their motherboards with water since CFC are illegal now for this purpose (otherwise the resin left from the solder paste eventually corrodes the connections).
I actually saw this at a tour of Intel's motherboard factory. It was really weird feeling to see a chain of motherboards in a conveyor belt being taken for a dip. Of course they use de-ionized water, the motherboard itself is not powered yet (duh!), and they immediately go into a dryer after their water bath.
This will be a silly question, I suppose. But from what I've seen liquid nitrogen do, once the material is taken out of the nitrogen, it's as brittle as a thin sheet of glass. I'm wondering just how safe this would be for the motherboard, with all the materials (fiberglass, copper, plastic, aluminum, etc...) contracting at different rates, would something not crack? If you immersed it slowly would that help? And last, but not least, if the material is as brittle as I figure it will be when removed, won't the motherboard break the first time you try to upgrade a card in a slot?
Couple of thoughts on your design.
You may want to make the 'super cooler' case larger, (so that any water that does devlop will be on the bottom. Then place your mother board on some sort of standoff...ie: expect the water, just work around it.
Then, if you add some sort of valve at the lowest point in your 'super cooler' case, you could then drain off any water condensation that develops. Check with an airplane junkyard or some place like that, pilots have to go through this same sort of stuff all the time.
Liquid cooling systems are typically used because they are very silent. The only thing I heard of the cooling system where I used to worked before, was a slight sound when the system was just turned off, and the pipes were being filled with liquid.
>This guy had fans on the thing six ways to sunday
>then says he never had the cover on. Hello,
>covers speed up the airflow, they keep the thing
>COOLER.
Alas, your theory doesn't match up with reality.
Keeping the case on with standard case designs doesn't allow for proper intake or exhaust. What happens is that the air inside gets warmer and warmer. It works as the opposite of an air conditioner -- the fans blow air over the heating element (CPUs) which eventually warms up all the air inside the case.
If you're using a motherboard with temperature sensors you can check it out. My CPUs went up about 10 degrees Celsius with the case on. You definitely notice the difference when you take the cover off -- you can feel the much warmer air escaping.
Actually TRY it some time and note the difference.
Its not a sealed system. You'd think condensation would fry it within a few minutes of operation.
On my case (Enlight mid-tower ATX), I get a drop of 5C if I take the front of the case off, and more if I take the side off.
The problem with the front seems to be the stupid little holes that are supposed to let air in for the front case fan are way to small.
If I run everything by the book according to Enlight, the motheboard temperature will be 25C over room temperature, and on warm days that is enough to go over the 50C limit in the BIOS.
I'm curious, why not put an anhydride (sp?) on the bottom (eg. sodium ) to collect the water? Or some of those little crytal package things that come with electonic stuffs?
That way you could just replace it to remove all the water.
I would think that the acetone would start attacking the solder mask, plastic packages and seals on the electrolytic capacitors. 3m makes a thermal transfer fluid for electronics called fluorinert.
(see http://www.3m.com/market/in dustrial/fluids/refheat.html)This stuff is really expensive. I used it years ago on power amplifiers and it really works. You can submerge the entire circuit without problems and it transfers heat like a champ.
I used to work at a supercomputing center at my university. We had a Cray YMP-2, (manufactured circa 1991) which used Fluoroinert as the coolant. It was about $100 a gallon, but absolutely non-toxic, and worked well. The story goes that Fluoroinert was originally developed by a medical company as an artificial hemoglobin substitute. Someone from Cray noticed its electrostatic properties and the rest is history. Our main sysadmin once quaffed a glass of the stuff -- said it was tasteless.
Why would it be a problem if the power supply or the hard disk fell in.
If you take for granted that the oil conducts as much as air, you can submerse anything in it you want.
The hard disk is sealed anyway, so no oil could get in there.
And as far as the other parts go, everything that can be exposed to air should be able to be exposed to oil.
I saw another post of someone worrying about a thin layer of oil insulating the jumpers.
Well, for the same part you could worry about a thin layer of air insulating jumpers in a regular setup.
This is really a brilliant idea, since the oil conducts heat much better then air. Maybe one day we'll all have liquid submerged pc's.
Actually, pc-makers would like this, because you'd have to buy the liquid from them, and they could make it impossible to get hold of the liquid unless you're oem, therefore forcing you to return your pc for any upgrade. Finally a way to control us completely, even better then intel's not-so-secret pIII tag.
The electronics on some deep sea submarines are encased in mineral oil. Though immersing electronics in oil might sound strange, it is not an uncommon practice. Here are some research papers on the topic:
http://tdei.sju.edu/tdei/index/eiidx.html
--------------
A Dylan hacker
Raleigh, NC -- When Joe Celery upgraded his home computer system, he ended up with a machine that was hotter than he bargained for.
Joe Celery was a member of an elite group of computer enthusiasts that call themselves the "3l1t3 0v3rCl0cK3rz Gu1Ld". The group's focus is a technique called "overclocking", which is a technical term for running a system faster than it is rated. Some overclockers do it to save money, but many, like Joe Celery, overclock for fame.
"I started out with a [Intel Corp. Celeron(tm)] 450A [300A processor overclocked to 450MHz," Mr. Celery stated in an exclusive interview from his hospital ward. "Sure, it ran Quake II real fast, but that wasn't enough. So then I tried watercooling."
Using approximately $500 worth of supplies, including copper tubing and a small air conditioner, he managed to get his computer to run as fast as one with a Pentium II chip that cost almost $300 more than his Celeron(tm) processor. It would process millions of instructions per second for as long as an hour before crashing.
He continued, "it was an incredible success. But I just wasn't satisfied. I wanted more." His next exploit involved a stack of Peltier cooling elements, flat devices that electrically transfer heat from one surface to another. The Peltier elements allowed him to crank his watercooling setup another 10%, to match the performance of a Pentium II chip costing $500 more than a stock Celeron. It used only $300 worth of Peltier elements, as well as the original watercooling apparatus.
Celery was markedly silent on how, exactly, he ended up in the hospital. After half an hour of prodding, he finally admitted what his latest creation was: "I tried to cool my system with hydrogen gas. It worked, until my hard drive spun up."
The resultant explosion caused approximately $15,000 worth of damage to Celery's neighbors' homes, notwithstanding the destruction of his own home. Analysts estimate the amount of damage was greater than the damage possible if a Pentium III Xeon chip costing $1000 more than Joe Celery's Celeron(tm) chip was used.
Celery left us with this final comment: "my next computer is going to be a Macintosh."
Only problem with this, though, is that you get annoying frost and condensation, that's why you want it submerged, so that no water vapor comes in contact with the cooling element.
Is this thing grounded? As I recall, incorrectly grounding certain equipment can really screw up things, because It doesn't know what voltage to use for binary zero. That, as I recall, is one of the reasons all cases are made of metal, and most mobo's are connected by at least one metal spacer.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Posted by brent_clements:
So it was mineral oil that should be used...I've been using sprite for the past few times I tried to cool my motherboard...
Ow ow ow stop sparking me you damned motherboard!!!!
-Brent
Posted by Open Matrix:
:-)
This one needs to be sent to segfault.org
Better use a different container. Acetone will dissolve that styrofoam container instantly.
If you go back to the link on the end of the URL
given, he's got the overclocking info: according
to him, a AMD K6 300Mhz overclocked to 500Mhz
and working fine based on the one shot with
the computer on and the cooling bath going full.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I got tired of replacing these cheap CPU fans that keep dying on me (Do they *all* suck?). They don't seem to last very long and they don't blow a lot of air onto the heat sink. So I mounted a squirrel-cage type blower above my CPU. 10X the airflow of a regular fan; no condensation problems (unlike peltier or liquid [pick your favorite gas] CPU cooling); and still quiet. I'm not trying to overclock, but even stock stuff gets hot in my non-airconditioned room here in Las Vegas where ambient room temp reaches 100+ sometimes. Check it out here.
