Thinking of going phase change cooling, is it worth it?

I was reading up on phase change/peltier cooling last night and the subject was rather interesting.

I went on the website of the company that made my water cooling setup and they offer such a unit. www.asetek.com

Is there any benefits to running at a cooler temperature? Right now I can't seem to exceed 48C under load on my water cooling setup no matter what I try.

Phase is rather complicated, and this topic would be better in the "Extreme Cooling" Fourum under the cooling section, anyways phase would give you around -18C or less for temps, which would fix your temperature problems. The only real downside to phase is the 800 - 2000$ Price

My main question is, are there any benefits (if any) to go from 48C under load to - 16C?

Yes you *can* overclock higher and use lower voltage than you could before with normal water.

The downside would be your power bill becuase your basically adding another refrigerator to your house with a phase cooler.

M Powered said:

My main question is, are there any benefits (if any) to go from 48C under load to - 16C?

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Hell Yeah, You can add much more Vcore and therefore more FSB which means Higher Clocks

More voltage? What if it exceeds the CPU "max" limit by a considerable amount? You're saying low temps will offset this?

there are two ways to get higher clocks. more voltage or lower temps. the max "safe" range of voltage increases when temps decrease. putting 2 and 2 together, you get much higher clocks on phase.

I think water is the best compromise. It's not nearly as effective as phase change, but is way more practical. There are hassle-free and relitavely cheap ways to cool the water and drop the temp another 10-20C without worrying about freezing and major condensation. That 10-20c can give your CPU better overclocking, extra life, or a little of both.

Moved...

Water has nearly an endless capacity compared to phase, but it certainly doesn't get as cold either Before shelling out massive $$$ for an LS or Mach II, I'd wait and really see what the OCZ Cryo-Z is all about.

1) It's cheap...supposedly coming in at $350ish, but might drop as low as $200 if sales are there (according to OCZ)...that's as cheap as a WC setup.
2) It's only 1/6HP compressor so it's not as good as an LS/Mach II/custom, but it won't be as hard on the electric bill either.
3) Confirmed the gas in the test setup is straight R507, not R134a or a blend.
4) It uses a Chilly1 evap = none better.

I've seen claimed temps as low as -50C idle (@ 68F amb) and am leery of some of the initial load temps that they have mentioned. Capacity seems too good to be true, but they certainly weren't using any kind of "laboratory grade" testing (CPU in a mobo + monitoring software). In other words, it's probably not as good as it shows (which should be the case).

Anyway, it could definitely be a decent option for the price of water or not a bunch more, but by all accounts, it won't/can't be as extreme as LS/Mach II/custom phase units because of the small comp. What it will be is very cheap and cheap to run.

Oh, I recently figured out how much my phase unit cost to run 12-15 hours/day every day. It was $8-$10/month using a 1/3HP comp...1/6HP on the Cryo would be about half of that, but my cost/KWH is cheap out here. Cali is about 2x as much.

I would caution against raising the vcore too much. I thought I could run my 3.2e at 1.65 vcore durring a liquid nitrogen test, (hit at 1.7v idle) and now it is dead. Cannot boot at stock speed anymore. At the most, you can run an extra 5% more vcore on phase than water imo, and remember that is your actual vcore, not what you set it at. If you cant afford to replace it, don't run more than 10% over on water or 15% on phase.

Edit: Stock vcore on that chip was 1.45v

like crimedog said, your processor will run faster if.

the rule is. if you reduce the temperature to half the absolute temperature. your processor will be able to run 2 times as fast. this has been generalized as 1-3% overclock for every 10C colder.

the other way to raise your overclock would be to raise your vcore which also adds heat. which is why its commonly thought that the reason for super cooling is only to offset the heat..


doing both will raise your overclock more than one or the other..

M Powered... since you just invested in a water cooling loop you might want to look into a water (liquid) chiller.. like converting an airconditioner to chill the liquid going through your water cooling loop..

greenmaji said:

M Powered... since you just invested in a water cooling loop you might want to look into a water (liquid) chiller.. like converting an airconditioner to chill the liquid going through your water cooling loop..

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Surplus water fountains and small counter top water coolers come to mind.

bobad said:

Surplus water fountains and small counter top water coolers come to mind.

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yea.. those might work but cheap aircons. come in the 5K btu. range..
I say cheap because they are in the US.. not to throw anyone off thats not a resedent of the US.. brand new aircons. are about 80 bucks over here..