Introduction
Some of you may still remember that we were pretty much the first to report on Kryotech and its CPU-cooling products almost 3 years ago. Since then Kryotech had been able to establish itself as the most prominent, if not even only, provider of professional sub-zero processor cooling solutions that enable the user to run her/his CPU at clock speeds way beyond its original specifications without any risk.
Cool Stuff From Denmark
This article is not about Kryotech, but about it’s only real competitor from the Kingdom of Denmark, a country famous for its lovely, but stubborn people, beautiful beaches and high-quality products. Although there’s hardly anything worse for a Dane than being compared to its once so imperialistic neighbour to the south, I will still dare saying that in the Danish population the expectations for product quality are just as high as for the picky Germans (I know what I am talking about!), as it is common for all the other Scandinavian nations as well.
Andre Sloth Eriksen And His Dream
More than three years ago, without being aware of Kryotech’s parallel-existence, Andre Sloth Eriksen decided to follow his vision and founded the company ‘asetek‘ in Denmark. At this time he had been a trainee at the Danish refrigeration unit manufacturer ‘Danfoss‘ and his idea was to produce a professional ultra-cooling solution for microprocessors that would enable it to run at clock speeds far beyond its specifications. Together with some die-hard cooling experts he started to develop asetek’s “VapoChill” line of products. Unlike his future US-competitor, asetek’s cooling solution was supposed to be small, light, quiet, easy to install and as versatile and independent as possible, but yet cost-effective. Today, asetek Inc. has become a full grown business, with R&D, Sales and Production departments, it is closely cooperating with leading cooling companies like Danfoss Denmark and Danfoss Germany and ready to supply the world with its well-designed and mature high-tech processor cooling solutions.
Two days ago Asetek announced its new VapoChill For Socket Processors and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what this article is actually about.
Sub-Zero Cooling In Theory
You know me long enough to remember that I just can’t shake my past as a doctor in a university hospital, who used to teach medical students. For that reason I won’t get into VapoChill’s details until I had the chance to explain the basic technology behind it. The impatient of you might be satisfied with the ultra-short version, which goes “sub-zero processor cooling is based on the same technology as the freezer that hosts all your frozen pizzas”.
I see that some of you are still interested, so get ready for some minimal thermo dynamics, your favorite in physics class.
Freon – The Thermal Carrier
First of all we need a medium that is able to transport the heat away from the processor. In case of a normal fan/heat sink solution this would be the surrounding air. Sub-zero cooling requires a closed system, which is using a specific coolant, also known as ‘freon’. Freon has a bit of a bad name, because former versions of it, as used in old refrigerators, freezers and air conditionings used to be destructive to the ozone layer.
The coolant found in today’s fridges, freezers, air conditionings and VapoChill is ‘green’, which doesn’t exactly mean that you should fertilize your plants with it, but at least it won’t kill them or you if there should ever be a leak. I’ve breathed the stuff once too and besides the fact that it might have made me do this lousy website job, it didn’t have too many bad effects on me. At room temperature the coolant is typically in gas-phase. Within a cooling unit it is constantly changing between fluid and gas condition, doing the job of – yes, you’ve guessed it – the actual cooling.
Cooling Through Evaporation
When a medium changes its aggregate condition from liquid to gaseous it actually ‘consumes’ energy. The best example that everyone knows is sweating. The sweat glands put some moisture on your skin and as it evaporates you get the cooling effect. Different fluids can ‘transport heat’ at certain temperatures more or less effectively. Splashing some alcohol (don’t use that expensive scotch, please) on your skin will make you realize that it cools a lot better than water. It simply evaporates quicker.
The Compressor
We have just learned that the coolant is gaseous at room temperature, but for it to have cooling effect it needs to be liquid. Thus the first step in our refrigeration circle is a compressor, which puts the coolant gas under very high pressure.
Taken from Danfoss’ website. Copyright by Danfoss
The Condenser
After compression, the Coolant is rather hot and not yet entirely liquid. The next step is a cooling unit, called ‘condenser’. It looks a bit like a shrunk car radiator. Usually you find one or more fans that ensure a good air flow through the condenser. You can find the condenser of many refrigerators at the bottom right underneath the fridge-door. When you put your hand there you will feel a warm air flow. This air was used to cool the compressed coolant.
Taken from Danfoss’ website. Copyright by Danfoss
After the coolant has passed through the condenser, it has successfully finished it’s phase change to liquid. In the next stage, the ‘receiver’ the liquid coolant is under high pressure and at about room temperature.
The ‘Expansion Valve’ and the ‘Evaporator’
Now comes the actual cooling trick. A special expansion valve or a long capillary tube (as used by VapoChill or Kryotech) ensures a pressure delta between the receiver and the evaporator, so that the pressure lasting on the coolant is actually dropping once it reaches the evaporator. The acute pressure drop of the coolant makes it change its aggregate phase back to gaseous, which consumes a lot of energy. In this condition the coolant is moving through the evaporator. The energy required by the coolant to change its phase from liquid to gas can only be obtained by removing thermal energy (=heat) from its surrounding, which is of course the surrounding of the evaporator. In case of a sub-zero CPU-cooler the processor is providing this thermal energy. Taking heat away from the CPU is the same as what we call ‘cooling’.
