• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Dirt cheap supercooling.

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

MsNath

Member
Joined
Feb 4, 2001
Some might call this cheating but hey it works great, cost me nothing and allowed me to use my stock heat sink and fan and reach well below -1c with no mods to my any of my part of my system.

My personal experience is that cooling is everything. And I don’t mean dropping your system down from 35c to 25c I mean getting really cool!

My pIII 700e hit 933 right out of the box with factory settings for the 933 and stock fan and heat sink. And it was running at 39c. I thought hey this was way to easy I'll go for 1gig. I managed to boot up into windows a few times at 1 gig but always with reg errors. I figured I had to cool things off a bit more. If it would hit 933 at 39c it would probably hit 1 gig at 25c. I cooled it down to 25, got errors 20c got errors, 15c and I was still getting errors. I thought if Im still getting errors it must be one of my other cards or the ram.

I swapped everything out and tried again. Still I got errors. Then I got really aggressive with the cooling. I dropped it down to -1c. Presto running rock stable at 1001mhz under all conditions with all my hardware and cards installed.

So here's the big picture. From 700 - 933 was no problem even with the stock fan. But to go that extra 70 mhz required me to cool the chip by 40c.
.
Ok I hear the sirens from the physics police approaching fast so I had better show you what I did.

Here's a picture of my computer room.
[img="[URL]http://plaza.powersurfr.com/MsNath/home/Comp1.JPG[/URL]"]

Notice the big bay doors behind the desk. Well I live in Canada and it gets well below freezing for at lest 6 months out of the year. In addition where Im from the air is very dry so little to no humidity.

Now have a close look at this next picture.
[img="[URL]http://plaza.powersurfr.com/MsNath/home/compout1.jpg[/URL]"]

notice somthing missing?<Like the case :) > Notice a small crack in the doors and wires leading out the doors. Notice an outline of a computer case on the opposite side of the glass.

Thats my chill box. On the night I hit 1001mhz it was -13c outside.

So the question is how practicle is this? Well as I mentioned before Its below zero for more than half the year, there is very little moister and best of all no mods to the system. its a double pane door so the crack lets in a bit of cold air but its nothing this Canadian girl can't handle. Now you dont want to leave your system sitting outside for weeks on end without checking it. But for testing your system to see how it will preform under such circumstances this is great.

I did it becuase I wanted to build a self contained cooling case and wanted to test how my complete system would react to the extream cold. The CD Roms were sluggish but everything else seemed fine. The positionioning of the case directly outside the window also gives me the option of relocating the drives inside with a couple of 24" ide cables.

Oh I should also mention that the overall cooling effect allowed me to use my cheap ram $75 Canadian for 128mb<apacer generic set at turbo and cas 2> and ati rage 128 expert video card.

[img="[URL]http://plaza.powersurfr.com/MsNath/home/MeAndMyCase.JPG[/URL]"]

[img="[URL]http://plaza.powersurfr.com/MsNath/home/outside2.JPG[/URL]"]
 
Some people move to where its warm for similiar reasons. I have a friend at University who loves cycling. When she gets her degree she wants to move some place warm so she can bike year round. :)

I can see it now, droves of computer geeks flocking to Canada to take advantage of our premium weather. :)

Travel brouchers anyone :)


dgk (Feb 23, 2001 08:49 a.m.):
You mean all I have to do is move to where it's below zero most of the time? Makes me think "Space Station..."
 
I love it. Especially the elegant simplicity of it.

MsNath, have you considered a duct arrangement from the outside? Kind of like a dryer vent in reverse. A filtered fan to pull that lovely clean, cool Canadian air in from the outside, and another fan at the case. Voila! No more open doors.
 
dgk (Feb 23, 2001 08:49 a.m.):
You mean all I have to do is move to where it's below zero most of the time? Makes me think "Space Station..."

But you would need some kind of sub-zero medium to absorb the heat and seeing as how there is very little matter in space it wouldn't loose heat, in fact the heatsink would perform worse in space than on earth as the only over way to give off heat is radiation and you would need temps of like 200oC so the sink would be glowing
 
I live in Michigan and about 2 months ago I did a similar experiment using dryer vent hose worked very well managed to get my 1gig tbird to run at 1289 system temp was 1C cpu 20C ;D
 
Phil (Feb 23, 2001 03:44 p.m.):
dgk (Feb 23, 2001 08:49 a.m.):
You mean all I have to do is move to where it's below zero most of the time? Makes me think "Space Station..."