I'm skeptical about the hard drive, but I know that the fan can't go it. Oil may have the same electrical conductivity as air, but it sure doesn't have the same viscosity. I'm guessing the power supply fan would make it about four rotations before it bogged down and poped the fuse.
There was a page somewhere which went into how it was possible to overcome that clock limit by fooling the chip through modifiying it's speed reference (some resistor and PLL thing if I can recall)...
/., tomshardware and any site I could find. This particular article was very technical, included howtos and theories and I just wish the hell I could find it!
I would very much appreciate ANYONE who could give me that URL. I've soured through
> I'm guessing the power supply fan
:-(
> would make it about four rotations before it > bogged down and poped the fuse.
No it wouldn't. It would stop. No fuse would pop. The fans in computers are impedance-protected. Try it yourself. stop the fan with your finger or a pencil or something. nothing bad happens.
There was (is) a company somewhere selling buzzers which go off when the fan stops rotating. They count on the circuit opening up to sound the buzzer. you stop the fan and it does nothing.
this is what I was looking for
Thank you!
Sure, it's only 1.0E-7 molecules per mole, but it is _something_
Actually, it's 1.0E-7 moles per liter. That's about 1.0E+15 molecules per mole
I was wondering at first why ultra-pure water wouldn't work better, given that it would probably transfer heat faster. But are there any bits on the motherboard that would corrode?
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Isn't this waht they used PCBs (Polychloryl Biphenyls) for in the old days? Of course, environmental regulations/ethics pretty much rules out that solution.
Check your hard drive for one of those 'Warranty Void if removed' stickers. Press it with your finger _gently_. It depresses. There's a hole there normally sealed from dust etc by the sticker. I've seen this on several (older) hard drives, although I can't comment on the very newest ones from the manufacturers.
This explains the altitude thing mentioned above.
I would also be worried about the prospect of any coolant fluid destroying the integrety of the glue holding the sticker down. But I'm ignorant in this area of chemistry so I don't know if mineral oil would be a problem here.
Hmm, I command your creativity!
:)
Just a couple minor problems, sperm are organic critters and carbon doesn't like heat much, so such a setup would need to be replenished constantly. Also, sperm need energy (glucose?) to move around.
But it'd be interesting if someone tried
Caelum
Are you talking about anhydrous Na(s)?? I should hope not, since it reacts violently with water to create NaOH(aq), much worse than the water itself. As for those little crystal package things that come with electronic stuffs, I'm not familiar with those...what are they?
No, the oil will not hurt the connections. We use special grease at work to protect high current connections made of aluminum and other metals. It is necessary to prevent oxidation. Oil will not hurt this application, unless it chemically breaks down into basic carbon compounds.
Mercury is used in some high current relays. If you want an industrial relay where the contacts just don't wear out under a heavy hammering, its the way to go.
The only problem is when they retire, they have to be disposed of in a sealed rubber lined steel drum approved by the EPA. It has been said that one drop of mercury can destroy a whole lake for things like fishing.
At the bottom of an aquarium? Clear epoxy. Some types of outdoor and industrial transformers are filled with epoxy and sand as a filler. They are impervious to water and dissipate heat well. Get it by the can!
I enjoyed reading the comments about people afraid placing thier dream machine in oil. We get to play with high voltage and mineral oil at work. In a high voltage test chamber where we can crank the probe up to 150,000 volts at 5 amps, we make place the connections in large, clear lexan (plexiglass) cylinders filled with mineral oil. The oil bath is a nice insulator and helps keep the joint cool, which is important.
I have heard a story where the joint was poor and not enough oil was in the container (at another location, not where I work!) When another object was under test, the container of the poor connection exploded in a HUGE fireball and the explosion viewed through a window. That must be the reason why high voltage rooms are made of many layers of metal.
Mineral oil is a great conductor of heat. It flows and moves heat away from the source.
Actually, this is done with TIG welders. Many TIG welders have a seperate coolant supply you hook up in addition to the main welding power supply. The welding "cable" is actually a set of skinny plastic tubes that run distilled water over the wire. Without the circulating water, the cable burns in a shower of blue flame. I had the opportunity to replace a few of these cables when the operator failed to check the coolant level.
Another place to consider getting iron cases for surplus would be an electric motor rebuilding company. They are in most cities. They have all the other essentials, such as transformer oil, epoxies, enamel, insulating standoffs, etc... You might even be able to pick up one of those iron boxes with the cooling fins on the side from the scrap iron bin. They would look cool and sure to dissipate all that extra heat your CPU can manage.
Who knows, you might be able to fit the air conditioner in the same box and seal the whole contraption. Some of the boxes have jacks on the outside for instrument hookups allready there! Many possibilities! (Be the first on your block to have a computer that is fireproof, armor plated bullet proof, resistant to nuclear blasts, and EMP!)
Another way to make diamonds is using an acyteline cutting torch and cut a slab of iron. I believe it was someone at a steel manufacturing plant where it was discovered that the slag edge where the sheet was cut was hard enough to instanty dull a large bandsaw blade. The story I hear is that they had an engineer check it out and found the floor where the cutting was done had a layer of very fine diamonds in the soot. Unfortunately, a process could not be made to sort through it cheaply.
What this means is that it is unwise to take a bandsaw or drill next to slag.
I may work in unusual conditions as I have seen anything catch fire. Perhaps mineral oil is very safe as a coolant.
I wonder what the flashpoint of mineral oil is. I use synthetic oil in my car due to it having a significantly higher flashpoint. I tried to burn Mobil-1 with a propane torch once. An oil that needs at least 75 more degrees to burn is less likely to break down and do evil things.
I must just see extreme conditions. Put it in a demanding application where it cools a poor electrical connection at 5 amps from a 150,000 volt load and it can explode in a colorful fireball. Water will do the same thing too if the hydrogen is allowed to accumulate.
The only problem with the power supply in the oil is that if on of the parts, such as a capacitor decides to self destruct, it could spray oil and sparks into the air. Not likely, but not fun to think about either. If you work with oil where there is potential for high releases of energy, an iron case would be ideal to contain any mishaps. Lets say I would not leave this unattended in my house and might be comforted by a fire extinguisher that works...
Thermal expansion is a real problem in the real world. If you ever had a television that you had to hit the side of it to make it work or clear the picture, you could be facing an expensive (but very easy) repair. Televisions and power supplies usually have areas on circuit boards that get very hot. When they see many power on/off cycles, the expansion tends to cause the soldered joints to crack and become loose. If the loose connection is a conduit for large currents, the resistance will make it even hotter and boil the solder away from the joint. Several years ago, 50% of all television repairs had this problem (I used to fix them!)
I have seen a $450 repair bill for repairing a projection television where a few joints needed soldering. Your repair bill may be calculated with this equation: worth/2 and the justification is "repaired or replaced high voltage power supply." When you can repair ten of these in a day, it is a lucrative business. Nowdays, most devices that have high current areas are better engineered with rivets and extra solder in critical areas.
I was thinking about what you can dip a 10,000 rpm drive or a whole computer in: enamel. Our 400 horsepower DC motors that see 600 volts have the windings protected in this way. Enamel is flexible, tough, protective, and is insulates against electricity, yet it can transfer heat quite well. Its durable and can take abuse. I have seen DC motors under high voltage work in wet conditions without fail.
