Throwing my heatsink in the freezer

Hi guys,
I have been wanting to do some extreme overclocking and I have a great heat sink. Can I just chuck my heat sink in the freezer for a while for a cooler performance? If not, has anyone got a good idea to cool a cpu with ice?

Thanks,
ZePotatox

Problem is condensation, if your cooling system is lower than the air temperature (also depends on a few other factors like humidity), water will start condensing on your parts. You'd have to insulate your motherboard.

The other thing with a fridge is that it's designed to cool something to a certain temperature and keep it there. It can't handle a constant head load, or the compressor overheats.

Best idea I've had is to wait for winter to come around and bench in my garage. Subzero ambient = pretty extreme overclocking with no worries about condensation.

If you go liquid, you can dump the radiator in a bucket of ice, just watch for condensation on the tubes.

By the time you get it mounted, and worry about off TPaste applications etc, it will be warm.

Takes most folks 15 min to put a HS on right to include Tpaste application and the proper tighenting of the 4 screws for even temps.

So, no, no help at all.

All of the above doesn't even matter really...there are several reasons this is a bad idea:

The heatpipes are designed to move heat, they are filled with a liquid and also are depressurized compared to normal air to lower the boiling point of the liquid used. The liquid inside warms, evaporates/boils, then re-condenses again in the heatpipe.

Kind of when you boil water in a saucepan with the lid on, pretend the saucepan only has 1cm of water in the bottom, and take most of the air out of the saucepan. It will boil, condensate on the lid, then drop down to boil again. Surrounding the pot, you weld a giant heatsink to help it condensate faster and cool again so it can re-boil and to control pressure.

When you freeze a heatpipe heatsink below the freeze point of the liquid, or cool it down too much, 2 things happen:

1. The pressure becomes lower, making the heatpipe want to implode
2. The liquid inside will not boil...you can't transport the heat from the base to the part where the fins are...

So in essence, it can become a safety hazard (depending on how much you chill it) and it will also not perform as intended, possibly very badly...actual CPU temperatures may be higher than they would be in normal conditions.

I don't know if you guys realize how Vapor-chamber heatsinks work too, like Vapor-X, but essentially they are a flat, square heatpipe.

It isn't a safety hazard. It just won't do anything, like Conumdrum said. The heatsink will have hit room temperature, or gotten near it, by the time it is mounted. If you mean putting it in a fridge/freezer, that flat out won't work.

I didn't say it was, but that it could become one. I didn't say it was major or anything either, I doubt anyone is going to hurt themselves on a heatpipe with a hole in it/deformity, but it is possible.

Depending on how cold you can get it and the thickness of the pipe, something like this can happen:

That image is from when someone lapped the base of an HDT cooler, but it shows how heatpipes can implode on themselves too...there is obvious deformity along the base even where it hasn't opened up.

Just like bottles:
If you close an empty water bottle when it is in a hot area, take it to a cold area, it will start to deform. Balloons shrink, etc. The pressure decreases.

Something that is already significantly depressurized, it's not always a good idea to try to lower the pressure more, puts more inward force on it.

As long as you don't modify the heatsink, cooling it to whatever degrees below zero isn't going to make it implode into a black hole. Even if it did break, it'd just leak harmlessly.

That person wasn't using their head and damaged their heatsink. Those type of heatsinks are already running very thin walls to facilitate fast heat transfer. Sanding it was stupid. That situation isn't comparable, at all.

A better idea is to open your windows or take your computer outside in winter temps.
of course this works best if you live somewhere where it gets cold outside.

Every once in a while someone will get unlucky and the ice that forms in freezing will crack a heatpipe. I haven't seen any implode, the internal pressure at 70f isn't that far from raw vacuum in the first place.

The water will freeze and stop transfering heat though, it'll even do it if the air you're benching in is cold enough (seems like -10c or so is when that starts happening) if you don't keep a load on it.


I like the outside the box thinking, that part is excellent. You just need a different direction for it is all

Hmm, well I guess my ideas aren't options. Back to the drawing board I say!