Will PCs all be watercooled in the future?

[Hugo Drax]

Prescotts are running close to the boiling point of water, when desktops hit
10Ghz (150-200C) will watercooling be a must? what about laptops? will we
need to wear on our backs a cooling coil with hoses going into the laptop.

I wonder if maybe intel needs to go back to the drawingboard and figure out
how to get more work per clock.

What about these videocards, look at the 5900 or 9800, they generate lots of
heat and even require a powersupply connector. I wonder if PCs will consume
1500 Watts of power when you use them 10 years from now. Thats a lot of
electricity.

 

[Larc]

| Prescotts are running close to the boiling point of water, when desktops hit
| 10Ghz (150-200C) will watercooling be a must? what about laptops? will we
| need to wear on our backs a cooling coil with hoses going into the laptop.
|
| I wonder if maybe intel needs to go back to the drawingboard and figure out
| how to get more work per clock.

Intel isn't the only company that needs to go back to the drawingboard! The
main interest seems to be speed, not efficiency. Energy used to create heat is
energy that doesn't add to computing power.

Larc



§§§ - Please change planet to earth to reply by e-mail - §§§

 

[Shep©]

| Prescotts are running close to the boiling point of water, when desktops hit
| 10Ghz (150-200C) will watercooling be a must? what about laptops? will we
| need to wear on our backs a cooling coil with hoses going into the laptop.
|
| I wonder if maybe intel needs to go back to the drawingboard and figure out
| how to get more work per clock.

Intel isn't the only company that needs to go back to the drawingboard! The
main interest seems to be speed, not efficiency. Energy used to create heat is
energy that doesn't add to computing power.

Larc

IMHO the problems with the development of micro computers started well
over 20 years ago.The basic structure of modern PCs at least was and
is based on the 2086 processors or even before.These were never really
designed but evolved and if not for,"Market Forces" may have died :/
Around the time of the MS 3.11 and just before both Atari and Amiga
could have been in the running and,"Their" CPUS were designed
from,"Gound-up" but it was,"Bill's" great slight-of-hand that got PCs
out of offices into homes and thus dominated the market.
I'm sure if you asked a CPU designer today to make a modern CPU from
scratch and they had no financial limitations or other agenda to limit
them we would have seen a faster and more efficient CPU and be further
down the road than we are and be nothing like the architecture of the
Modern PC CPU.
As for cooling etc.Well R&D groups for several companies are
already working on molecular gell,"NAND" gates and predictions are
that the world will have a,"BIO Computer" by or before 2020 and of
course at that level the computing power would be immense.
Note:
In this case I predict the cooling system will be sweaty skin


"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" ;-)





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[Dave C.]

Prescotts are running close to the boiling point of water, when desktops hit
10Ghz (150-200C) will watercooling be a must? what about laptops? will we
need to wear on our backs a cooling coil with hoses going into the laptop.

I don't see a need for watercooling, but I'm thinking of making my next
system watercooled. It won't have any window or fancy lights or anything.
In fact, you won't even see the EXTERIOR of the PC unless you tear my desk
apart. But I'm thinking of watercooling it anyway. I want to build a
nearly silent PC. I'm going to mod the heck out of it so that the power
supply and water pump are both located in the next room (a linen closet, tee
hee), with lines running through custom wall jacks. I figure with the power
supply outside and all the major chips watercooled, there should be no need
for air circulation at all inside the case. I'll just make a huge screened
window on top of the case for heat to escape naturally. The only thing
generating any heat in the case will be the hard disks, so they should be
cool enough with NO air circulation. -Dave

 

[jeffc]

I don't see a need for watercooling, but I'm thinking of making my next
system watercooled. It won't have any window or fancy lights or anything.
In fact, you won't even see the EXTERIOR of the PC unless you tear my desk
apart. But I'm thinking of watercooling it anyway. I want to build a
nearly silent PC. I'm going to mod the heck out of it so that the power
supply and water pump are both located in the next room (a linen closet, tee
hee), with lines running through custom wall jacks. I figure with the power
supply outside and all the major chips watercooled, there should be no need
for air circulation at all inside the case. I'll just make a huge screened
window on top of the case for heat to escape naturally. The only thing
generating any heat in the case will be the hard disks, so they should be
cool enough with NO air circulation. -Dave

That's debatable, but anyway, if the computer is going somewhere *inside*
your desk, then why you need extreme silencing? It seems like a regular
quiet computer is fine if you're sticking it in a desk somewhere. Just
provide a little airflow in and out.

 

[Dave C.]

That's debatable, but anyway, if the computer is going somewhere *inside*

your desk, then why you need extreme silencing? It seems like a regular
quiet computer is fine if you're sticking it in a desk somewhere. Just
provide a little airflow in and out.