Speaking of liquid nitrogen making things brittle and shatter, once I was in a chemistry lab late one night when an evil cockroach happend to skitter across the floor. Well, we scooped the bugger up and let him join the fun in our flask of liquid nitrogen.
Yup, he was instantly converted into a deep sleep. Then, we tossed the baby and his bathwater onto the floor in those pretty balls of steam as liquid nitrogen is famous for. The cockroach landed in two peices. He eventually woke up and couldn't find his feet!
Has anyone ever tried to run an electronic circuit in temperatures that cold? I suspect the doped regions of transistors would behave differently and have different gain characterstics. I'm not sure a computer would compute.
At work we have two types of transformers: open core and oil filled. The oil filled are much smaller and can handle voltages a magnitude higher up to 150,000 volts at a few megawatts 100% of the time due to the circulation and insulating properties of the oil and large heat fins. The open air type transformers a much larger and require natural convection and only see 14,400 volts. The only advantage of the open air might be the large magnetic core to dampen voltage fluctuations.
Needless to say, the oil filled transformers are sealed to prevent contamination of the oil and prevent oxidation and cumbustion. If they are ever overheated, the oil tends to break down over time, lose its dielectric properties, and eventually short. Some oil filled transformers have large fans on the heatsinks to keep the oil at reasonable temperatures.
I'm not sure what blend transformer oil is for our applications as we have a contractor repair our damage, but you can get it in 55 gallon drums. I'm sure any other oil, including mineral oil would be just fine in this application (provided moisture does not contaminate the oil over time.)
I could imagine a much "prettier" setup where the case is made of painted iron, closed, sealed, and painted. Then lower the freon pressure in the air conditioner to allow much lower temperatures when the gas expands inside the coils.
Then people might think this is cool and not be offended by the "scraps of styrofoam" and parts laying around everywhere. Looks like a prototype to me...
I wonder how hard it will be to build a double layer metal shell filled with dry ice or whatever other coolant used, completely covering the motherboard + PC cards. with all the cable connections connected to intermediate panel on one side of the box to ensure insulation. The heat sink on the CPU (and on whatever other components) would be coupled to the cooling system. The entire cavity would then be at the same temperature (perhaps a fan on the inside to disperse the air warmed up by the CPU), minimizing the chance for condensation.
Kill'em! Kill'em all!
Well Jobs has also been stupid in pushing the fanless design at times. The most famous case was the Apple III. Most people haven't heard of the Apple III, which is understandable, as it was overpriced, poorly marketed, competed against the IBM PC (this is several years before the Mac came out) and had to be recalled due to massive heat problems.
Basically, ICs were popping off of the board due to thermal expansion/contraction cycles. The field techs were instructed to lift the CPU a couple inches up, then drop it to reseat everything.
When the Apple III was brought back onto the market some months later (IIRC 9 months) it had an impact no greater than a comet the size of a chiuaua's head.
As for the original Mac, it worked alright drawing cold air through the bottom with the low-pressure of hot air rising out of the top. To facilitate this however there was an aftermarket product, which I believe was called the Mac Chimmney. It looked like a tin woodsman's hat, stood a foot or two high, and worked pretty well despite being silly.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Sorry, but a vaccuum is a perfect insulator. The only way your motherboard would be able to get rid of hid would be to radiate it as IR. The big problem in space travel is not keeping things warm, you have several humans generating kW of heat to do that, the problem is getting rid of the heat. That is why the space shuttle has to open up the cargo bay doors as soon as it gets into orbit, to radiate away heat. If the doors don't open they have to come back real quick or else you end up with braised astronauts.
I prefer headphones. The Sennheiser HD580's are a dream.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
The best part of my new Quantum 6.4GB drive isn't the size or the access time, but the low noise emissions. The difference over my older 2-4GB drives is amazing.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
...they don't do it like this. This story isn't so much about the results as it's about some guy pushing the limits of sanity :-)
In fact, this story doesn't even mention how much the guy was able to overclock the damn thing. Can we have that bit of information, please?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
This is only half-way on topic, and perhaps it should be on ask-Slashdot, but here goes:
I want the latest and gratest CPU, mainboard, and 3D GFX card AND I want them silent. Less noisy is good, real quiet is better, but what I really, really want is total silence.
That's why this cooling method appealed to me at first -- it looked like it might be really quiet. Fans pushing air around are noisy, but with liquid you avoid that. Then I saw the pump and the air conditioner and figured they'd probably be anything but quiet.
Am I alone in my quest for quiet computing?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Okay, so it might not be too practical for everyone, but I was thinking that you could just submirge the whole motherboard in liquid nitrogen in a good vacuum-insulated container. I would assume that the chemical properties of nitrogen don't change when it's in liquid form, so it would be non-reactive and non-conductive. Then, the only problem is continuously replacing the nitrogen which boils off due to CPU heat (room heat would have little effect in a good insulated container. Any thoughts?
One other thing about mercury... it boils at relatively low temperature, and you just don't want to have to deal with mercury vapor...
Here's an idea on silent cooling... evaporation. Evaporation is a exothermic process (gives off heat) and thus is a cooling process. So if you immersed something (like the cooling fins on the CPU) in a cheap liquid with low vapor pressure (perhaps methanol) then the temperature of the fins cannot increase beyond the boiling point of the liquid while the liquid remains. You could then construct a reflux system to allow the methanol vapors to re-condense and return to the cooling fins. Just another thought!
Two good points raised.
First, how will the heat be let off. One way is by keeping the system at atmospheric pressure by allowing excess pressure to escape. That would release heat by evaporation (boiling) of the nitrogen. The other way is to keep the system at high pressure to keep all of the nitrogen liquid; the heat would then need to be replaced through a heat exchanger of some sort.
And as for why nitrogen vs. helium, it is much easier to obtain large quantities of liquid nitrogen; liquid helium is more expensive to obtain and requires more-expensive containers to keep it liquid (high pressure) at room temperature.
But since I work in a chemistry laboratory, I have lots of access to liquid N2, but we only have enough liquid He around to cool off the NMR magnets...
There are a couple of liquids which you might consider for your cooling to avoid the liquid problems. The one I would look strongly at is acetone.
Yes, the stuff smells bad, but it will remain as a liquid (and not get gooey or gelataneous) down much colder than -30 or -40 C... I use dry ice/acetone baths all the time, and it's still very much a liquid at -70C.
It's immiscible with water, so you won't have any water-contamination problems, and any water that hits the cold acetone will instantly freeze.
Although it has a relatively high vapor pressure at room temperature (i.e. it smells bad) the vapor pressure isn't nearly as bad at cold temperatures, and you won't smell it at all. And you won't smell it anyway if you have a cover on the case.
So anyway, you have my vote to use acetone as your cooling fluid.
The way I read it (several years ago.)the hard drive heads float over the disk surface on a layer of air. That relationship of lift requires that the air be within a certain range of densities(or temperatures). That range of densities is less than allowable between a warm hd and a cold one. Therefore small amounts of air are allowed to pass through miniscule filtered holes to keep the internal air density within a range that is determined by the max and min altitude of the hard drive heads(which have small airplane wing like airfoils, hence "landing zone"). There are actually limitations on how high an altitude any given hard disk can operate at.
Hence submerging is probably a bad idea. (Unless it's a .mil? sealed hard drive designed specifily for underwater(underfluid) use.
Matthew Newhall
Yes! I'm in heaven!
This is nice.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Noise:
The a/c unit is noisy. I can't vouch for the garden pump. My original thought was a capillary system, which wouldn't work well with viscous coolants. Well, not at any kind of speed. You could get a capillary system to work, but you could spoon it faster. I'd think submerging the pump as well would silence it fairly effectively, not to mention the a/c unit.
