Nitrogen-cooled PCs

[mattx]

BBC NEWS | Technology | Tech Know: Nitrogen-cooled PCs

 

Looking at the paper cups etc I just hope one of them does not pick up the wrong one thinking it's a cup of tea..........

[synaesthesia]

lol - no wonder that chap's machine was crashing, he's using ruddy Kingston memory. Like trying to drive an F1 car on a set of £25 scrubbed tyres!

 

Fair play to them though, would rather spend my weekends playing golf or snooker than alternating playing a game/3dmark and pouring liquid nitrogen into my PC

[laserblazer]

In 1970 I worked on a satellite earth station in the Maldives (tough but somebody had to do it) and the parametric receiver amp. was designed to be cooled by liquid nitrogen to improve the signal to noise ratio. We had a very expensive plant for producing the nitrogen but neer had to use for the purpose because the signal strength was so good without cooling.

 

We used it to cool our beer when went on a fishing trips.

[t_h]

We used it to cool our beer when went on a fishing trips.

 

Justified the expense then in my opinion.

[CyberNerd]

When I worked in a chemistry lab we used liquid N2 for various things including cooling equipment,

One of our postgrad students had the dumb idea of cooling a bottle of wine in a Nitrogen dewer ( A dewer is essentially a vacuum filled flask). The Wine bottle froze so rapidly it exploded, causing the Dewer to implode. Luckily the guy was wearing safety specs - he was covered in small cuts and there was glass right over the other side of the lab. We didn't tell HSE about that.

[srochford]

The other exciting thing you can do with a dewar of liquid nitrogen is put a damp cork in the top. If there's enough moisture, it will freeze to the top. You've then got a sealed unit with nitrogen slowly boiling and the pressure building up. Before long, it goes bang in a quite spectacular fashion.

 

Kids: don't try this at home :-)

[CyberNerd]

The other exciting thing you can do with a dewar of liquid nitrogen is put a damp cork in the top. If there's enough moisture, it will freeze to the top. You've then got a sealed unit with nitrogen slowly boiling and the pressure building up. Before long, it goes bang in a quite spectacular fashion.

 

Kids: don't try this at home :-)

 

Dry Ice (solid CO2) is also fine for this (allegedly), it's easier to get hold of and a good deal safer.

Half fill a 2ltr coke bottle with warm water, add a few handfulls of CO2, tighten the lid, run.