Say you can’t move your entire data center to the edge of the Arctic Circle, where it’s constantly frigid and the electricity is cheap. How do you cool the furnace-like heat that big data-storage spaces generate? Use hot water from computers to drive the refrigeration of others. IEEE Spectrum reports. “The electrical energy that goes into the computer is converted into heat, essentially, and if you could reuse that heat somehow, then you recover a large part of the energy and the cost that you put into this,” says Tilo Wettig at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Basically, that waste heat can be used to drive a special kind of refrigerator called an adsorption chiller. The chillers produce cold water, which is then used to cool other computers in the data center or provide air-conditioning for the site’s human workers. The Regensburg team spent over a year operating a new liquid-cooling technology meant for large-scale, piping-hot computer clusters. They call their research platform iDataCool. Since the project was carried out in collaboration with the IBM Research & Development Laboratory, the researchers based it on IBM’s iDataPlex server system, designed for high-performance computing. [The] key innovation of iDataCool is its low-cost, custom-designed copper heat sink, through which the water flows, drawing away heat. The processor heat sink is hard-soldered to a copper pipeline with flowing water, which is attached to heat sinks affixed to other components in the system, such as memory and voltage controllers. Energy from all this hot water (above 65 degrees Celsius) drives the adsorption chiller, which feeds a separate cooling loop in the data center. The energy recovered was about 25 percent of what would’ve been lost (better thermal insulation could get it to 50 percent). Most of our laptops are cooled by air, often with fans. Liquid-cooled systems are more expensive and require more maintenance (water causes irreparable damage to circuits), so its biggest deterrent might be the fear of putting up a little more money for a system that isn’t widely used. The results were presented at the International Supercomputing Conference in Leipzig, Germany, last week. [Via IEEE Spectrum] Image: SuperMUC (with a similar warm water cooling system) / LRZ

Due to increased heat produced by overclocked components, an effective cooling system is necessary to avoid damaging the hardware. Overclockers go to great extents to keep their valuable hardware cool in the face of ridiculous speeds. Here are a few examples of MHz junkies that might have gone just a little too far while trying to keep their computers cool (in no particular order):

1. The Turbocharger: This guy had an old turbocharger lying around and decided to put it to good use, pumping air into his flaming hot case faster than any 90mm fan out there.
   


2. Liquid Nitrogen Cooled: The Reigning Champion, used again and again with every new chip released. The only way to go for a new 3DMark record. This was used to cool a P4 over clocked to 5.25Ghz!
   


3. The Oversize Fan: Built on Plastic Tubing, with a rediculously large fan. Completely custom case with probably the best ventilation possible.
   


4. Pool Cooled PC: Cooler Computer, Warmer Pool. This guy integrated the water cooling system for a few computers with his pool's piping to get a cheap and efficient water cooling system.
   


5. The Case Fan Case: This case consists of 70 Case Fans total, all blowing air into or out of the case. The fans aren't screwed onto the case, they are the case.
   


6. The Cookie Jar Trick: A fan mount, air duct, and hard drive silencing enclosure -- all in one! This practical mod is for anyone running a high speed HDD but looking for some silence at night.
   


7. Refrigerant Cooled PC: Think of it as Liquid Nitrogen Lite. This mod uses the same technology as a refrigerator, and is fairly cheap if you have the supplies.
   
   


8. The Water Cooled PC: From 1885? This beautiful rig combines style and substance. Truly a work of art.
   


9. The Cooking Oil PC: $1000 worth of hardware submerged in oil. The vegetable oil acts as a good coolant but doesn't conduct electricity. Just don't play Crysis for ten hours straight or you'll end up with some deep fried chips.
   


10. Air Ducts: Foam Boards Direct Air Inside Case. This is another cheap and practical mod anyone can do. A few peaces of cardboard and a couple fans to efficiently direct air in any case.
    

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