Coolants:
There have been several ideas for this tossed about, including freon and liquid nitrogen. The problem with those? Maintaining the coolant system, and keeping it loaded. Alcohol would work, except for the 'Great Balls of Fire' factor. What about synthetic motor oils? The ones with lower viscosity ratings, or geared for high heat environments, would be a better bet. The thermal transfer qualities are undoubtedly higher than those of the mineral oil.
'Son, have you seen those two quarts of 10w/30 I bought for your mom's car?'
"Uh, no, Dad, sorry."
One reply to my original post suggested an enamel casing. Taking this a step further, why not sheath the motherboard in clear flexible rubber or latex (Trojan condoms, eat yer heart out), and doing some fancy work around the expansion and memory slot, and then injecting coolant in one corner, and drain it from the other? I'd think this would lend itself better to a more managable self contained environment, that makes upgrades easier to cope with.
Alternatives to that still include submersing the entire motherboard, but using some kind of bus cable extender to give you use of the expansion slots, and some funky modification to 'ram expanders' to raise your memory chips out of the goop.
I'm still rather keen on the singular application of an enclosed reservoir and circulation mechanism cooling just the processor heat sink, in a kit just the right size to fit in an 5 1/4 inch drive bay.
Still thinking.
- billn
There are silicones and polymeric fluorocarbons that would meet that requirement, but they're not readily available. Regardless, condensation is going to be a big problem, as water will eventually become entrained in the cooling liquid causing corrosion, if nothing else. Besides, that mineral oil is NOT anhydrous to begin with.
-dwd-
Remember that things contract when they're cold, and since boards are made of a variety of materials, you'll have a problem with warping and subsequent mechanical/electrical failures.
-dwd-
After reading about a guy who had his computer components hanging from the ceiling as some kind of mobile, he mentioned his next trick was to put the computer at the bottom of his fish tank. This got me thinking about something you described. What kind of polycarbonate crystalline substance (i'm not a chemistry person so i'm guessing here)could we encase the motherboard and all cards so that it is an electrical insulator and yet conducts heat away very well? Unfortunately, you'd have to be pretty sure about the jumper settings before encasing the board and immersing it. However, give this guy some kudos for using mineral oil for I was still thinking of mere water. Those of you out there with the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics blah blah blah what would the best substance to immerse it in?
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
Don't certain non conductive materials start to superconduct at those tempratures? I have heard that some ceramics superconduct when supercooled. It would be bad if say, the coating on the CPU started to conduct.
"how come I hear a vaccum noise"... possibly becuz you have an overactive imagination. I peeled 15 drives for their platters a couple of weeks ago, Western Digital, Quantum, Micropolis, Seagate, Priam, one Tandem, and a couple of really odd birds. Every one had a very well filtered vent hole; generally on the "dirty" side of the drives' main filter media.
The vent is generally on the top, and is generally a pattern of 6 holes (5 around, one in the middle). A couple of the older drives in my sample have a little plastic button embedded in the metal plate; most just have holes in the metal itself.
"Carbon Tetrachloride is used to make phosgene gas. Phosgene is a very lethal gas and was used in World War 1. The gas is made by heating carbon tetrachloride." -- Poor Man's James Bond v1; "Poisons" section. It doesn't take much heat.
it goes on to say that "60 minutes of breathing 10ppm can be dangerous", and that phosgene has an odor of musty hay, which can be smelled at about 6ppm.
It shouldn't take much ventilation to prevent dangerous concentrations from building up; I'd try some different coolants first...
The point is that there is no seal to break but that harddrives do have an opening for pressure acclimatisation. However these have long winded canals for dust filtering, the question is if something with the viscosity of oil would actually get in (consider that the would have to get out through the same opening to let the oil in).
That would have the problem that it wouldn't work everywhere. Especially not in the Kremlin.
I don't think that if this is standard sometime in the future it would have complete MBs under coolant. If liquid cooling is required in the future (looks like that), probably the motherboards would change and everything that emits heat (CPU, RAM, graphics?) would be seperate and then put into a cooling box. After all, not everyone wants a fridge on his desk :-)
Notice the specs which say up to 15,000 feet or so. Drives are filtered but not air tight. You lose too much air pressure, the head stops flying...
Don't think it would spin well in oil, nor would the heads fly well, and the seek time would definitely slow down.
--
Infuriate left and right
Anyone here remember when Slashdot readers used to have a sense of humor? Does anyone here remember when the absolute in technical accuracy (and spelling correctness) weren't required by posters? How many people here have viewed Slashdot for more than a year?
Okay, I expect this post to be moderated down to a (-1, Offtopic), and, you know what, I don't really care! If I have to, to get my point across, I'll post this damned reply to every submitted article here. I want people to remember.
I remember when the whole moderation thing was up for debate. Remember that? The loudest of us were so ticked off because of MEEPT (probably one of the greatest joys here at Slashdot) and "First!" posters.
What have we now? Someone makes a humorous post, and it gets a negative mark. Someone makes an obscure mark (The Seymour Cray remark above), and it gets moderated down and up because some clueless newbies can't make the connection or don't deem it "news-worthy".
I, for one, think that this "cure" is worse than the "disease". Moderation has gotten out of control. Feelings are getting hurt, and Slashdot is turning into MSNBC.com or ZDnet, or some other place where only "good" feedback is reported (by default). Look what we've lost! Those of you who think we have won a "real" news source, you probably think that when Macromedia releases a new 42.7megabyte version of Flash so that you can download a rotating daisy animation, the web has "won", too.
Okay, so maybe I'm not ESR, maybe I'm not RMS, maybe I'm not anyone other than someone who really happens to believe in Open Source as more than a buzzword or a way of getting people to contribute free code. No one blesses my words, but if you truly understand, they won't have to. At least hear me out.
Offtopic, am I? Maybe I am, maybe you can't see the connection. This has gotten way out-of-hand, and Slashdot has sold its soul to the public, the masses, the same people that bitch when Open Source upgrades are "late", that bitch when Linus releases bug fixes immediately, "making" them have to upgrade their kernel every few weeks, the same people that whine when their ISPs won't install FrontPage extensions because they lack the mental endurance to learn HTML.
In short, SlashDot has sold out. Maybe we should start moderating articles and banner ads and links while we're at it? I realize this is Rob's site, but he led us to believe him a visionary, one who was one of Us, one who wouldn't sell out. If he were, moderation would either be unheard of or would be across-the-board for posters as well as readers.
For those of you who remember, let's all have a moment of silence as Slashdot passes from a mature forum in which humour and knowledge resounded side-by-side, to a kindergarten where only people with Gold Stars get their posts shown to new viewers and those of us who don't have cookie-enabled browsers (I'm a Lynx user, 70% of the time).
I'm very saddened by this, and I'll miss Slashdot a lot. It's a sad thing when Slashdot turns away the very target market that caused it to grow to its large size in the first place. Slashdot is now chic and trendy just like Slate or Wired.
We all worried that Slashdot would turn into Usenet. It seems that it's drifting towards the very opposite extreme. While, yes, the posts are still viewable, they get branded as "unsuitable". Now they get branded "why" they are "unsuitable".
So, call me a (-1, Offtopic), and just see if I give a flying fsck. Slashdot is dead. It has sold its soul. Perhaps we'll start seeing Kiplinger "Hacker" backpack ads or Microsoft Ergo-mouse banner ads at the top of the pages now?
Those of you in power who remember, I urge you to turn back this trend before you lie in sick disgust at what you have been swayed into creating. Or, at least make the default setting to "Moderation Off".
The following sentence is true.
The previous sentence is false.