But you would need some kind of sub-zero medium to absorb the heat and seeing as how there is very little matter in space it wouldn't loose heat, in fact the heatsink would perform worse in space than on earth as the only over way to give off heat is radiation and you would need temps of like 200oC so the sink would be glowing

if that were true then there would be no need for insulated space suits... as your suggestion would imply a persons body heat would not leave your person, so something as simple as scuba gear would suffice ;D
 
kat (Feb 23, 2001 03:54 p.m.):
I live in Michigan and about 2 months ago I did a similar experiment using dryer vent hose worked very well managed to get my 1gig tbird to run at 1289 system temp was 1C cpu 20C ;D

Just out of curiosity, is a 120mm fan a pretty good match for the diameter of dryer vent hose?
 
dgk (Feb 23, 2001 08:49 a.m.):

if that were true then there would be no need for insulated space suits... as your suggestion would imply a persons body heat would not leave your person, so something as simple as scuba gear would suffice ;D

you do radiate some infra red heat and so would the heat sink, whilst it is enough to be life threatening for a human, it would not be enough to cool the heatsink down, that is why the fan blows air onto the sink so more heat is conducted by conduction, very little is lost by radiation, just put you hand near it and you won't feel much heat but when you touch it you do.
 
Living in Minnesota, I love it! Last night, it got down to -20C. I don't know if I want my hard drives that cold but it is certainly food for thought. Unfortunately, it does get hot here for about 3 months, so importing some outside air would be limited to the other 9.

Hoot
 
Yes I thought about that. However, I'm in an apartment and my windows are desined in such a way that I couldn't make that happen. I could rig something up for the patio doors but why bother. It takes less than 20 seconds to put the case outside. My only worry is a freak snow storm.

In addition I really wanted to check out the effects of cooling the whole case. The dryer ducting would only cool the cpu.

DennisC (Feb 23, 2001 04:18 p.m.):
I love it. Especially the elegant simplicity of it.

MsNath, have you considered a duct arrangement from the outside? Kind of like a dryer vent in reverse. A filtered fan to pull that lovely clean, cool Canadian air in from the outside, and another fan at the case. Voila! No more open doors.
 
Mr_Goat (Feb 24, 2001 12:50 a.m.):
What are you going to do if it ever rains???

In my experience it seldom rains at -13C :) But snow is a distinct possibility. However, shovelling out the PC every morning is just another part of the Canadian experience.

[From another Canadian natural-cooler -- but I use ductwork.]
 
Re: dryer vent hose...I think a 160 would fit better than a 120. The only problem with ducting cold outside air into the system is the humidity INSIDE the house. Chances are that the relative humidity inside is higher than outside. You would need to completely insulate the box from the inside air and cycle the air in from outside and then exhaust it outside as well. It's probably easier to build a "dog house" box outside for the computer with screened sides to allow ventilation and protect it from the snow.
 
OK, all very good points about the ducting. I guess it goes back to MsNath's solution being simple and elegant as it is. The "doghouse" is a pretty neat idea, though.

On another note, I love all the pics, MsNath! I really wish more of us would do that. A good picture of somebody's setup goes a long way toward clarifying what they're talking about. Besides, it's cool to look at. I know, not all of us have digital cameras, myself included, but I would still encourage the idea. Some of you fellas might want to keep it to equipment shots though; I doubt you're as photogenic as MsNath.
 
Newbie_Doo (Feb 24, 2001 10:00 a.m.):
Re: dryer vent hose...I think a 160 would fit better than a 120. The only problem with ducting cold outside air into the system is the humidity INSIDE the house. Chances are that the relative humidity inside is higher than outside. You would need to completely insulate the box from the inside air and cycle the air in from outside and then exhaust it outside as well.

Do you know this for fact, or are you just speculatin' ? 'Cause I've successfully ducted outside air as cold as -28C into the machine without any real problems.
 
Omg i had the same idea for ducting cold air outside as soon as i get my duron 700. I am worried about condensation though!!! i am going to run a dryer vent into the blowhole in the side of my case and mount it to the fan on my heatsink. should i worry about condensation??? ps. there is alot of snow on the ground outside...!!
 
How about burying a couple of loops of vent hose in the snow and blowing the air slowly through the cooled hose? Might work, no? RE: condensation...it shouldn't be a problem unless the internal surfaces of the computer are cooled below the dewpoint of the air inside. No personal experience (it's not that cold here in Virginia), but the science is sound. It's not a good idea to fire up your computer (tape player, vcr, sunglasses, camera) after bringing it inside until it has come up to room temp and been there for a while. Just common sense, that's all.
 
The ducting is a good idea but it breaks the KIS rule<Keep it Simple> :)

Tonight's low is forecast to be -28c. This might allow me to squeeze out a bit more out of this chip.

Someone mentioned the digital camera thing. For taking quick demo shots you can get real cheap digital cameras. less than $100 Canadian. I got an afga CL20 it was $229.00 it takes sharp pictures has a flash and doubles as a web cam with a max refresh rate of 30 fps.
 
My only question is when are you going to attempt Dual's ? Just noted you have the big brother to my server's motherboard *That being a BP6* But other than a great example of how to put the weather that makes us freeze when we gotta shovel to good use =) *Living in wisconsin, just south of the border it get's pretty cold here* Otherwise great job on implementing the KISS method, and keep it up! =)

My .02 Cents
 
Back