The Crazy Future of CPU Cooling

what happens when a CPU gets too cold well we know when the opposite happens and it gets too hot that the CPU overheats and loses performance so what challenges do we face on the flip side when a CPU gets colder and colder to find out today we're going to be experimenting with some alternative ways to cool a PC starting off simple with the box fan placing it right up against the motherboard will give it tons of airflow to help dissipate heat but as of right now we're only moving around room temperature air so by introducing some bags of ice we can lower that surrounding air temperature and just like that we have our first cooling setup so let's turn on the PC to see if it actually helps with the Box band turned off we can see the normal temperature of the CPU in this system is around 37 39 degrees Celsius and so now if we crank up the fan to its highest setting anecdotally I do feel tons of cold air being blown onto the motherboard and if we take a look at the actual graph you can see that the temperature has already dropped over 10 degrees Celsius honestly that's not too bad but we can do a whole lot better so we'll remove the ice in the fan and replace it with a modern Marvel the air conditioning unit I found this portable one on Craigslist for a hundred dollars which is cheaper than some aios but it will require some modification to work with our system essentially we need to create a direct connection from the output of cold air on the AC unit to the CPU itself thanks to a bit of duct tape and elbow grease we're all set and now the AC unit's liquid refrigerant is basically directly cooling the air in between itself and the CPU with that we can power on the computer one more time so after logging on and setting up or monitoring programs we can again see that 37 to 39 degree base temperature powering on the AC unit reveals that its default temperature is 66 degrees Fahrenheit or around 19 degrees Celsius it quickly spins to life spewing out hot air in its back in tandem with the cold air out the nozzle and again anecdotally this air feels even colder than the setup with the box fan and ice and it turns out it can get even colder going down to its limit of 62 degrees Fahrenheit or around 16.6 degrees Celsius taking a look at the CPU temperature graph you can see that we're starting to walk our way down towards the high 20s low 30s but this is just getting started after the AC unit has had some time to warm up or I guess cool down we end up hitting 19 degrees Celsius for the first time in this experiment but the temperature drops don't stop there over the course of a few minutes the CPU temperature continues to decrease until we hit our first single digit measure that's honestly absurd and shows just how good the AC unit is at cooling our PC but can we do even better of course we can it's time to break out the dry ice you want to see something crazy and this here CPU is room temperature and there's no speeding up in this video after being in contact with dry ice for mere seconds the entire IHS starts to frost over this happens because dry ice is simply that cold clacking in at negative 100 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 70 degrees Celsius so what happens if we use it to cool our CPU well we'll grab a chunk of the dry ice and then put it on top of this conveniently placed heatsink and now this is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen you ready for it keep an eye on this temperature that's right it drops to zero degrees Celsius zero degrees and it would drop further but the measuring tool just simply doesn't go below zero and remember this is passively cooled with the dry ice there's no fan moving air around this it's just the dry ice it's safe to assume that the CPU is hitting temperatures between negative 60 and negative 70 degrees Celsius and at these temperatures the first signs of trouble start to transpire but before we talk about that I'd like to take a moment to thank today's video sponsor PCB way is a One-Stop shop for all of your Tech tinkering needs from Custom PCB fabrication and assembly to 3D printing cncing and even injection molding PCB way offers quality manufacturing delivered right to your doorstep it's a great service to make that side project you have in mind come to life but even if you don't have a project in mind PCB ways open source Community has you covered every week a handful of user generated PCB files 3D prints and other designs are showcased for you to view get inspired and to try out for yourself this chica slate project for example looks really cool I love it when you could find a little Easter eggs baked directly into to the pcbs themselves so if you're up for it here you can also vote on the designs that you like the most and even submit your very own projects for others to see but now if you're still a bit hesitant to get started with custom boards another thing to consider is that when you register a new account with PCB way you'll also receive a five dollar welcome bonus and the cost of 10 custom PCB boards also happens to be five dollars so definitely worth checking out to get you over the hump thanks again to PCB way for sponsoring today's video you can check them out with the top Link in the description below now returning to our dry ice CPU experiment if you take a close look at the heatsink and surrounding motherboard you might be able to notice these small droplets of liquid starting to form you might think this is due to the dry ice melting and turning into liquid but the thing about dry ice is that it evaporates when it warms up it doesn't turn into liquid at all so these droplets are coming from somewhere else entirely and the culprit is condensation the same thing happens when you place a cold glass of water on the counter during a hot summer day you'll notice the outside of the glass becomes wet due to the temperature difference between the cold air inside and the warmer air outside when air is cool to a temperature below its dew point its moisture capacity becomes reduced causing Airborne water vapor to turn into liquid so these droplets on our computer are not melted dry ice but actually just H2O which as you may know does not mix nicely with electronics due to its Keen ability to