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
That's what I could think of off the top of my head anyways... ;)
IANAPM (physics major) tho....
I was talking this over with a friend today, and we came up with a cool idea for the case. An acrylic fishtank.
TruVu tanks (made by Aqua Plex I think) would be great for this. Nice rounded corners, all sizes and shapes, covers, lighted from the top,.ect ect.
Fishtanks also have lots of nifty stands designed to hide filters, air pumps, or in this case a small refridgerator.
You could mount the board on an acrylic rack sideways (kind of like how MB's are now) inside the tank. Use cable extention cords for the video, sound, ether, ect. Drill holes in the side and snake the cables out then fill the holes with something like epoxy. This would make moving the computer or changing peripherals easier, and less sloppy.
If you ever had to change a card on the motherboard, just lift the rack up and set it on top the tank, let it drip-drip-drip oil back in the tank while you swap the cards. Plop the rack back in.
In fact, several computers could share a giant tank (200 gal) and cooling system.
Think of how cool your computer would look in a 35 gal hex aquarium, with a neat blue light on top and perhaps little bubbles drifting up from behind the motherboard...
Remember the computer from Rollerball or the Cray supercomputer liquid cooling fountian?
Neato. I want one.
I guess I know what my next project is gunna be.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
One of my cases has so many holes drilled in it, air has no definite in or out. Blocking the holes and only allowing air to come in the front and out the back seemed to have no effect and also seemed to be worse.
Currently, that case has no cover and totes 7 fans to keep it cool. One for each HD, one BussCool dual fan at the Video, one on the CPU heatsink, one blower pointing at the side of the CPU and one on the power supply.
It's now keeping quite cool.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
This guy had fans on the thing six ways to sunday then says he never had the cover on. Hello, covers speed up the airflow, they keep the thing COOLER.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
For zillions of years, power-line transformers have been cozily bathing in mineral oil (with or without PCBs).
Somebody was bound to make the breakthrough of adapting that method to computers...
But it I would do such as stunt, I'd simply immerse the whole shebang in a pressurized container with freon, going through a compressor and regulator and evaporator... Just like they do in modern high-speed (electric) train controls...
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
Antifreeze would kind of affect the purity :)
How about pure alcohol? I don't know what
its freezing point is, but vodka stays liquid
in a normal freezer.
Ahh, a 200 proof vodka cooled computer!
peter
he said He3. A very different isotope than the normal He4 :)
the subject says it - but i think reactors use closed loop of sodium.
i could be wrong, but that's what i remember.
Mineral oil on carpet is -such- a joy to clean up...
See title. I may not know what I'm talking about, but isn't this stuff denser than water? I know that the chunks of sodium they had at my highschool were kept submerged in mineral oil to prevent them from touching water. It wouldn't make much sense to do so if any water in the oil would form an impossible to remove layer on the bottom of the jar.
Do you mean arstechnica? They did an article some time ago with links to lots of related sources.
I obviously have no clue about this
subject. Thus I was wondering: what's
wrong with an entire computer in an
ice case? You wouldn't need to worry
about MB format (AT/ATX), just dip in water
and let freeze. You'd then only have to keep
the outside of an ice cube below freezing,
which your setup already presumably allows for.
In the article he said mineral oil. I don't believe that's flamable. I'm fairly sure that when I tried to use it in an oil lamp I was making that I was quite let-down. AFTER I finally figured out what was wrong, it still took another trip to the store to solve the problem.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I think that they haven't yet gotten a design that's inexpensive enough to sell. The high temperature super-conductors are v. difficult to make into wires, etc.
And they would need to be submerged in -- coolant. Which coolant seems to vary depending on a lot of different factors (although liquid helium WOULD work).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'd be really surprised it that kind of extreme condition applied to a fluid being used to cool a computer .. some talk of liquid nitrogen implies a different extreme condition, but not a hot one.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Distilled water idoes&i lead electricity, however very bad. This is due to that some of the water molecules (1 in 2^14?), works as three (What is that in english? In swedish its Joner, an atom with some extra electrons or some missing electrons), one oxygen and two hydrogen... So theoretically it could damage the idea... But in practice, I don't think it matters...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Distilled water does not conduct electricity, so theoretically the exact same thing could be done with water. There would be problems with corrosion, but surely the system would last a couple of days?
So Dr. Freeze, how about it?-)That comment was in bad taste. Moderator(s)?
You mean that comment HAD bad taste.
*smirk*
Air has one strong limitation. Moisture.
:^)
We won't even talk about how liquid cooling is much better. However, I will indulge you by stating that an environment of pure Helium, or some other noble gas would work well. (I don't consider Nitrogen *that* inert.) I'm curious what Neon would do in the presence of all those miniscule electric currents on a motherboard.
Back to the liquid cooling...
If the unit is later sealed, he'd better be careful not to generate too much pressure. Styrofoam is strong as hell when compressed a certain way. However, I doubt that consumer grade foam will hold up under pressure.
Perhaps someone should make a fiberglass or acrylic case?
--Al
Well, if you don't want to overclock, and you want total silence, you really do need a totally passive cooling system, right?
I actually don't know how well mineral oil conducts heat; I do know that water 'stores' quite a bit of heat, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.
If you were to use a large enough bath of mineral oil, the oil will definitely suck up heat as long as it's cooler than the components.
Now you'd need some really seriously weird casing for the system; it would need to be a huge heat sink, with larger surface area than volume, if possible. *Everything* would be in contact with the oil, and the case would then be a heat exchanger...
So like you'd need thin aluminum fins *within* the case and aluminum fins outside the case; you'd need more outside fins because air would conduct heat less efficiently than oil, I think...
For an entire system submerged in mineral oil, you could employ a high torque low velocity fan that makes little noise, because it needn't move fast to move the oil, just move a lot of it. Like maybe 3rpm, or 10rpm, for example.
Then you could have a really low noise cooling system!
Maybe
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
If all you want is a low power CPU with decent MHz rating, and don't mind Linux, BeOS, or MacOS, you could always go for a Mac, right? Or an iMac?
I hear that Jobs doesn't like fan noise, either, and kept that in consideration with the design of the iMac.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Some real problems with using water:
Someone mentioned that it would freeze, and I'm not sure if anyone knows just how good an *insulator* ice is...
Eventually, if you cool your system below 0C, the entire water bath would become ice...
Some don't see any problem, and I may just be paranoid...
But some components *can* approach or exceed 100C, especially if overclocked... Like CPUs or video card chipsets, I think. Now the problem would be that any ice in contact with warm components will melt, so there are pockets of water within this ice cube... But it's guaranteed that the water will remain at 0C as long as it is in contact with more ice...
However, there is something called a triple point, at which ice, water, and vapor can exist all at once.
If the ice forms a complete seal around the system, it may be possible for there to be ice that goes to water which goes to vapor... And you'd have an extremely bad case of melt-vaporize-condese-freeze, with the accompanying expansion/contraction problems, and I imagine there could be explosive cracking within the ice, much as an ice cube does when dropped into a warm soda...
With fragile components in slots/sockets, this might be very bad =)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I read an article a while back where a guy covered every flat surface on the inside of his computer's case with carpet insulation. He also insulated a small box and used it to redirect the air coming out of the power supply towards the floor.
.18 micron process someone will start making chips with decent MHz ratings at low voltages and they won't need fourteen fans running on them to let you run a word processor :)
He said it cut the noise way down while only raising the temperature in his case by a few degrees. This was an older article, however, and probably wouldn't work too well with newer hotter cpus.