Yeah, I built a computer for my wife that is nearly silent and air-cooled
with 5 (total) fans. Sitting in a desk, it is virtually silent. But not
totally silent. I'm obsessed. I want a computer that I can stick my ear on
and STILL not hear it, unless the hard drive is spinning up. Oh, and I
don't want to give up speed to obtain that, either. Thus no passive cooled
cyrix processor, for example. I'm leaning toward Athlon64 for my next
build, with water cooling for CPU, chipset and video. -Dave

 

[~ Q ~]

Dave C. - typed:

Yeah, I built a computer for my wife that is nearly silent and
air-cooled with 5 (total) fans. Sitting in a desk, it is virtually
silent. But not totally silent. I'm obsessed. I want a computer
that I can stick my ear on and STILL not hear it, unless the hard
drive is spinning up. Oh, and I don't want to give up speed to
obtain that, either. Thus no passive cooled cyrix processor, for
example. I'm leaning toward Athlon64 for my next build, with water
cooling for CPU, chipset and video. -Dave

The more people who demand silent PCs the better, IMO. When I asked a
couple of years back how to quieten mine, the responses were mostly that
PCs were noisy, so except it. Needless to say, I didn't. A bit of
searching brought up many sites devoted to noise reduction & I ended up
ditching my TT Volcano7 (well named - sounded like one) with a Zalman:
got rid of the horrid little NB chip fan then lined my Lian Li case with
sound absorbing/dampening panels. Aluminium cases are quieter than steel
ones & conduct heat better. I was surprised to find that temperatures
hardly rose, probably due to having 3 quiet case fans (sound deadening
materials tend to also be good insulators). Another point is to avoid
devices with fans where possible - many burners had them (still have?).
Another advantage of passive cooling is that there's no fan to fail, so
are potentially more reliable.

Read one article that stated the next m/b design - BTX - will have
provision for better cooling & CPU passive cooling by encouraging the
relevant manufactures to actually *use* the 4 HSF holes to mount
heatsinks up 1kg. The design includes an adjacent CPU exhaust fan &
shroud. BTX is also supposed to include PCI-Express, DDRII but possibly
no legacy ports. Existing ATX PSUs are supposed to be usable but not the
current case or m/b tray.

A friend commented that Intel were about the worst processor designers
out there, opining that they were still stuck with the legacy of a
washing machine CPU & that Motorola were one example of better if not
more successful technology. I'm not the 1st to speculate how much
better/faster a computer /could/ be if designed from scratch. That just
won't happen, more's the pity, just a painful evolution by random
selection! Who would tolerate a whole new design which didn't run with
old s/w & h/w? Not many, so there lies the rub.

 

[Dave C.]

Read one article that stated the next m/b design - BTX - will have
provision for better cooling & CPU passive cooling by encouraging the
relevant manufactures to actually *use* the 4 HSF holes to mount
heatsinks up 1kg. The design includes an adjacent CPU exhaust fan &
shroud. BTX is also supposed to include PCI-Express, DDRII but possibly
no legacy ports. Existing ATX PSUs are supposed to be usable but not the
current case or m/b tray.

Oh man, don't get be started on BTX. Safe landing? Shit, I'm just hoping
it doesn't implode on takeoff. If you study the specifications CAREFULLY,
you'll conclude that ATX would have worked just as well for everything
envisioned for BTX. Saying that existing power supplies can be used is not
a strong argument for BTX as the power supply is the one component that
SHOULD be replaced with every build, regardless of format. Not buying a new
power supply for a new build is like buying a brand new Mercedes with bald
tires with severe sidewall damage. Yeah, it might run, but it's a disaster
waiting to happen. Great way to kill new hardware. -Dave

 

[somebody]

Prescotts are running close to the boiling point of water, when desktops hit
10Ghz (150-200C) will watercooling be a must? what about laptops? will we
need to wear on our backs a cooling coil with hoses going into the laptop.

I wonder if maybe intel needs to go back to the drawingboard and figure out
how to get more work per clock.

Well... ...- actually, Intel have changed course. You're not likely
to see the results for a couple of years, but from now on emphasis is
going to be on optimizing performance rather than clockspeed. I
suppose reasons are both reduced competitiveness and the problems and
delays with Prescott. But marketing department have suffered another
defeat as well. No more protecting EPIC aka IA64, and no more billions
put into the Itanium pit. Which I reckon means Itanium is effectively,
though unofficially as of yet, dead. Long live IA32e aka iAMD'86-64.

What about these videocards, look at the 5900 or 9800, they generate lots of
heat and even require a powersupply connector. I wonder if PCs will consume
1500 Watts of power when you use them 10 years from now. Thats a lot of
electricity.

Technology is going to go the way of least resistance. The day
increased Watts and more sophisticated cooling is a more convenient
way to increase performance than miniaturization, then we'll see that.
Maybe BTX is going to move the borders on cooling capacity a bit.
Maybe CPU design will follow and make use of it.

