Why not Water cooling?

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  • Reply 161 of 219
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    But the G5 is designed to invite "tampering" in the form of RAM, HDD, PCI and AGP upgrades, even to the extent of making it as easy as it has ever been to add any of those items to a tower ...But the PowerMac G5 is a tower. It has to easily accept GeForce FX cards, 12" PCI cards, 10,000 RPM SATA drives, 8GB (or 16GB, since the PM will be able to accept 2GB modules when those become available) of the fastest RAM on the market, and one or two workstation-class CPUs, all while running quietly.



    Amorph, that's not what I meant by tampering. AGP, PCI, RAM, Hard drives are all designed to be upgraded and it will not void any company's warranty. The NEC machine that I refer to has 3 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, 2 RAM slot, and 2 bays for hard drives. Water-cooling will not prevent you from upgrading those devices.



    There just will be no more tampering with the CPU and motherboard. It's goodbye to the CPU upgrade manufacturers (Or is it? Will they make liquid cooled upgrades? But that's another story.) I haven't any recent stories of any computer maker which encourages CPU swaps.
  • Reply 162 of 219
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BeigeUser

    Amorph, that's not what I meant by tampering. AGP, PCI, RAM, Hard drives are all designed to be upgraded and it will not void any company's warranty. The NEC machine that I refer to has 3 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, 2 RAM slot, and 2 bays for hard drives. Water-cooling will not prevent you from upgrading those devices.



    Do you have a link to pictures of this thing? Because if the liquid cooling doesn't extend to those devices, then they'll have to be cooled some other way, because they'll heat the case up and change the airflow for the worse. Maybe this is one of the many PC cases that offers all those slots because they're in the ATX spec, not because the manufacturer has even tried to make sure the system works when they're all filled up.



    Or, the liquid cooling does extend to them, in which case it's difficult to upgrade them. Either way, the solution is considerably less elegant than the G5's, where the cooling system is independent of, but sensitive to and more than capable of handling all the expansion options.



    Quote:

    There just will be no more tampering with the CPU and motherboard. It's goodbye to the CPU upgrade manufacturers (Or is it? Will they make liquid cooled upgrades? But that's another story.) I haven't any recent stories of any computer maker which encourages CPU swaps.



    CPU upgrade manufacturers have proven to be almost infinitely resourceful. I wouldn't count them out. At any rate, given that the G5's motherboard faces the case wall directly behind it (so that when you open a G5, you're looking at the underside of the motherboard), this problem is already essentially solved.
  • Reply 163 of 219
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    Exactly! Wow... yer smart! That was my point dimwit, or should I call you Bill?



    Well it's good you are finally over your "water-cooling fits all" fixation.



    It makes a lot of sense for those vendors who can't seem to come up with anything better than a generic, beige box. As for Apple's industrial design exercises, I don't think we should be so eager to shove them under a desk or a dark room just yet. I think they should keep going with their prominently displayed works of art for as long as they can milk it. It is a part of what makes them stand-out in the first place.
  • Reply 164 of 219
    Quote:

    I was riffing off the "computer like an appliance" idea, which has been central to Apple's thinking for over two decades now. And which I happen to think is a great idea.



    Ok, thats what I though... maybe apppliance wasn't the right word... I am thinking of a water heater or home air conditioner or your homes circuit box. Or like a home server.



    Quote:

    looked like or what they were shaped like, but stackable components are certainly possible (just be aware of heat issues).



    Can you have modular graphics cards with this technology? Or is it just for peripherals?



    Quote:

    The closest current answer to what you want is the good old 19" rack, which has been used to "stack" components together for decades now.



    This isn't aesthetically pleasing at all is it though? Or is this for the basement method? As for the living room modular system I envision just a normal stereo system type setup... but you would need all the computer companies to build their components approximatley the same size so they stacked neatly... or you would need the christmas boc type system.