Tried to search for the original article but no luck, sorry. Hopefully, as chip makers switch to copper interconnects and a
Uh - there's a company who's been doing this for a while. Kryotech makes AMD systems cooled to -47 Celsius. http://www.kryotech.com
>How about inserting the motherboard into a
>freezer with some kind of humidity control to
>eliminate condensation. That way you could
>overclock the entire system bus.
Essentially, the idea is to replace standard atmosphere with something that conducts heat as well or better and can be cooled more effectively,
AND is inert/non corrosive/non electrically conductive, right? So why not a pure nitrogen atmosphere? Of course, having a sealed unit would be a pain.
Pure antifreeze? Rubbing alcohol? (Things
that wouldn't freeze solid.) (Baby oil == mineral oil plus fragrance.) Of course, the problem with 'water'-cooled anything is the pain of the maintanance.
> So now we'll have to take our systems into Jiffy Lube every 3,000 hours?
No, you'll have to have your residence "wired" for coolant, and the next generation of modems will have a little brass tube alongside the phone jack.
Extra! Quake Triggers Global Warming
(That'll be Quake the game, not an earthquake.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Those little crystal packets are silicone (I'm quite sure, and if I'm wroong, I'm 100% sure that someone will correct me). They are there to suck up the moist from the air to protect the chips..
Oops-- order of magnitude error. I meant 0.006" of FR4 (PCB material).
"Distance between plates" is inherently 3D (2D plates x 1D distance). The physics involved are 3D and can be generalized to cover "wires in space."
The capacitance of a wire in space is not defined until you define the return path. In the case of an infinitely large cylinder or an infinitely far away plane, capacitance per unit length goes to 0. I found nothing in my intro physics book, _Electricity and Magnetism_ (Berkeley physics course, vol 2) to contradict this. Dr. HoJo's (exellent) book is at work, but I doubt you will find any contradiction there, either.
Let's apply this back to the mineral oil. The primary capacitance is due to the ground plane under the trace. We are replacing the air above (actually, first comes the solder mask) with mineral oil, which you say has a DC of about 3. If it were 4.5, what would it take to double our original capacitance caused by the ground plane? It would take a plane in the mineral oil 0.006" above the trace. We don't have that. Do we have a plane 10x that far away (60 mils)? No. 100x? No. The effect on trace capacitance per unit length will be negligible.
I recall Dr. HoJo's book has a section on buried microstrips. You could use this to calculate how near a conductive plane above would need to be for, say, a 5% change in total capacitance.
Reviewing this, I thought I should also say something about the root epsilon prop delay argument. In a *uniform medium,* the signal will slow as stated.
However, with a non-uniform medium, suddenly it is the *path chosen* that matters. Like a resistor divider, the path of lowest impedance dominates; it is the epsilon along that path that matters.
BTW, I believe Dr. HJ referrs to what I call buried microstrips as "offset striplines."
I've gotta disagree.
The dielectric constant is not important as a standalone figure. The capacitance is a function of the dielectric constant and the distance between plates. The air (or mineral oil) side of a PCB trace goes some distance before coupling. In fact, the only meaningful coupling increase might be to adjacent traces, creating increased crosstalk. Remember the other side of the trace is looking at about 0.06" of FR4 (dielectric constant of about 5) to the next layer, which should be ground below impedance-controlled traces. The incident-wave height should not change due to this. Changes to the FR4 material's thickness and/or dielectric constant would be much more siginficant.
BTW, this got me thinking about the system's bypass caps, so I checked. Tantalums will only drop in capacitance by about 8% at -40C(or F) and X7R ceramics will be about the same. Z5U ceramics will drop more, but not as much as if they were running at +70F. A quick search gave me no info on low-temp characteristics for electrolytics, but most are spec'd down to -40 or lower.
Hams have been making dummy loads with resistors in mineral oil for years. Heathkit made one from a one gallon paint can that could sink 2Kw of RF for a few minutes, lower power for longer.
(name withheld by request)
My phys-lexia might be a problem here, but since all the water will freeze, no unremovable water layer should form. (Right?) Ice floats in water because ice gets air bubbles trapped in it; possibly some other structural thing accounts for this (any physicists reading?).
So the real question here is whether ice will float in oil; assuming ice floats in water because of air bubbles, ice should also float in oil.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Paper has a lower dc, doesn't it? I suppose you could use liquid paper? :)
The Holes have to be small. The primary function of a computer case is to prevent radio frequency noise from getting out. Physics dictates that to this the holes must be no larger than one quarter of the length of the shortest wavelength you need to stop. Which is in turn a function of the speed of the fastest oscillator in the computer. Did you ever read the label "...complies with FCC Part B..." and the standards are a lot less tolerant now for CE than the FCC ever wanted.
Actually at abolute zero, you wouldn't have any electricity flowing. Electrons would cease to even move...
Mercury!!!!!!!!!!! :)
that conducts heat really well...
heh heh
I think the main reason he wanted minral oil was that it didn't freez at -40C. you could only use de-inozed water to cool to 0C. The propertys you want would be: Low freezing point (less then -60C), large heat capacity, and an insulater
---------------
Chad Okere
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
er.. eh? I don't think so.
If electrons cease to move, they will crash into the nucleus (because of attraction to protons), the atom will be a millionth of it's previous size, and you would probably get a black hole.
What you meant to say is that the mocules stop _vibrating_. Heat just causes things to vibrate lots, remove the heat, remove the vibration. If you could get an electron to stop, we'd all be fscked..
So I take it that Mineral Oil has a Very low conductivity. If not, would the small amount of electrical loss(?) outweight performance.
It is very interesting indeed, I have water cooled reciently but what are the advantages of submersing the motherboard over just cooling the exterior of the chip? I know the obvious cooling advantage, but is this worth it?
It would be nice to know the results (speed increases, cpu temp etc.)
I could just see the power supply falling in, or even worse the hard drive.
Dr. Ffreeze has more guts than I do.
I threw some in a glass of water to see if they'd dissolve er something. They sounded a bit like wimpy rice crispies for a litle while, and then they just sat there. I wasn't impressed... : )
Dirk
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
I can't believe that I had to slog all the way to the bottom before someone mentioned the most obvious caveat in doing this! Mineral oil, alcohol, acetone, what do they have in common? They're potent oxidizers! They'll eat anything organic. Wait until the oil (or whatever) eats through the styrofoam and dumps itself onto the carpet. It could be really fun with the more volitile stuff, let it drip down to where there's a pilot light, then wait for the vapor pressure to build...
Of course you could get to find out how long a PC can run after the PC boards delaminate and the plastic packages melt. After it does quit, you could sell it as high-tech art. I see the potential for making real profit on this!
Mr. Natural -- Cat Herder
A typical application for mineral oil as a coolant is to cool transformers for high-power overland power lines. This technology has been in use for decades.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
--bdj
- Mercury is heavy;
- You can't touch the stuff;
- It's expensive;
And the list goes on and on. It was a good joke, though...--bdj
--bdj
"Distance between plates" only applies in a 2D situation. A wire in space still has a fair bit of capacitance per unit length -- in fact, if you recall your intro physics, SPACE has a fair bit of capacitance. Electromagnetic signals don't actually travel through conductors, they travel through the space around them, and increasing the dielectric constant of that space (eg mineral oil or FR4) slows the signal at sqrt(epsilon) while lowering the line impedance by the same amount.
For more on this subject, you might want to pick up a copy of Howard Johnson's excellent High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic
Bottom line: in high-speed circuits, the space around the conductors (and its dielectric properties) is *very* important even if there aren't any other nearby conductors. Of course, there are -- which is why I mentioned crosstalk, too.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
... and though I hate to chill the enthusiasm here I have to point out that my handle is exactly what anyone doing this is likely to get: overshoot. Mineral oil has a dielectric constant of about 3 instead of the 1.0 for air, and that means that the surface traces on the MB will be both slower and lower impedance than they are designed to be.
