Many may not have heard of phase change cooling before but it is one of the best way to keep a computer cool short of submerging it in liquid nitrogen. The way it works is a compressor sucks gaseous Freon from an evaporator. The pressure is increased until the Freon changes to liquid. A inline radiator will dispose of the heat generated from the compression as a capillary tube lowers the pressure while the liquid Freon travels back to the evaporator. The entire process of turing the liquid back into gas uses the heat from your processor, that you are trying to get rid of to begin with. All of this results in temperatures as low as -30c. You can keep temperatures as steady as -25 while doing 1Ghz+ overclocks.

The main problem with all of this is that due to the technology used and the limited number of vendors supplying solutions, for years it has been in the price range of 850-1200$. The systems that include it are also pretty hideous looking in my opinion, compared to normal case options now avaliable.

At CES this year the company OCZ made an announcement that should completly change the Phase Change market. They will be introducing to the market a phase changing system named Cyro-Z that can be used with almost any case. In addition it will retail at only 299$ and they want to try to bring it down to 200$ as soon as increased sales volume allows it. Luckily the system is not only resonably priced but stylish looking. Due to the lesser cost you will not be able to open the unit up and change the cooling fluid but that is a very small negative considering that with the stock offering you will be looking at temperatures of -25 and below. Here is looking to a good year for technology.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Cory, Hardware, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.