Introduction:

With the release of the P4 "C" and the new AMD A64 it was time to give my old Athlon XP a boost. There are numerous possibilities on how to approach this, one could upgrade his air cooling to a Thermalright SP-97 for example and win some Mhz. Next step would be to water cool your CPU. This can give you a nice increase in speed. Adding a peltier to the setup will furthermore up the total CPU Mhz.

Onwards and upwards we go, phase-change cooling is, at this time of writing, the best and most “extreme” cooling out there, it can push a 3Ghz P4 over the 4000Mhz peak, but the downside is it huge cost. nVentiv’s Mach I and II as well as Asetek’s Vapochill are 2 pre-fab solutions which provide you with below zero temperatures while keeping the installation and operation relatively easy. But to buy one of those units to give an older system a “speed boost” would be a bit counterproductive as the cost of such a unit finances an A64/P4 setup with ease.

So here I present you with my cooling material used on my poor Athlon XP:

Danfoss SC15D filled with R404a

715 W electrical power

300W @-40°C

Danfoss TS2 TEV with 0X -60°C/-25°C

Flexible tubes

Parts where bought from ebay and some from shops, the Evaporator head is a design by Nikolauzi from Loewe

Mandatory pictures of the setup:







The Danfoss hooked up:





Installation and isolation of the evap-head:






Up and running: