"Fastest PC in the World" Runs Athlon at 800MHz

Errant Knyght writes "Not sure if it is true, but if it is...I want one." The Tom's Hardware writeup seems believable; lots of specs, pictures, even ordering info. KryoTech, the company that makes it, puts a refrigeration unit under the PC case and cools the uP to -36 degrees C before it fires up the rest of the unit. Looks like fun.

Comments

Kryotech's cooling system

[the_tsi]

It's old news. :) They've been shipping supercooled boxen for over a year. The 800mhz athlon they've been hyping for a few months now; it's about time Tom got one and reviewed it. Speaking of Tom, anyone else think the quality of his site has gone down very quickly in about the past 18 months? I haven't seen a big motherboard roundup or anything useful for a while. I don't give a flip about the seven-chapter analysis of 32 video cards that's taken three months to come together; we need more variety. I've tried to find a replacement tech website to fill my needs, and the closest thing I can find is Ars Technica, but occasionally they have reviews by people who either don't understand the technology or are just plain cheap (not "economical") about using it. Don't say AnandTech... there's just too much attitude spewing out of that site. :) -Chris (Footnote: KryoTech's PCs may very well be the only worthwhile product to *ever* come out of South Carolina... :P )

900 mHZ

[Accipiter]

With the speeds of processors getting faster and faster, we're going to reach a problem with they hit 900 mHZ. Your processor will interfere with your Cordless phone. (Read: This is no joke!)

Since most new cordless phones transmit at 900 mHZ, having a processor generating the same frequency would cause problems. When the waves from the phone and processor collide, it could cause each signal to cancel the other out, nullifying them both. So how is this problem solved? 900+ processors will actually be built with shielding. Sounds crazy, but it's true.

A bit offtopic, but just a tidbit of info for everyone.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:900 mHZ

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...so how come when I was in college, and everyone on the floor had 900Mhz phones, I couldn't tap into their conversation? Where was my interference? And why didn't my 25Mhz Mac screw up my 25Mhz cordless way back in the day? Hmm...Ponderous.

(a). 900 Mhz phones are digital. This makes it impossible for someone to listen in on them with a $300 Rat Shack scanner. Even if you get the digital transmission and try to play it back, it won't work. 900 Mhz cordless phones use super-light encryption. Once broken, yeah, then you can hear it. And I just have $1000 itching a hole in my pocket for it... (not). And even if you had a 900 Mhz phone, there are at least 25 channels. And even if all 25 channels were used, and your phone decided to stomp on someone's signal, then it would sound like this:

FSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSH.

either that, or a modem like sound. I don't know, and I really couldn't care less...

(b). Your mac was sheilded, since it was FCC approved. RF doesn't leak from sheilded boxes.

(c). If your mac wasn't sheilded (ie... Usually very old, seems old machines got away with FCC ratings, even when their sheilding sucked.) then your phone didn't work at 25 Mhz. There is a very high chance it didn't work at 25 Mhz. I don't have my frequency book handy, but I beleive 25 Mhz is used for RC Planes, boats, etc... I know the 47-49 Mhz or so band is used for old Portable phones, Walkie-Talkies, etc... Public, (d). Take a C64. Turn it on. Turn on a radio to about FM 104.5 Mhz, and set it on top of the disk drive. Access the disk drive (LOAD "*",8,1 [return]). Then come back to me with your revised theory.

(e). For the final insult, take your computer to a local Ham radio operator's place. Take the cover off, turn it on, and leave... This will make them want blood... ;-)

Note: I'm not suggesting RF leakage from computers is horrendous, just that it exists. It is infact, not as big a deal as (non radio operator) people might at first think... I keep my case off, and our TV antenna works just fine, TYVM. :-)

Re:900 mHZ

[substrate]

This is why computers are in cases and are tested to be compliant with FCC regulations (as long as they're still in the case, the case hasn't been modified etc). We've passed through similar bandwidth sharing episodes before, such as when CPU's first hit the 100 MHz domain. Thats FM radio.

Re:900 mHZ

[technos]

Odd.. I don't seem to remember any problems with my OC'd 386 and my 48 mhz cordless phone.. ;-)

Clock rate... what the bid deal ? ?

[ndfa]

They use 128Megs of RAM, and an EIDE drive ?

Am i missing something here or has INTEL marketing done such a good job that people who should be thinking of ways to improve performance in other ways are just taking part in the rat race for more clocks ? ?

EIDE, now thats something that i find funny, if you are going to do soooo much to a system, at least have the decency to put in a nice Ultra2Wide drive in there. I dont care what numbers say, SCSI still makes a lot of difference!
Secondly, how about some more memory please ? ?

then comes the question that is it really worth the darn hastle ? things going to be slow in a few months anyway, why waste money on a few clocks if you can spend it wisely on otherthings ?

Dont get me wrong, in practice its cool to see what a processor can push, but we have seen it too many times. Its bad enough that all the marketing hype is about "xxxMhz".... sure, lets put a 600Mhz, Celery, with slow RAM, a crapy vdo card, slow Drive, and call it top of the line!

On most things a system with well chosen components will outperform (in the real world) one that has just a faster processor!!! why we keep getting these "supercool" things is a mystery to me.....

I am not trying to start a war here, i am just saying that maybe articles like this should include a fair warning to users about alternatives to FASTER processors!

just my .02$

Not quite the fastest in the world...

[Wonko42]

I know this is kinda' mean, but...er...this isn't such a big deal. I work for Chipzilla and people here were playing with processors over a year ago that did well over 1GHz without too much extra cooling. More than the usual amount, of course, but nothing supercooled. The systems were slightly unstable, though, and they were purely for testing new manufacturing processes. More than that I can't say, since I wasn't directly involved in the usage of the machines. All I know is, I'd have loved to put a distributed.net client on one of those babies...

Oh yeah, it's true, but

[jht]

...but it's real old news. Kryotech has made kits to supercool Alphas and Pentiums, so the Athlon isn't much of a leap for them. I think the Alpha folks had Kryotech on stage with them at Microprocessor Forum or some similar event this year to do the Alpha at 1 GHz demo.

Tom covered this back in early August, when he was in yet another "I'm better than you, puny humans" phase - he wrote an article announcing that he had figured out how to overclock Athlons, but that he wasn't going to tell anybody becouse it was just too technical for mere mortals. After a suitable interval of being flamed by the universe, he spilled the beans a couple of days later.

Tom's has gotten a little less interesting of late. I think part of that is because the hardware scene has been relatively static lately, - Athlon is the first radically new thing in a while as far as motherboards/processors go in the Wintel space (I'm not counting G4, guys - Tom doesn't cover that!).

- -Josh Turiel