by GunnerMan » Mon Dec 17, 2007 11:22 am
That would work good for keeping the tower as a whole cool, Hemroid but what these systems here do is cool the CPU directly so you can get temps on the CPU Die down in the average range of -40C or so. Think more over this product I think OCZ has a problem on their hands. Their small phase were probably designed to handle the load of an Single core/early dual core cpus. Now that we are in the quad core generation things are running hotter. These small units may not even be able to better water cooling with a hot high end quad core overclocked. So I think they have a problem not getting these out the door when they made them.
Phase(depending on the gas) does not cary heat load very well. A unit may be tuned to handle 1.6 vols and if you crank it much past that say .05 volts a loaded CPU will actually overheat. You might be able to run -10 C on the Die at idle but once you fire up a intensive application your CPU will overheat. A phase change is not just a game of connect the pipes and throw in some refrigerant. The pipes need to be of proper size and lenth and they need to accomodate the medium. This all takes a lot of research, math, and experience to get a phase to work right for a singular CPU.
You can not just take a phase unit off of one CPU model and put it on another and expect the same performance. Sure it will probably work but not as well or well at all. WHat OCZ was hoping to do was provide a cheap solution so all of that work is left out. But they may have tried to go to cheap and their units only work on a select range of CPUs.
If anyone is interested in extreme cooling without the phase unit you can get some decent temps with a Electric Peltier AKA Thermoelectric Cooling(TEC). I am not familiar with them but traditionally you have 2 copper plats a cold and hot plate. By use of electricity it pulls all of the heat off of the cold plat and trnasfers it to the hot plate, where other means are used to eveacuate the heat. Depending on the size of the tec you can get som pretty cold temps. But the colder you want the more power you need wich means more heat. Most tecs these days that are worth their salt need to be water cooled themselves and they need a dedicated PSU.
Tecs (because of their high power intake) have been known to start electrical fires because the home wiring was to old or small to handle the flow. If possible run it off of a different line than your PC..A different line not a different outlet. Or run a dedicated line straight to the breaker box.
Both methods have their dangers, stengths, and weaknesses but both are good options for extreme overclocking. All of todays world record clocks are attained on Dry ice, liquid Nitro, or a Cascade phase change unit.
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