Asus Supercomputer Motherboard Revealed

[wayneepalmer]

One of the things I am thinking about in this involves having the PC in a moisture free environment and sealing it into a fridge/freezer case that has been ported thru with all the cabling seemed like a good idea.

I hate to think that it might cost a huge amount but these folks do industrial grade cryo chambers:

http://www.thermotron.com/

Maybe something from them would work.

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]wayneepalmer[/nom]One of the things I am thinking about in this involves having the PC in a moisture free environment and sealing it into a fridge/freezer case that has been ported thru with all the cabling seemed like a good idea.I hate to think that it might cost a huge amount but these folks do industrial grade cryo chambers:http://www.thermotron.com/Maybe something from them would work.[/citation]
Or you could just go with a Phase change cooling system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cooling#Phase-change_cooling
http://gomeler.com/2006/04/16/vapor-phase-change-cooling/

It's been around for years.

 

[wayneepalmer]

I can still see that there would be issues involving condensation and at various points as the bulk of the pc case equipment is still exposed to the environment and the room air moisture.

Enclosing the entire processing unit in a cold, dry environment would it seem to me be better. You could use passive heat sinks so fan lubrication wouldn't be an issue and using an SSD drive would remove the bearing issues with the hard drive.

The Thermotron guys I mentioned make cryo chillers/heat enclosures that industrial test labs use for containment and they even have internal circulation that is good for the whole environment down to >-100F. They even install sealable thru ports that cabling could be run so you could keep the entire central pc unit completely sealed from the atmosphere.

In case, you are wondering I occasionally do cryogenic bearing testing for the aerospace industry and I've worked with these units.

 

[bill gates is your daddy]

but in these cyro chillers do you usually have something in there that is constantly producing 100+ of heat?

 

[bill gates is your daddy]

[citation][nom]bill gates is your daddy[/nom]but in these cyro chillers do you usually have something in there that is constantly producing 100+ of heat?[/citation]


(edit) 100w+

 

[wayneepalmer]

With as much cooling capacity as we are talking about (I usually use LN2 injection in mine which can take about 4 cubic feet of chamber and 50-100 Lbs of steel to -70ºF in about 20-45 minutes depending on how crappy the LN2 tank is) but they also have self-cooling chambers as big as a walk-in freezer or even a small warehouse used for simulating arctic conditions.

The little pittance of heat put out by a PC (even one with the CPU's/GPU's pushing the boiling point) isn't going to matter much given the capacity I'm talking about. These type of chambers are used by folks at NASA, Boeing, Airbus, etc.

I do see your point about the fridges I mentioned before (I had forgotten about the cycling issue) but I still think that a chest-type deep-freeze might keep up with a pc. I know folks that keep stuff solid frozen even with chest-type units in shed's in places like Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama where the temp outside the unit is over 100ºF.

Now PAYING FOR THE ELECTRICITY is another matter.

You better have lots and lots of solar panels or a big windmill otherwise you're going to be buying an electric company bigwig a GulfStream G-5 for his or her trips to the Bahama's.

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]wayneepalmer[/nom]I do see your point about the fridges I mentioned before (I had forgotten about the cycling issue) but I still think that a chest-type deep-freeze might keep up with a pc. I know folks that keep stuff solid frozen even with chest-type units in shed's in places like Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama where the temp outside the unit is over 100ºF.[/citation]
Do you?

When you put a piece of meat in the freezer, it doesn't generate heat, once is hits a certain temp, it will stay at that temp unless it's heated. If I were to put a space heater in a freezer, it's wouldn't do much to cool it off, partially due to how bad air is at conducting heat.

It makes more sense to go with a Phase change or cascade cooling system, where a compressor changes a refrigerant gas into a liquid, and applies that directly to the necessary components.

 

[wayneepalmer]

I think that just applying cooling to certain components still leaves you with the moisture migration issue. When I was in the fleet, dry air cooling and cooled chamber isolation for computing systems was an absolute must. Water kills electrons even faster than heat.

I think would be far better to enclose the whole system and freeze it in a dry environment even if that meant you needed to use the cooling system you describe to cool an insulated chamber.

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]wayneepalmer[/nom]I think that just applying cooling to certain components still leaves you with the moisture migration issue. When I was in the fleet, dry air cooling and cooled chamber isolation for computing systems was an absolute must. Water kills electrons even faster than heat. I think would be far better to enclose the whole system and freeze it in a dry environment even if that meant you needed to use the cooling system you describe to cool an insulated chamber.[/citation]
There are people out there with 24/7 phase systems with no condensation issues. I suppose putting the entire system in a dry area would work, but some components will not post at certain temperatures.

 

[wayneepalmer]

Other than the hard drive (which was the reason I mentioned using one of the new solid state drives), what else won't post of its too cold?