    Quote:

    As to having the things in a closet - well, that brings in networking, and wireless networking, both of which are significant bottlenecks. If you want to hook up a display then the whole stack will have to be somewhere in the general vicinity of a desk. Closets are the domain of headless servers, not personal computers.



    Or you could have a new wiring system in your house... but is there a limit to the distance the monitor signal could travel? Can you boost that signal if necessary?
  • Reply 165 of 219
    Quote:

    Well it's good you are finally over your "water-cooling fits all" fixation.



    Your fantasy world is fascinating.



    Am I Saddam Hussein in your fantasy world... and this is some kind of vigilante justice? Don't you have something more productive to do? When did arguing with me become your pet project?



    Quote:

    It makes a lot of sense for those vendors who can't seem to come up with anything better than a generic, beige box. As for Apple's industrial design exercises, I don't think we should be so eager to shove them under a desk or a dark room just yet. I think they should keep going with their prominently displayed works of art for as long as they can milk it. It is a part of what makes them stand-out in the first place.



    You claimed that water cooling was simply just for "teh cool" factor(which it isn't), so therefore you said it wasn't worth doing... don't you see your hypocrasy, ever?



    If you want to BUY SCULPTURE you don't have to use getting a computer as an excuse.
  • Reply 166 of 219
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    Ok, thats what I though... maybe apppliance wasn't the right word... I am thinking of a water heater or home air conditioner or your homes circuit box. Or like a home server.



    "Major appliance," then?



    Quote:

    Can you have modular graphics cards with this technology? Or is it just for peripherals?



    You can have modular anything you can solder to a motherboard - graphics cards, RAM, CPUs, etc. You will have to deal with latency issues (because the signal has to travel a long distance), but the bandwidth is there.



    Quote:

    This isn't aesthetically pleasing at all is it though? Or is this for the basement method?



    Racks have been inhabiting closets and basements for eons. They can also be found in live stage rigs used by performers, and in studios.



    I don't think you'd have one in your living room, though. Unless it was behind a door, the way some multimedia centers hide components. Because, let's face it, most stereo components aren't all that great to look at either.



    Quote:

    As for the living room modular system I envision just a normal stereo system type setup... but you would need all the computer companies to build their components approximatley the same size so they stacked neatly... or you would need the christmas boc type system.



    That's the advantage of the rack. The 19" rack is an industry standard across multiple industries, so you can mix and match all kinds of things freely, and the rack provides spacing between components for ventilation, and it also prevents the component on the bottom from having to bear the weight of all the components on top. You can fit 42 Xserves in a standard full-height rack, but you wouldn't want to stack 42 Xserves on top of each other!



    Quote:

    Or you could have a new wiring system in your house... but is there a limit to the distance the monitor signal could travel? Can you boost that signal if necessary?



    I believe so. They've got monitor cables up to 15 feet now, at least, and I think you can get repeaters. It would cost a fortune to wire your house with monitor cable, though. That stuff is not cheap, and it's far too thick to be any good at turning corners or following the conventional paths that wiring takes through a house - never mind the fact that you might not want live electrical components like the repeaters embedded in your walls.
  • Reply 167 of 219
    Amorph,



    As mentioned in my original post, I'm not an engineer and the technical talk is starting to go beyond my knowledge. But from what I can tell from the NEC website, only the CPU is water-cooled. The rest of the components are air-cooled in the traditional way. They seem to use some kind of two-fan combination to achieve these results. Either way, it seems to work. NEC claims 33dB and it does sound quiet in person. Of course it's hard to tell for sure when I only heard it in a computer store with the salepeople talking and A/C going. (I live in Japan)



    A description of the cooling system is about halfway down this page:



    http://121ware.com/community/navigat...t%2f01&ND=4485



    It's all in Japanese so hopefully, the pictures make sense to you. If you have any questions, let me know. I will read the text and attempt to make sense in English.
  • Reply 168 of 219
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BeigeUser

    But from what I can tell from the NEC website, only the CPU is water-cooled. The rest of the components are air-cooled in the traditional way.



