Hardware Does cold make your computer faster?

[Urwumpe]

I put an external fan right by my PC to try and super cool it but what a mistake.

If you install the fan in the wrong direction, you disturb the airflow and cause the heat to stay concentrated inside the chassis. Keeping the right airflow in mind is an important task during building a PC, but often even professional companies fail it.

 

[Andy44]

I have one of those fan deck thingies for my laptop, the kind you stick your laptop on top of and plug it into a USB port for power. It has two fans in it which suck more air through my computer. Doesn't make it run faster, but it does keep the internal fan from kicking on all the time, which should increase the life of at least part of the machine and makes it a little quieter overall.

 

[HiPotOk1978]

A computer will slow down when it gets too hot. But it won't run 'faster' if it's cooler. I.e, you can't increase the performance of your PC by, say, running it out of a fridge.

If you can keep the humidity down, sticking the hardware in that cold you could 1 of 2 things

1) overclock the out of it
2) crack something from rapid temp change

 

[Andy44]

I worry about cold, since I often have to leave my laptop in my vehicle and it gets cold outside.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

Here's another over clocking video using liquid nitrogen.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8208614616938350291

 

[Dig Gil]

:OMG::hesaid: Liquid Nitrogen! Can it be better!??:lol:

 

[Cairan]

If you can keep the humidity down, sticking the hardware in that cold you could 1 of 2 things

1) overclock the out of it
2) crack something from rapid temp change

That's where all our Shuttle knowledge comes into play. Just like NASA uses an incremental approach to fill the external tank, you can chill down a computer for overcloking by doint it in steps...

:OMG::hesaid: Liquid Nitrogen! Can it be better!??:lol:

Liquid helium?

 

[thomasantony]

Many enthusiasts overclock their CPUs to 6 GHz or more using Dry ice cooling or LN2 cooling.

 

[Dig Gil]

Well all this about freezing the CPU is getting very extreme, if whatever cooling down the computer works or not we don't need to reach 0 Kelvin. Anyway I don't think liquid helium is able to stay in place (http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=a0ledbd2uu).

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

Does cold make my PC run faster?

Well my PC is always slow, and I live in England:rofl:

 

[Quick_Nick]

Many enthusiasts overclock their CPUs to 6 GHz or more using Dry ice cooling or LN2 cooling.

Woah! I can see it now: You walk into a computer repair shop with your motherboard in pieces. When the guy at the front desk asks what happened you tell him that you froze your motherboard with liquid nitrogen and accidentally bumped it. :lol:

 

[Messierhunter]

Had a friend who overclocked a 33mhz 486 processor while cooling it with liquid nitrogen for a high school science project. I forget how many processors he destroyed before he finally came up with a way to get the nitrogren over the processor without it leaking. Moral of the story, don't use aluminum foil when attemping this, it's not foolproof. During the same science fair, I used some of the same liquid nitrogen to boost the efficiency of a solar cell and discovered that you can pour just about as much nitrogen onto it as you want and it'll keep on ticking.

 

[BHawthorne]

Unless you're willing to expend large stack of cash on sub-ambient cooling it's a waste of time. Water cooling and air cooling are both ambient based cooling solutions. Meaning you'll never get any better temps than what the temperature is in the room the computer is in. Cooling efficiency is more important than cooling temperature. Good cable management and adaquite case fans can give you good airflow to ensure case temps are as close to ambient as possable. That said, those that do the expensive overclocking to outragous settings for records never use those setups for 24/7 daily use. It'll end up costing you more to augment your cooling with high tech cooling solutions than to just buy a faster CPU.

Crank up the mhz with OCing, just remember 50C CPU and 80C GPU max stress and you'll be fine. There are countless forums on the internet dedicated to OCing.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

What you say is true, BHawthorne, but I have a friend that has a freon cooled pc case. When both cores and the gfx card are running at full steam max res, his cpu temp barely rises over zero C. He doesnt overclock, but he is able to stretch his tech to the max. Oh and play seriously awsome looking game visuals.
Making the most of the gear you have and extending it's life, now arguably that is value for money.

 

[ar81]

In the cold of the night
of the fresh air of artificial biospheres
machines are not expected to fail
unless air supply is cut
and digital traffic will melt down.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

yeah, it's a bummer when that happens.

 

[BHawthorne]

What you say is true, BHawthorne, but I have a friend that has a freon cooled pc case. When both cores and the gfx card are running at full steam max res, his cpu temp barely rises over zero C. He doesnt overclock, but he is able to stretch his tech to the max. Oh and play seriously awsome looking game visuals.
Making the most of the gear you have and extending it's life, now arguably that is value for money.

Freon sub-ambient cooling costs $750-1000 to implement. It's a lot more functional than most other sub-ambient cooling methods. There is also peltier-assisted water cooling, but that gets expsenvie too.

 

[-Pv-]

I used Peltier-cooled water on an o/c system for two years. Was cheap to build (as a doit-myself kit.)
-Pv-

 

[RisingFury]

Yes it will. The optimum temperature for a motherboard is about -138C. At that temperature electrical resistance is lowered meaning the electrical pulses can move around the motherboard that much quicker.

It own't do much good for other components such as the PSU or harddrive. I'm trying to find the articles that talked about this but it was several years ago now........

This is false.

Superconductors lose their resistance when cooled down and can even reduce their resistance to 0.

But the stuff commercial CPUs are made is a semi-conductor. It will only conduct current in a range of temperatures. If you cool it down too much, it'll actually stop working.

Most of these CPUs have an optimum temperature range between 30 and 40°C.


If you want a computer for processing power, buy a PC. Laptops suck, get used to it people.

 

[dbeachy1]

But the stuff commercial CPUs are made is a semi-conductor. It will only conduct current in a range of temperatures. If you cool it down too much, it'll actually stop working.

Most of these CPUs have an optimum temperature range between 30 and 40°C.

With all due respect, that is ridiculous. CPUs run just fine at -190 degrees C on liquid nitrogen cooling, as Tom's Hardware did here when they were able to overlock a P4 to 5.25 GHz at -196 degrees C: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/5-ghz-project,731.html

A CPU will run at exactly the same speed (its set clock rate) whether the CPU is -190 degrees C or 70 degrees C: cooling the CPU will not cause a computer to run any faster (or slower) than its set clock rate. However, it will usually allow the system to remain stable at a higher clock rate, as shown by the liquid nitrogen cooling article above.