Well renowned RAM and PSU maker OCZ has another product up their sleeve. The Cryo-Z Single Stage Direct Die phase change cpu cooling unit. Said to retail at $500 this is perfect for those wanting to venture into the world of extreme cooling but don't have the will or the know how to do one themselves.

People claim there are warehouses with them ready to roll off to you but something is holding them back. They have a 1/6 HP compressor so they wont be the strongest or the coldest thing on the block. My guess is they will be charged with r-154a or r-402a. Giving you temps ranging from -20 to -50 C head temp.

Pretty neat to see this world is beeing brought into a more mainline area. Here is a link to a look at what she is http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/377/1

Perhaps because a fridge is damp and electronics don't like water?

Well unless you have an industrial freezer it would not do much good. You can however duct an A/c unit into your case safely and cool your system as a whole but not down to -50C.

Someone would want to cool their system down to that temp because they want to be extreme in their overclocking pursut. The cold makes electrons flow much better and easyer. So your max overclock with max voltage can probably done under a phase change with stock voltage. Also someone with a cold PU has the capacity to put more voltage through their cpu than you would ever dream of. I put 1.8 vcore through my cpu. You would never try that on air.

I would just replace my aging 486 DX 66, with a fantastically fast 486 DX 100... ...!!

None of this "over clocking" malarkey!... ...!

Paul.... ...!

If it were to burst you could get pretty hurt. Most (good) phase builders pressure test their units to 300 PSi or more for 24 hours before an actuall charge to test for bursting and leaks. Most gasses condense at way lower than 300 PSI anyways. Around 70 - 220 PSI. These units probably use R-404a or something like that wich would need a pressure of 173.51 PSi to condense at 75 degrees F.

That would work good for keeping the tower as a whole cool, Hemroid but what these systems here do is cool the CPU directly so you can get temps on the CPU Die down in the average range of -40C or so. Think more over this product I think OCZ has a  problem on their hands. Their small phase were probably designed to handle the load of an Single core/early dual core cpus. Now that we are in the quad core generation things are running hotter. These small units may not even be able to better water cooling with a hot high end quad core overclocked. So I think they have a problem not getting these out the door when they made them.

Phase(depending on the gas) does not cary heat load very well. A unit may be tuned to handle 1.6 vols and if you crank it much past that say .05 volts a loaded CPU will actually overheat. You might be able to run -10 C on the Die at idle but once you fire up a intensive application your CPU will overheat. A phase change is not just a game of connect the pipes and throw in some refrigerant. The pipes need to be of proper size and lenth and they need to accomodate the medium. This all takes a lot of research, math, and experience to get a phase to work right for a singular CPU.

You can not just take a phase unit off of one CPU model and put it on another and expect the same performance. Sure it will probably work but not as well or well at all. WHat OCZ was hoping to do was provide a cheap solution so all of that work is left out. But they may have tried to go to cheap and their units only work on a select range of CPUs.


If anyone is interested in extreme cooling without the phase unit you can get some decent temps with a Electric Peltier AKA Thermoelectric Cooling(TEC). I am not familiar with them but traditionally you have 2 copper plats a cold and hot plate. By use of electricity it pulls all of the heat off of the cold plat and trnasfers it to the hot plate, where other means are used to eveacuate the heat. Depending on the size of the tec you can get som pretty cold temps. But the colder you want the more power you need wich means more heat. Most tecs these days that are worth their salt need to be water cooled themselves and they need a dedicated PSU.
Tecs (because of their high power intake) have been known to start electrical fires because the home wiring was to old or small to handle the flow. If possible run it off of a different line than your PC..A different line not a different outlet. Or run a dedicated line straight to the breaker box.


Both methods have their dangers, stengths, and weaknesses but both are good options for extreme overclocking. All of todays world record clocks are attained on Dry ice, liquid Nitro, or a Cascade phase change unit.