Supercooling

For years hardware hackers have been working to get more speed out of their computer, one of the most popular methods has been overclocking the CPU. If a chip is designed to operate at say 500 MHz at 100°F, you may be able to get it to run at a little faster if you can cool the chip to say 80° F. This is partly because substances become better conductors of electricity the closer they come to absolute 0 (-459.67° F, -273.15° C). In fact even rubber becomes a perfect conductor at absolute 0.

CMOS chips likewise can run (be clocked) faster at lower temperatures. In fact if you cool a CPU down to –120° C you can safely double the speed of the chip. I hope to be able to overclock a PIII 500 MHz CPU to 1 GHz, to achieve such speeds a custom supercooler needs to be built that will cool the system and keep it cooled for an extended period of time. Below you can check out where I am in this project, if you have any comments or suggestions please drop me an email.

Phase 1

Phase 2

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