More Cooling/Overclocking Fun

heretic writes "Here's another construction article on cooling components down to -40. While not quite as insane as the mineral oil solution (heh), it's still quite extreme. For only $600, it's pretty neat that he can nearly double his processor speed. I guess these sorts of techniques will remain viable until we have massive N-way SMP. "

Comments

Figurative, not literal, freon :)

[hawk]

R-12 was banned (and all leave the debates about whether the science involved was schlocky enough to toss it to other sites :).

We now get R134a, which transfers substantially less heat. Don't convert your old R-12 a/c units unless you have to; post-conversion, they don't cool as much. You need a heat exchanger about 50% larger to get the same amount of cooling, and there just isn't room for this in your car. Mercedes switched early, and the result (at least if you lived in the desert) was a $60k car that couldn't cool itself down to comfortable temps . . .

Also, R134a has a nasty tendency that R12 didn't--under the right conditions, it can explode. Some time back, i read a snide op-ed piece suggesting an exploding refridgerator as the new symbol for the extreme-fringe of the environmentalists :)

criticism

[austad]

Everyone seems to be criticizing this guy and telling him to just go buy some Alpha's or something faster in the first place instead of spending so much time trying to make it work.

It's called a hobby. Even though he uses the machine for his job, I'm sure overclocking is sort of a hobby to him, just like it is to many others. People spend lots of time and money doing things they don't need to do because it is fun and helps them learn.