Liquid cooling?

[Jim Fraser]

While I think overclocking is kinda silly in extreme cases (like hot-rods)
and nearly pointless for most real serious computing applications, I think
the water-cooling has real merits and could be considered for dense
clusters.
1) Water cools orders-of-magnitudes better then air
2) It is far quieter
3) CPU temps hardly vary as compared to air (even under load) (better
stability)
4) It does not have to be that much more expensive then high-end air cooling
(there is a real price to cool dual cpu's in a 1U steel box.)
5) leaks are almost unheard-of, and are not as catastrophic as they sound
(distilled water is generally not a problem, but a leak is a possible mode
of failure)
6) Dense water cooled systems could be easily be engineered to remove bulk
heat far better then the rows of tiny little cheap jap fans whirring at 7000
rpm...talk about failure rates!?! Fans are most prone to failure that result
in hardware breakdowns.  Don't discard water cooling.


Also for the non-budget minded, there is the complete board submergence
route with  hydrofluoroether (HFW) 3M makes it
http://products.3m.com/usenglish/mfg_industrial/elec_materials.jhtml?powurl=
SKKXCT77P5be2FCSL3BCQXgeGST1T4S9TCgv5NGBVHDQ19gl ...this is expensive (~250
bucks+/gal but exceptionally effective.  I think CRAY made a machine that
used a similar fluid once.
A couple of weeks ago I saw the guys on TECHTV demonstrate this stuff in a
fish-tank like set-up:
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story/0,24330,3380128,00.html

jim


-----Original Message-----
From: beowulf-admin at beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-admin at beowulf.org]On
Behalf Of John Hearns
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 11:57 AM
To: beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: Re: Liquid cooling?


On Wed, 2002-04-24 at 15:10, Worsham, Michael A. wrote:
> Has anyone attempting to create a beowulf cluster using extreme methods of
> cooling, such as the liquid cooling?
>
> Example sites: http://www.koolance.com/, http://www.senfu.com.tw/, &
> http://www.overclockershideout.com/
>

Well, I think Robert Brown has FINALLY been beaten here.
You're not going to install Freon tanks, complete with plastic
fish are you Bob?
I just have this bizarre vision of Bob in an aqualung visiting
a Freon-flooded machine room...





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