conduct electricity and cause electrical shorts so condensation poses a serious issue when a CPU gets too cold but what are some ways to circumvent this the answer surprisingly can likely be found in your bathroom medicine cabinet if you've ever watched a video of an extreme overclocker preparing for say pouring liquid nitrogen directly on a CPU you might have noticed that their first step is covering the motherboard in a coat of Vaseline this hydrophobic coat acts as insulation between the motherboard and the surrounding air creating a barrier for water vapor to form on it when it condenses without it being directly in contact with these sensitive electronics and as a side note nail polish can also be used for the same effect in place of Vaseline but is slightly more of a permanent solution because it's a lot more difficult to clean up alright so condensation is a problem that can be accounted for but what other issues crop up when we reach these Sub-Zero temperatures well to find out we now need to take a closer look at our thermal paste serving as the layer directly between our CPU and heatsink thermal paste job is to replace any and all air pockets between these two surfaces to more efficiently transfer heat and it does a fantastic job at this between the temperatures of a 130 degrees Celsius at the high end and negative 50 degrees Celsius on the low end but wait a minute we're outside the balance of this range now leading much closer to negative 60 and 70 degrees Celsius than the limit of negative 50. it's so outside of this range you can quickly see how stiff and rigid are once viscous thermal paste has now become depending on the chemical ingredients and makeup of our specific thermal paste this rigidity will often lead to the paste cracking and when this occurs in our PC it introduces gaps in our cooling system with air taking its place which means at this point our thermal paste is no longer bridging our heat source and our heat sink leading to very inefficient thermal transfer on top of that this situation becomes even more drastic if we have any type of liquid metal thermal paste inside of the IHS of our CPU and while it's not the most common situation in the world it's certainly familiar to you overclocking enthusiasts to put some liquid metal inside of a CPU at room temperature it certainly outperforms normal thermal paste but in these extreme cold situations the liquid metal becomes even more rigid than normal thermal paste and due to its proximity to the actual CPU dye and caches it presents an extremely dangerous threat of physically scratching these internal components the solution this time around is simply to use thermal paste that's specifically made for these really low temperatures and to avoid using liquid metal thermal paste altogether alright so now that we've circumnavigated the threat of both condensation and the cracking of our thermal paste at these temperatures of around negative 60 to 70 degrees Celsius it's time to get even colder and I mean a lot colder to do so we need to leave the confines of our studio and find a cryogen lab as the cpu's temperature drops lower and lower into the negative 200s of degrees Celsius we in fact can enter an entirely new form of computing altogether specifically the world of quantum Computing Quantum Computing requires Quantum CPU use and inside of these Quantum processors even minuscule amounts of heat can cause errors within the storage of qubits which are essentially the building blocks of a Quantum PC because of this we need to store a Quantum CPU at temperatures colder than space itself which is mind-boggling but if dry ice can only get us down to around negative 70 degrees Celsius how in the world can we get nearly four times colder than that well one method that is currently being used by researchers is a cryogen-free dilution refrigeration system that has several stages of cooling mechanisms but mainly relying on the evaporation of helium Isotopes as a refrigerant this allows space to be cooled to fractions of degrees above the coldest theoretical temperature possible which is also known as absolute zero and for context is around negative 273 degrees Celsius that said there is an alternative cooling method being explored to replace these large refrigerated rooms and this new method has proven to allow for similar types of extreme cooling while keeping the rest of the room at normal temperature and the solution is none other than lasers that's right this is The Cutting Edge technology of laser cooling through the process of launching specific wavelengths of light at a microscopic level at individual molecules making up an object laser cooling can add momentum in the opposite direction that these molecules are currently moving which in effect slows everything down and massively reduces the temperature of the entire system it honestly feels like it's out of a sci-fi movie or something but it actually works which is incredible now currently this method has constraints about cooling large surface areas so for it to cool the entire surface of say a CPU might require some time but that said if this technology can scale to the point where you can install it inside of your own PC well at that point your CPU will be very close to becoming a Super conductor at these unfathomably low temperatures of approaching absolute zero your processor would effectively be able to transfer electricity through it with no resistance whatsoever also leading to no heat whatsoever which if you ask me is the ultimate end game for a cooling system within your computer one that produces no heat at all so therefore yes there are certainly challenges when a CPU gets colder and colder and colder but as we've seen today the benefits of having a cold CPU far outweigh the consequences and in our typical PCS with liquid or air cooling we actually never have to deal with these consequences anyway but that said this was still a fun topic to explore so that's all I have for you today I'm Mr Easter thank you for watching and I'll catch you in the next one to stay cool out there but not too cold

Channel: mryeester

Views: 1,296,596

Keywords: pc, pc tips, pc building, mryeester

Id: _6mjbtgmN_k

Length: 10min 5sec (605 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023