But things actually haven't changed for a long time, in this respect.
I can remember 68030s running at 80C. And early PIIIs were hot, so
were early Athlons, and early P4s, and now early Prescotts.
Today, mighty K8-Athlon64s are like only 60-70W, and according to AMD,
they're going to get even cooler. You might also want to consider the
Crusou and Centrino, and mobile Athlon64. I don't think you can say
we're really getting any hotter, as of yet. Same with graphics. Do you
remember Voodoo5, aka 'Napalm'?

Another thing that might give some kind of perspective on this: An
international team of scientists, in Denmark, have succeeded in
creating a chemical process that produces molecular transistors. Each
molecule is a transistor. A tiny, tiny stick, I think it is 3nm long.
And lots of them. - And they work perfectly! How does one know that? -
Because some technicians in Sweden have succeeded in wiring them
together and connect them! They cut a ridiculously small stencil of
the conductive pattern in a thin foil, with an electron beam. Then
they beam gold atoms through it, focusing on the target 'chip' which
is cooled down to almost absolute zero. This way they get conductive
leads only 2-3 atoms thick and width still in the same magnitude. Now
there are gaps where the transistors should be, just as wide as the
transistors are long. A tiny, tiny whiff of electric potential
applied, then sucks down a transistor molecule that settles on the
surface, bridging the connectors. Some more electricity and a bit of
heat, welds it all together.

It's all much more difficult than it sounds, and there's a long, long
way left to go to a, whathaveyou, 250 million transistor CPU. - But
hey, it's not science fiction or speculations, it's real! - Totally
far out, like!

ancra

 

[Dave C.]

Well... ...- actually, Intel have changed course. You're not likely
to see the results for a couple of years, but from now on emphasis is
going to be on optimizing performance rather than clockspeed. I
suppose reasons are both reduced competitiveness and the problems and
delays with Prescott.

In other words, Intel has given up trying to compete with AMD for best bang
for the buck. That is soooooooooooooooooooooooo funny. -Dave

 

[somebody]

In other words, Intel has given up trying to compete with AMD for best bang
for the buck. That is soooooooooooooooooooooooo funny. -Dave

No, I must have expressed myself poorly. I don't think it says
anything about Intel's intentions in that manner. And I would think it
suggests the rather opposite, if anything. The change of emphasis is
intended to protect their competitiveness. Meaning, the market
department's desire for clockrates, have eroded Intel's circuit
technology, since research have focused on high clock rates.

The cpu-core technologies Intel already have in the pipeline are still
going to appear. But the line of simple, 'stupid', longpiped,
highclocked, inefficient cpu cores, that Intel introduced with the
Willamette P4 and currently are pursuing with Prescott, and maybe
Tejas, are not going to be continued in the future. We're going to see
more clever, more efficient chips again, like the old Pentium, PII,
Tualatin, Centrino and like AMD's K7, K8.

What they have done sofar, is that they've hit AMD hard in the budget
sector, with their oh so very slow, but highclocked Celerons. With a
lot of help from Dell. That has been very successful. But it's got
nothing to do with bang for the buck. Rather the absolute opposite.
Selling absolute crap to clueless buyers at premium rates. All with
the help of clockrates.

The goal of that plan was to kill off AMD. But meanwhile, they've lost
a lot of P4 market share to AMD, so AMD's cpu business started making
money again, last year.
AMD's funds might still be low, but in other ways they're on a roll
right now. Their asian partners fabs are spitting out AthlonXPs, their
own fab is churning out K8s. But that's not enough, they're really
selling well, so they've hired lots of IBM's fundry capacity as well.
Which all proves that a good part of the market is beginning to
understand that GHz is not the 'speed' of the cpu.

And... be seroius, - when have Intel competed with AMD for best bang
for the buck? - Never.
But as AMD is becoming a more accepted and respected manufacturer,
Intel will at some point have to.

ancra

 

[JAD]

I don't think you will be able to recognize the insides of rig of the
future, if the powers that be have their TCPA the way they want it.
We won't be able to do anything inside the box. Water cooled in a
dell? Yikes what a CS nightmare that would be. Could you just hear the
phone convo? ;^)


http://www.againsttcpa.com/what-is-tcpa.html

This is already way under way...hidden in 'PCI express' and then the
new 'graphics' port intro that will have "macroXXXX" built right in.
Along with sound cards that will have a form of 'copyright protection'
OB.

 

[Peter B.]

How about a Mr. Coffee/Intel machine? Perhaps an Intel toaster oven
combo?

Pete

 

[Dave C.]

How about a Mr. Coffee/Intel machine? Perhaps an Intel toaster oven
combo?

Pete

I know you probably meant that as a joke, but why not? It's only one small
step from watercooled system to coffee maker. CPUs are already close to
boiling water, but they aren't supposed to run that hot, and coffee doesn't
need to be that hot. You might be able to drain enough energy from a CPU to
slowly brew a cup or two of coffee. I like it. Get your caffeine kick for
those late-night usenet sessions. -Dave