    OK, well, that's interesting. Since PPCs (including even the 970, since it's now obvious that the two 2GHz 970s total 97W) aren't nearly as hot as P4s, the usefulness of water cooling for that chip in that model doesn't imply anything about the usefulness of water cooling for the G5. Of course, there's that little conduit in the G5's heat sink(s)...



    Quote:

    They seem to use some kind of two-fan combination to achieve these results. Either way, it seems to work. NEC claims 33dB and it does sound quiet in person.



    That's in the general vicinity of the sound levels for the G5. A bit quieter, but not much, especially given its power and expandability relative to the top-end PowerMac.
  • Reply 169 of 219
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    Your fantasy world is fascinating.



    Am I Saddam Hussein in your fantasy world... and this is some kind of vigilante justice? Don't you have something more productive to do? When did arguing with me become your pet project?




    I'm only applying your own logic to every new idea you suggest to see how ludicrous the result is. You, OTOH, seem to be overtly handing out the insults. You should put that in check. Don't believe me? Ask somebody. Your hostility is not welcome here.



    Quote:

    You claimed that water cooling was simply just for "teh cool" factor(which it isn't), so therefore you said it wasn't worth doing... don't you see your hypocrasy, ever?



    ...when it is applied in situations where it really wasn't a necessity. If you can't pick up the real meaning from people's posts, then don't quote them back to support your own viewpoints.



    Quote:

    If you want to BUY SCULPTURE you don't have to use getting a computer as an excuse.



    Sure you don't have to, but if you are going to have a big box of fancy componentry, an attractive case design sure beats the pants off a generic, beige box in the looks department. That point seems to escape a lot of people since they have already decided in their minds that they are going to shove their PC box into obscurity, anyway.
  • Reply 170 of 219
    Quote:

    That stuff is not cheap, and it's far too thick to be any good at turning corners or following the conventional paths that wiring takes through a house - never mind the fact that you might not want live electrical components like the repeaters embedded in your walls.



    This doesn't make sense to me though... coaxial cable is VERY stiff and almost as thick as my monitor cable... also look at all the information it can carry, and how far. There must be some solution to take care of that.
  • Reply 171 of 219
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    Since PPCs (including even the 970, since it's now obvious that the two 2GHz 970s total 97W) aren't nearly as hot as P4s, the usefulness of water cooling for that chip in that model doesn't imply anything about the usefulness of water cooling for the G5.



    If you can cool a chip that's hotter than 2 G5's combined by using water-cooling and 2 fans, wouldn't that benefit the G5's by allowing it clock higher? Or reducing the number of fans? Move the CPU around so the case can be more compact?



    Maybe. Maybe not. I assume Apple probably already has the answer. They probably have prototype liquid-cooled G5's in their labs somewhere and they probably had it for months now. The fact that the current G5's use the 9-fan setup is because it provided the best balance of cost, reliability, quietness, and performance.



    But reliability and costs tend to get better over time. I still think there is a possible liquid-cooled Mac in the future. Maybe Apple will take the wait-and-see approach and watch how the NEC and Hitachi turns out. They've done that many times before. They were late adopters of USB2, IDE, PCI, AGP etc. But I've always liked it when Apple was the first on the marketplace (e.g. Wi-Fi, firewire, GUI etc.) If water-cooling catches on, I hope they don't wait too long.
  • Reply 172 of 219
    Quote:

    The fact that the current G5's use the 9-fan setup is because it provided the best balance of cost, reliability, quietness, and performance.



    I don't know about this... just because Apple isn't doing it doesn't mean it wasn't the best solution at the time. I think other things that have nothing to do with the actual engineering play a factor. For one, there is the stigma that is shared by many here; fluid + electronics = catastrophy or people feel that they won't be able to tinker with their computers. It is such a radical change I think they were simply affraid to take that risk as you mentioned about them being late adopters at times.



    btw... are you japanese or just living in japan, Beige user?
  • Reply 173 of 219
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    I don't know about this... just because Apple isn't doing it doesn't mean it was the best solution at the time. I think other factors that have nothing to do with the actually engineering plays a factor. For one there is the stigma that is shared by many here; fluid + electronics = catastrophy or people feel that thewy won't be able to tinker with their computers. It is such a radical change I think they were simply affraid to take that risk as you mentioned about them being late adopters at times.



    btw... are you japanese or just living in japan, Beige user?