Incident waves from the ICs will be smaller and may not make threshold, termination will be mismatched, there will be reflections from every change of layer, signals will take longer to get across the board, you end up with clock skew, and crosstalk will increase.
Most of these effects won't cause immediate failure. Or even frequent failure. Maybe just enough to make the system run like it was on Losedoze.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm not a physics majour, but I think you're abusing the language a bit to prove your point.
If you were somehow able to get an electron to *stop*, you'd know its velocity precisely, and so the uncertainty in its position would be infinite. It wouldn't necessarily be anywhere NEAR the nucleus in question.
Besides, it isn't quite proper to say that electrons avoid colliding with nuclei because the elctrons are moving. You should say it's because they can only occupy certain energy states. If electrons simply orbited nuclei like the Earth orbits the Sun, they WOULD eventually spiral into their respective nuclei, and the universe wouldn't have lasted very long.
-------
-- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
Actually it would work, especially if you
provide a high surface, high emissivity heatsink.
Satellite infrared detectors have used radiative
cooling for years
That is a problem. Not so much if you gradually heat up the components, the same way you'd have to cool them when you immersed them.
;-)
There is a chance that you would break a connection somewhere, but most of the components are fairly well connected. You'd have to hope that they would all cool fast enough to not be a problem.
The motherboard probably would break, but regardless you'd have to be very careful. If you were putting the amount of money necessary to do this into a system, I have a feeling you wouldn't have to worry about it though.
What if something *did* go wrong in this setup? That would be a pretty dangerous "oops"...
Many Cray's are multiple Alpha CPU's.... and standard Intel CPU's have been cooled to below -35C. *If* the silicon were cooled enough to superconduct, they might be circuitry failures. But only if the etched circuit's walls started to conduct I would think. ;-)
I am probably wrong, so correct me!
Well, you don't really have to replace the nitrogen. The hard part would be cycling it around through a cooling system... the heat let off when it's recooled would probably be quite tremendous. This is used to some extent already in many different applications. If you are going for this level of cooling, why not use liquid helium? At that tempreture your computer would nearly superconduct, and performance approximately doubles. Also, helium boils at
-268.6C, vs -195.8C for nitrogen.
As fun as the talk about liquid cooling is, wouldn't it be easier and safer to use a low tempreture liquid to cool the air instead? For instance, a typical freezer uses Freon; what if you adapted a freezer to user something like liquid nitrogen? I don't know if that's easily done, but it's an idea. Then you need not worry about conductivity problems, signal degredation, and problems with timing across the board.
You could cut and seal a freezer, and seal parts of the case, to allow for use of removeable media as well. The big benefit (if you ask me) would be you wouldn't void any equipment warrenties!
Just a thought though...
Have you given any thought to adding a filter to the pump? Since the pump is drawing the oil across the CPU's HS fins I would be quite concerned about conductive particles being swept up against the CPU board and shorting something out.
Also, have you considered using a stock Celeron HS and housing? It would help to better channel the oil across the fins.
Plus there's the risk of a reaction between the mineral oil and thermal compounds...
I'm curious what Neon would do in the presence of all those miniscule electric currents on a motherboard.
If you're referring to neon lighting, it won't happen. Not only would no sparking take place under normal operation, but a spark large enough to start a plasma reaction with the neon would generate so much RFI that it would likely interupt or fry most of the ICs in the system.
A computer manufacturer out west (the name escapes me) has been selling air-cooled machines that operate at below freezing temuratures for at least a year, now (sure, they're $30,000, but that's beside the point). I believe they can squeeze about 10mhz out of a proc just by cooling it.
The horrible fact is that most materials change density according to temperature. The world works because water is one of the few known substances that expands when cooled (the other being a rare form of tungsten). A great idea would be to seal the proc, and ice that very carefully. Even better, oil that. The smaller the setup, the easier it is to cool.
If i might ask, why exactly does this guy want to cool his machine so radically? Most people just buy a couple of fans or a heatsink.
Joe
I've designed a number of boards, with the disclaimer "it was a long time ago, in a chip company far, far away"
The boards were designed specifically for quality assurance environmental testing. That meant thermal shock +120C/-50C, and characterizing things like changing the length & spacing of the leads, dielectric constants, overshoot, voltage changes. The custom built board which changed the operating voltages lead directly to 3.3 volt parts appearing about 2 years later.
My solution was to build a board which could remain outside the harsh operating environments, and attached the processor to a small test jig at the end of a 2.5 foot long cable. Every signal passed over a buffered twisted pair wire, which preservered the AC characteristics from DC to 400+ MHz. The extension cable with its two ends cost about $5000, but then we could swap in a bunch of different cheap test boards, and put the test end just about everywhere. A future idea for DrFfreeze would be to make a small extender tower for the CPU, and build just a small enviro-box around it. Then you only have to keep the CPU cold during overclocking, and ignore cooling the entire board.
Mineral oil works just as good as fluorinert, it has almost the same dielectric properties, and shouldn't change the max operating speed of your board unless the important traces are on the outermost layers, and not properly designed WRT Johnson's "Designing with Black Magic" book. Oil has slightly worse heat transfer props, and tends to burn/smoke at high temps where fluorinert is fine.
Fluorinert costs about $100/gallon, high quality mineral oil costs about $5/gallon. Fluorinert breaks down into nasty hydro-fluoroCarbons which eat the ozone layer forever, mineral oil breaks down into simple hydrocarbons the same as burning kerosene or diesel. The choice should be clear, stick with the mineral oil, and add an overtemp sensor to prevent fires.
As mentioned elsewhere, some types of styro insulators will slowly disolve with mineral oil, so keep an eye on what you have for the first few days. So will some insulators on small green jumper wires, suitcase jumpers, plastic SIMM and PLCC sockets. Avoid acetone, alcohols, distilled water, and just about everything else. They will all cause some kind of chemical reaction with some part of your MoBo.
Hardware hacking is the ultimate proof of ability. Hack On!
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
That guy has a good idea, but he seems to have overlooked that if he removes a card, a thin layer of insulating oil would form over the connections, and it would be near impossible to clean it off.
If you just wanted to overclock the CPU, you could mount a peltier on the CPU, put a thermistor (sp?) on another part of the CPU, and built a simple thermostat that keeps the CPU at just the right temperator. That way you don't have to worry about condensation if the CPU halts for some reason and the peltier supercools it.
How about inserting the motherboard into a freezer with some kind of humidity control to eliminate condensation. That way you could overclock the entire system
bus.
-- Paperwork is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists.
Q: Why don't the British make computers?
A: They could not figure out a way for them to leak oil.
While it may be looked at as cooky, Dr. Freeze might be onto something. This working prototype looks as sloppy as ever, but I'm betting with some more design(and more importantly, testing on not-so-pricey hardware) he could have a cool(but not right now cool lookign)setup.
Unless he coats the entire board (cards and all) in a fine later of acrillic or something I wouldnt
think submerging a powered board in mineral oil would be very good... Maybe Im wrong, is Mineral Oil a bad conductor?? If mineral oil does conduct, wouldnt the stray electricity cause intermittent failures?
That comment was in bad taste. Moderator(s)?
--------
Baloney,
My G3 tower has a 3 inch variable speed fan parked directly above the processor. On a moderatly warm day it makes its presence known. All Macs directly back to the mighty SE have had a fan. Yes, Mr. Jobs hated the sound of a fan. He still does. That is why the iMac has a fan buried in the middle of the system. Some of the early PowerMacs have peliter junctions in them, but they still have a fan in them. Ask anyone with an overheated 6100.
Hello.
Hello,
:)
:)
Revision S is for the sexey stuff!
Dr. Ffreeze
PS. Pricey hardware... wait a month.. ok now cheap!
Hello,
:(
Water (if it were to remain ultra pure) would be great! That ultra-pure clause gets you every time.
Plus, as someone stated it would ffreeze. Sure you could add antifreeze but how would it react to the plastics?
I was not going to gamble with water because of the EXTREEME need for purity.
FYI,
Dr. Ffreeze
Hello,
Thankx,
Dr. Ffreeze
nuf said...
Dr. Ffreeze
Hello,
I will take a look at this later, but one of my passions is to learn. Until now, I have not got very many bites on teh subject.
Dr. Ffreeze
Dr. Ffreeze
Hello All,
:)
Thank you dattaway! Mineral oil is also used to help make telsa coils. That is where I got the idea.
Scraps of styrofoam, parts, and clutter. welcome to my Computer room. That has nothing to do with my skills, intelect, or theories. I think that dattaway hit the nail on the head again, PROTOTYPE.
Dr. Ffreeze
Hello,
Not really a big deal but it was fun doing it. It is cool realizing that ALL of my components can be overclocked. CPU, RAM, and Video card. Plus I can adapt it to any system board.
Dr. Ffreeze
Hello,
Sorry, as I mentioned before this site was mostly for me. I had no idea that there would be this much interest. FrontPage98 is giving me fits and I am now caught answering ICQ and emails. I have no benchmarks because I hit a speedbump. I got frost/ice buildup. Did I not know that this would happen? Yes, but I am in testing. This box was actually for my old K6-2 300 ASUS T2P4 (still love that board!). When box 2 is done Tue. I hope I will have some hard numbers!
Sorry for lack of #'s,
Dr. Ffreeze
nuf said,
Dr. Ffreeze
Hello All,
:)
The second box will be completed on Tues I hope (if I stop ICQing everyone AND stop responding to all of my emails).
Dr. Ffreeze
http://www.accsdata.com/DrFfreeze
Hello,
I have softmenu. Abit BX6 Rev. 2. But I have removed cards and put them back in with no problems.
Dr. Ffreeze
Hello All,
I can't wait until I get to work on my site. Work and such. This project was for me and so was the web site. I was just tinkering. I talked about it and no one listened or said that I was crazy. Ok. Not a problem. BLAM. 20,000 in on day! Questions out the wazoo. I will answer all emails but it will take some time. I WILL be updating with some benchmarks (dugh). I will get very detailed if the desire to know is out there. I am still in TESTING. Box 2 Tuesday 5-31-99 should allow for all out AC operation with no worry of condensation. Box 2 will come complete with LID!
Dr. Ffreeze
Hello,
:)
Might I share a bit? "Didn't understand conventional cooling methods, so..." Not true. Not true at all.
True. Very True. I am still in testing. The web page was mostly for my tinkering, otherwise I would (and will) offer MUCH many explinations. The 170 GPH pump is temp. Box 2 will allow the coils to be submerged in the oil.
Pressure? Not when the oil gets cold. It's like Mapel Syrup on a cold Winter day. I knew that I needed TONES of capacity if it were to pump the oil when it got to extreme temps. I was wrong in that the pump (or any for that matter that would fit) is not strong enough. I will have to look at other ways to agitate the oil.
Possible suspicion, but faulse. 3 weeks and running.
Dr. Ffreeze
PS. Not trying to be rude.
Hello All,
Thin layer of oil has not caused a problem.
I wanted to overclock my CPU and Video card. Many also overlock the fact that the RAM and therefore the FSB (front side bus) will be able to be overclocked. The lock on Intel sucks though.
Dr. Ffreeze
Hello All,
:) You saw a spring in my step! Here I am STILL not updating my site or siliconing my box 2! (I had some good talks though)
:( In a "dry test" (no oil) I got down to -38.5 C, but frost stoped me yet again. I got to 10 C or 12 C (NOT negitive) when I noticed ice forming and powered down.
Some quick info.
Who an I?
Average Joe overclocker, a bit extreem, a dreamer, and a bad spellar.
Why did I do this?
Always wanted to cool it a bit more but hated condensation problems (still have em but not for long). I love to learn and tinker. The concept was simple.
Why do I not tell any good info of cpu or new speed?
Long story short. I have talked about this type of thing for years (even on Tom's list server). No one paid heed unless they said that I was crazy (true). I have my own web page (blah). Out of two years I have about 2,000 hits. Guess who's homepage my site is? Me. So most of them were me hitting my own site. I took some pictures and tried a Kodak digital service. I also was trying to learn some FrontPage98 on a server that supported FrontPage Server Extensions. Posted pics. Mailed pics to Voodoo Extreeme, HarOCP, and talked on Ace's Hardware. No bites except for an offer IF I gave an exclusive. No dice. I wanted any and all to learn, look and question. EverQuest and something else made me have to reformat my drive (forget). This caused me to loose my web site access (new). I started tinker on designing some concrete lined speakers and crossovers. I got home from work and BLAM. 4,600 hits!!!!!! Wow!!!
5 news sites! WOW! Email and tons of it. I started answereing them. I tried to update my site explaining the speed and such but I had problems (still do).Time for bed (I run a 225,000 sq. ft. super store at night). I got up and 11,500 hits!
What the HELL speed are you at?
Retail Celeron 333 MHz
Fan Heatsink 416 MHz
Liquid cooling 416 MHz (WHAT?!?)
The quick is that until I get the coils submerged in box 2 (that I need to start) I will not be able to run the AC non-stop.
What are my Gaols?
See my web site and kick my arse if I don't update it 6-1 or 6-2.
Eamils are all welcome. I will help anyone in similar interests.
I hope this clears some things up,
Dr. Ffreeze
new site
http://www.accsdata.com/drffreeze
old site
http://members.iquest.net/~opto
Another interesting thought might be the use of a perfluorocarbon, which is a free-flowing liquid down to -100 degrees Celcius, non-toxic, and has tremendous heat-exhange properties--check out more information at the following address:
o .htm
u percoolin.html
http://members.tripod.com/~Chemo_Gnostic/cryobi
Also, for another similarly mad overclocking example, look at:
http://www.cpusite.examedia.nl/sections/steve/s
Hihi
Well, from what I've read here so far, about half of these posts could have been avoided if any of those posters realized that mineral oil is MUCH Heavier than water.
How do I know?
I've tried to make a Lava lamp from the instructions of a 'Maxim' Magazine. No, it didn't work. 2/3 filled with mineral oil, 1/3 with water and a dab of oil paint. (Which went though the layer of water and sat on the bottom like a big red well lit turd.)
I've mixed that sucked pretty hard, and short of placing the whole mess in a blender (Hey....) it wouldn't mix. I had to resort to mixing the paint and with paint thinner on the side and then adding it to the whole mess. Finally I added enough paint for the colored water to sink to the bottom, and there it sits. Above it is a layer of oil and above that is a layer of paint thinner.
To sum, by immersing the air conditioning coils in the oil and minimizing the turbulence, the only parts the water will touch is the parts rising out of the oil.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Personally, I'm too paranoid to overclock. Someday, when They open up an apartment complex in orbit around a deep space asteroid somewhere, I'll move there, then hang my motherboard outside the window for a Natural Kelven Zero ;) ..Although Upgrades would be a Pain... But then, Who needs upgrades? By that time, I'll be using a 233thz Computer, +the overclock would make 600thz at least. Can you Say Lethal CD Drives? If not, I hope you can read it, 'cause there it is.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
In short, stick to mineral oil.