This part might be a bit hard to understand, so I’ve thought of some examples. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what happens if you open the valve of a fluid nitrogen tank to the normal air (remember Terminator II and the frozen T1000?). The gas streams out fast, it is very cold and you might find an actual buildup of frozen nitrogen around the leak. It is always a bit surprising, because the actual tank hadn’t been cold at all. It’s only the sudden pressure drop that causes the freezing temperature. Smokers who refill their gas-lighters may know a similar effect. The tip of the little refill tank gets very cold, especially when you are not able to connect it to the lighter properly and let the lighter-gas stream out to the open air. Finally I’d like to remind scuba divers, especially the ones who like to dive under freezing conditions. Those hardcore divers are most certainly aware of the fact that they require a very good regulator second stage, which does not produce ice. The logic is simple. In the second stage is always some water and the pressure drop of the breathing gas when you inhale could be enough to freeze the already cold water. Obviously this could be fatal.
The gaseous coolant is still pretty cold when it makes its way back to the compressor, to enter the cooling circle once more.
The Refrigeration Circle
In this excellent little picture from Danfoss you can see the hot and cold as well as the liquid and gaseous phases of the coolant as it moves through the refrigeration cycle.
The amount of cooling a refrigeration unit can provide is obviously depending on the flow of coolant through the system and the coolant-type itself. The more flow the more heat can be removed.
The New VapoChill
What you see here is the new design of a VapoChill-box. I personally don’t really care much for the looks of my computer, but Asetek is very proud on the new design, which was done by a professional team. When you purchase the VapoChill For Socket Processors you get this case plus the much more important cooling innards.
Inside of the case you will find a compact 12 V compressor + condenser unit and the special socket-evaporator. After we have understood the principle of cooling, we only need to pay attention to the evaporator, which is the most important and sophisticated part of this super-cooling solution.
The New VapoChill, Continued
The evaporator has two important functions. It is supposed to cool the processor as much as possible, while making sure that the surrounding of the processor, including the motherboard, doesn’t receive any major cooling at all, to avoid condense water buildup.
Here’s a quote from a previous cooling article at Tom’s Hardware:
| Cooling a CPU below the freezing point of water requires a very well done insulation from the surrounding. You can certainly imagine that otherwise all the liquid in the air around it would instantly freeze at the CPU and the surrounding components, further away condensed water would cover the less cold components of the motherboard and this would definitely jeopardize if not even destroy any computer system due to short circuits. Thus the CPU needs to be insulated very well and to avoid any condensing water, the cover of the CPU should even be heated. |
The New VapoChill, Continued
You see how complex it actually is to ensure a good insulation of the area around the CPU chip, if you’ve got a Socket-CPU situation. The boldest trick in this diagram is the heating element, which ensures that the pins of the CPU stay warm, keeping the motherboard from cooling down too much and thus from collecting condensed water.
The Specs
The most important thing to the majority of you will obviously be the temperature that VapoChill can reach. Andre told me that -19°C (-2°F) are the lowest CPU temperature possible for VapoChill, but he ensured me that his baby can reach the same CPU frequencies that Kryotech is able to reach with their -50°C (-58°F) solution. Of course, that remains to be seen for the time being.
Limiting VapoChill to -19°C (-2°F) cooling enables the usage of a significantly smaller and lighter compressor that is less noisy and wastes less energy than a compressor that goes down to -50°C (-58°F). It also keeps the costs down. As long as the processor clock speeds reached by VapoChill are indeed identical to those of Kryotech’s solution, a smaller, lighter, quieter and cheaper system is obviously of significant advantage. Asetek speaks of 30-60% possible CPU clock speed increase. Andre doesn’t like the term ‘overclocking’, but speaks of ‘thermic acceleration’.
Facts And Expectations
For the $650 of suggested retail price the VapoChill offers a very professional cooling solution for the crazy ones of us, who think that overclocking has still got a bright future, and it’s got to really, doesn’t it? It also might well be the default cooling solution of future processors.
VapoChill offers some special advantages, which I would like to list here:
- VapoChill is a one-case solution. There is no special bottom part attached. The compressor/condenser unit remains within the normal PC-housing.
- VapoChill is using a special 12 V compressor that receives its current from the PC-power supply. Thus it doesn’t matter if the system is used with 115 or 230 V.
- The compressor is compact, light, quiet and consumes only 50W.
- Asetek is not married with any CPU-maker, so VapoChill can host Athlon/Duron processors just as much as Pentium III/Celeron processors.
- As you can see in the picture below, the refrigeration unit is ABOVE the rest of the system, not underneath, which limits the way of the coolant to the CPU to a minimum and keeps the housing nice and tidy.
- VapoChill’s evaporator-unit fits ANY Socket370 or SocketA motherboard, due to its slim design. Thus there is no hassle choosing the right motherboard for it.
- VapoChill is “Made in Denmark”, which for me personally is just as good as “Made in Germany”. The ones of you who care about this will know what I mean. I wouldn’t apply this if Denmark would make cars though … 🙂
There’s also a few disadvantages right now.
- Asetek does not give any warranty on the CPUs used and neither Intel nor AMD are currently promising any support as well.
- Asetek has no close cooperation with any of the two x86 CPU-makers yet, which makes it difficult for them to receive early specification data of upcoming CPUs and put’s Asetek at a slightly unfair disadvantage compared to Kryotech. This speaks for the typical inflexibility of the large chip companies who think they are overly important. I am sure that this will change soon.
Before I jump to any conclusions, I will have to get my hands on one of these babies, to see if Andre’s claims are actually realizable. After speaking to him on the phone for more than an hour I’ve got a very good feeling. As much as Tom’s Hardware can make a product successful, as much it can make it a complete failure. It doesn’t seem to me as if Andre is gambling with me. He came across very confidant, but, much more importantly, refreshingly honest – something I don’t experience often when speaking to company officials. We will review a VapoChill extremely soon and then we will see if Kryotech has reasons to sweat or to stay cool.
Please follow-up with Processors On The Rocks VOL. 2.