    That's a tough question. I am 100% Japanese in ethnicity. I was born in raised in Japan. But I am a U.S. citizen and I've only attended American schools for my whole life. I currently work for a American University here in Japan. Sorry, didn't mean to confuse you.
  • Reply 174 of 219
    That is very interesting! Do you have a dual citizenship? If so, you are extremely lucky. : D I love Japanese culture... everything - architecture, cuisine, art, technology, japanese craftsmanship.



    You have an interesting perspective... you must be very comfortable with both cultures... how do you compare them? Which do you prefer?
  • Reply 175 of 219
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    Do you have a dual citizenship? ...You have an interesting perspective... you must be very comfortable with both cultures... how do you compare them? Which do you prefer?



    I only have U.S. citizenship. I don't want to talk too much about this here since this has nothing to do with current hardware. Come to think of it, the whole talk about water-cooling has nothing to do with current hardware.



    Anyway, I don't really prefer either culture. They both have their pros and cons. I just go back and forth as it pleases me. This is one of the benefits of my life.
  • Reply 176 of 219
    http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...threadid=37488



    Quote:

    A Spymac thread posted this weekend reveals some screenshots and information about a feature of the new PowerMac G5's called "Slewing".



    The feature is located in the Energy Saver Control Panel and allows the user to make some modifications to the Processor and Bus performance settings. A concept that is familiar to laptop owners... the G5 can be run in Reduced, Highest and Automatic performance settings.



    Details on the various modes are provided in Apple's Developer Documentation.







    quote:

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------



    To lower power consumption, heat generation, and fan noise, the Power Mac G5 computer incorporates an automatic power management technique called bus slewing. Bus slewing is designed to run at high processor and bus speeds and high voltage when the demand on the processor is high, and to run at low processor and bus speeds and low voltage when the demand on the processor is low.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------







    Speed ranges involved start from 1.3GHz up to the highest rated GHz of the chip (1.6, 1.8, or 2.0). The default slewing option for the PowerMac G5s is Automatic, and the processor and bus speeds are modulated seamlessly to the user.



    According to our contacts, there should be no performance loss in Automatic mode.



    That being said, at least one user claims an 11 point increase in their Xbench score after changing their Slewing mode from Automatic to Highest. Readers are reminded that XBench has been inconsistent in producing reproducible benchmark numbers -- even on the same machine. MacRumors' reader 1stunna managed to get a 11 point increase in Xbench scores by simply rerunning the test three times, with no other changes to the system. Whether this represents test-to-test variability or a side-effect of the processor automatically ramping up is still up for debate.



    This is interesting.... I wonder how much this decreases noise levels? Or is the listed noise level with this in full effect?



    That could explain the noise complaint in the thread I posted this from.



    So in other words... what is the actual maximum noise level of the G5?
  • Reply 177 of 219
    ryaxnbryaxnb Posts: 583member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Fawkes

    Oh, I just can't resist a bit of trivia... Introduced in 1985, the Cray-2 Supercomputer (1.9 GFlops, 2 GBytes memory) used a fluid called Florinert (used in heart transplants) for cooling. It was pumped throughout the entire computer and then cooled by a refrigeration unit (see picture below, just to the right of the woman--note the cool transparent liquid-filled bubbly thing with the Cray logo). The stuff is completely non-conducting, so the computer was essentially immersed in it. This ability was demonstrated to the press by plunging a running Mac 128 (just introduced, remember) into a pool of the stuff!



    For you other geeks out there, the Cray-1 (133 MFlops), introduced in 1976, was made entirely out of *2* chips: 5-input NANDs and 1k memories.




