Liquid Helium

insamaic · Oct 31, 2006

Hey Y'All.

I've seen overclocked computers running with Liquid Nitrogen cooling, but never Liquid Helium. Has anyone done it, is it possible?

If you don't know, Liquid Nitrogen is -196 degrees celcius, and Liquid Helium is in the -280 degrees celcius range.

DavidGP · Nov 1, 2006

Possible yes and has been done lately by IBM in developing the next gen cpu's http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5099584.stm

How cheap and safe it would be to use in a home experiment and how far you could push todays chip's to is debatable, no doubt someone has done it with Helium but I know many stick to 02, LN02 or other materials like oils or fluorinert, have been used.

ItsWendy · Nov 1, 2006

You get in that temperature range, strangeness happens. Superconducting is just the beginning, how about materials with 0 viscosity (they tend to climb out of the glass holding them), or super thermal conductors (not too practical in that narrow range, but would be dandy if they could get it near room temperature). The main thing is many semiconductors stop being semiconductors at that temperature, although there are a lot of other electronic effects that could replace it. You'd have to redesign from the ground up.

insamaic · Nov 1, 2006

Haha. Yah. Thanks guys for some insight.

mcadam · Nov 2, 2006

I saw a video recently where they overclocked a cpu and got it to 5ghz, cooled using liquid nitrogen. I'll try and find it.

EDIT - found it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evtGvukJ3KI

insamaic · Nov 3, 2006

Another guy got 7.16Ghz with Liquid Nitrogen, I wonder what a Core 2 Duo could get to.

IBM have a 500Ghz computer they made... I don't know why they bother.... :|

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Liquid Helium

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