can you over cool a cpu?

I was wonder if you could over cool a cpu or a gpu? I was thinking of building a liquid cooling system using ac to cool the Reservoir?????

No worries, CPUs can take sub zero temperatures.

useshane said:

I was wonder if you could over cool a cpu or a gpu? I was thinking of building a liquid cooling system using ac to cool the Reservoir?????

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Your only real worry might be condensation, using chilled water.

You might think of blowing the cool air at the radiator. It has fins to dissipate the heat from the cool air. A res won't do squat with cool air.

Now if you mean using a phase change setup into a container to cool the water, yes it's done. Pretty extreme, and you have to be very careful not to go below freezing and worry about condensation on the tubes and blocks. Much care in thermal insulation, to include goop put under the CPU between the CPU and the pins on the CPU.

Been done, google sub-ambient cooling PC in Google.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=476737
this might help. if you go sub ambiant you will have condesation

As far as the CPU itself goes, intel cpus (and older AMDs) can take something like -50 to -100* temps before they start crashing, Phenom II cpus from AMD can now go very low, within a degree or three of 0*k i think.

I stuck my radiator in ice for some testing and never saw condensation. Its really dry in colorado though.

As long as you avoid condensation, the cold won't hurt your CPU. However, you may find that for your purposes, all sub-ambient cooling methods are beyond the point of diminishing returns. If you haven't tried ambient watercooling yet, I suggest you start there. If you decide later that the slight increase in performance is worth the increased complexity and power consumption of a phase change system, the experience you gained with your ambient rig will be very useful. Odds are good, though, that ambient watercooling will be enough.

OTOH, if you're refrigeration tech with too much time on your hands and just want to mess around, you'll find plenty of good ideas in the extreme cooling section.

I put my rad on the ac vent in my room and went a little sub ambient. but we turned the heat on last week....