    That shows how tech is evolving... I bet the PM G5 can do close to 1.9Gflops (and the G4 can do 133Mflops!)
  • Reply 178 of 219
    ryaxnbryaxnb Posts: 583member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    Lets get one thing straight... I love apples designers, and engineers, innovativeness. I absolutely love it. I love most of their design choices...but this is one that is really disappointing.



    This wind tunnel solution won't last. It doesn't have enough life in it and even as is it has some horrible problems. As I have pointed out over and over.



    So why even bother with this bizarre system? At the very least they should have gone to a liquid system. But there are even some other systems that have a lot of potential, too.



    Sure... we can just deal with all all the problems of the G5 case design... but why should we when we have other alternatives?



    We can walk to work... or wash our clothes on a rock in a river... OR we can spend some extra money and buy a car and a washing machine to make our lives easier and better. Hell, we don't really need a computer... there are many alternatives to do the things we do on computers... yet we pay extra money for the convenience and luxury a computer provides... so why are we unwilling to pay for a better, smaller, quieter and cleaner method of cooling our computer?




    What are all the problems with air-cooling? Let's go over what you've stated so far:

    Smaller: Then where are you going to put the radiator, radiator fans, and liquid?

    Quieter: What about the radiator fans?

    9 fans: Yes, but 9 quiet fans.

    Able to move more heat: True. However, air-cooling hasn't reached it's limits yet.
  • Reply 179 of 219
    ryaxnbryaxnb Posts: 583member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    That was a fantastic post, BeigeUser. I agree with everything you said... I wish I could have said it as eloquently.



    I actually believe the whole expandability and modification aspect of personal computers needs to be addressed in some different way. We either need to treat the bulk of our computers as if they were some type of appliance... like your homes water heater OR like your homes stereo system.



    One scenario puts the bulk of the computer which is just absolutley functional and has no regard for aesthetics and is built for easy modification in your basment or a closet or attic.



    Then you have the modular stackable stereo angle... where each piece could have its own small case that you could buy for it. Almost like varying sizes of christmas boxes.



    Lets say you get a new video card... buy a "christmas box" like apple case in the thickness that matches the thickness of the new video card. Simply stack it on top of your existing PC.



    This is really difficult to describe. lol I need to draw some pictures or something.




    The "computer as appliance" thing has been around for awhile, and while other companies made "Internet PCs" that failed, Apple made a good one, the iMac. The iMac even partially uses liquid-cooling, I believe. The iMac makes a good "computer appliance." And I wish Dell and other companies would get the idea: computer as appliance is good as long as:

    *You make it fairly full-featured (iMac)

    *You make it small (iMac)

    *You don't make it a tower (iMac)

    However, pros seem to like an expanadable tower, while basic users go off happily with their iMacs. Thus, I believe the "computer as appliance" thing is good, but only for entry-level and midrange.
  • Reply 180 of 219
    ryaxnbryaxnb Posts: 583member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iSegway

    That was a fantastic post, BeigeUser. I agree with everything you said... I wish I could have said it as eloquently.



    I actually believe the whole expandability and modification aspect of personal computers needs to be addressed in some different way. We either need to treat the bulk of our computers as if they were some type of appliance... like your homes water heater OR like your homes stereo system.



    One scenario puts the bulk of the computer which is just absolutley functional and has no regard for aesthetics and is built for easy modification in your basment or a closet or attic.



    Then you have the modular stackable stereo angle... where each piece could have its own small case that you could buy for it. Almost like varying sizes of christmas boxes.



    Lets say you get a new video card... buy a "christmas box" like apple case in the thickness that matches the thickness of the new video card. Simply stack it on top of your existing PC.



    This is really difficult to describe. lol I need to draw some pictures or something.




    There is one problem with this idea: It doesn't account for notebooks. Keep in mind that about 1/2 of Apple's sales are notebooks, and they don't want to leave them out.
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