Liquid helium trumps liquid nitrogen at AMD's Phenom II overclocking love-in
By Tim Stevens 
posted May 28th 2009 10:38AM
posted May 28th 2009 10:38AM
posted May 28th 2009 10:38AM
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Helium is obtained as a gas by the liquefaction and fractional distillation of Atmospheric air.
It does costs energie to do this but it´s "expense of Earth's natural resources" depends on what kind of energy you are using. (if solar or wind energy was used to distillate the air the expense is minimal) The helium (and LN) is not lost it is just being released from where it had been obtained to begin with. (It´s kind of saying that if I fill a bucket with water from a river, throw the water back into the river I´m using up water... while I only used up the energy to complete the act of filling and emptying the bucket)
Not true. Helium is fractionated from natural gas, it has no meaningful concentration in the atmosphere.
Sorry, but your wrong, but so are several others here so lets set the record right for a minute
1. Helium is formed through radioactive decay and is typically harvested at petro oil sites or natural Gas sites, not the atmosphere where the concentration is too small to effectively harvest.
2. They do use Fractional Distillation to gather Helium, but it's not atmospheric air but rather Natural gas.
3. Yes, helium is the second most common element... In the universe not on earth atmospherically it only accounts for about 5ppm.
4. When You "return it to the atmosphere", not only was the nitrogen your releasing never in the air, but last time that matter was at the surface, if it ever was, it was a completely different element thanks to the miracle of radioisotope decay functions.
5. To complete your analogy it's more like taking a bucket of 24K gold and throwing it in the river. No it probably didn't hurt the river, and it cost a good bit of money for what fun you had, but if you had a reason you felt was justified then more power to you.
For the record I do think that over clocking CPUs is reason enough to justify the use of liquid helium, beats the hell out of sending up a friggin blimp.
helium can also be won back from the atmosphere, albeit at a higher cost. In fact before discovering it was available in rather high concentrations in some natural gas fields it was the only way to obtain it.
BTW The LHC needs 120 metric tons of liquid helium to cool down the accelerator (90 tons are being used in the magnets and the rest in the pipes and refrigerator). So please let those guys at AMD us a few liters as well.
under obama's new plan, they have to divy up the extra megahurtz and share it with all of us. Noone is allowed to have something that much better than the rest of us.
+1
mmmm communism tastes like fail
"mmmm communism tastes like fail"
Communism at least does have its positive sides. It for example had a pretty strong educational system, which cannot be said about the current USA.
Communism education is pure brainwash. You are tought one thing from one angle period! and you are only tought what the dick-tator wants you to learn.
In Communist America, the processor overclocks you?
"In these tough economic times it's good to see that one company at least is still willing to take things to great excesses at the expense of Earth's natural resources."
That's a funny remark coming from a site that promotes buying the newest latest gadgets that we don't actually need. I know I'm not good to the Earth--but I try not to be a hypocrite to boot.
sarcasm Engadget and hypocrisy never /sarcasm
me want!
Hate to be a killjoy, but safety glasses/goggles would have been a good idea in that photo
Sorry to burst their bubble, but ComputerTV and CompUSA in Miami held an attempt to break the 7Ghz barrier this Tuesday. They didn't reach 7, but they did get to 6.93Ghz. For more info visit http://com.puter.tv/
Helium is WASTED!!! Helium is WASTED!! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Helium is a light enough element that at room temperature it has enough velocity to leave earth's gravitational field. There is very little helium in the atmosphere.
We have a finite supply of Helium on earth, usually as a by product of extracting natural gas. So unless we start fusing hydrogen to make helium, we will run out.
+1
Though it may be the most common element... On earth it is not.
I'm really surprised at the amount of confusion between hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen. Please people, don't spread misinformation if you don't know what you're talking about.
So I shouldn't have huffed all that helium last week?
@ dirtyvegas. If you are a scuba diver @ 300 feet then all is fine.
Helium is insanely expensive now. A lot of NMR/MRI magnets are now equipped with helium recyclers just to prevent the cost of having to pay the rising cost of helium. If people are willing to pay that much money to over clock a machine, then why not just build a supercomputer?
Totally thought those guys on the left were making out.
Neat idea. And...um...the burning thing isn't quite accurate. It's more like evaporating. Even more, it's being returned to environment from which it was harvested. It's akin to complaining about the rain drying up. If you want to give a PC Earth friendly comment, complain about the fossil fuels used to extract the nitrogen and helium, not the use of common elements.
I think saving Aluminium (yes, "-inium") is of bigger concern.
;)
There is plenty of bauxite in the crust; and even when that's used up, the Aluminum isn't going anywhere.
Helium is produced *very* slowly by nuclear reactions here on Earth. When Helium is released into the atmosphere, most of it escapes gravity and is lost to us permanently. There is no way to trap Helium chemically, as it does not combine with other elements. It is difficult to create Helium since it requires a nuclear transmutation, and even if we had the technology to run fusion reactors to generate all of the world's electricity, it would still produce a minuscule amount of helium compared to our demand.
But... will it run Flight Simulator?
Terry Thomas
President
PC Tech
Atlanta, Georgia USA
(yeah, I've been around THAT long)
Wow. They botched the title on that one. I'm pretty sure it should be nitrogen in the title instead of hydrogen. Nothing like overclocking your computer to the point of explosion to get some publicity.
I noticed the same thing; funny that it didn't get noted on the first page of comments. So much for attention to detail...
They need to run a ribbon cable out the side of the processor so that it would be cooled from both sides.
The title is supposed to say Liquid Nitrogen, not Hydrogen. That wouldn't make sense anyway, since Hydrogen is a very volatile gas and you wouldn't want to be using it out and about.
.......and yes it will blend, play crysis and replace your girlfriend. kthxbai!
there is a video of this on ustream right now search for computer tv chanel
Watching all that helium go up in smoke makes this scuba diver cry.
@ John
Your absolutely right - its a piece of cake. I worked for a superconductivity company until 6 months ago, and we used liquid helium to lower the temperature to the point of almost 0k that allowed us to super conduct.
Anyway, with all the helium boil-off, we recycled it all. We then reliquified it and used it again. very helpful considering the price of Helium 3
Everything you do uses natural resources. That's what life is about. If we didn't use natural resources we would be dead. Besides, I haven't heard about any helium shortage emergency...
Then you haven't been paying attention:
http://www.google.com/search?q=helium+shortage
6.89GHz! for a GPU we can BUY! ...that's good! Showing the performance of your product currently on the market is not a waste.
Geez, it's like the engadget staff has a grudge against all things AMD and ATI. Did Intel bribe you, too?
I believe.
Now lets put the latest intel processors to the same test and check the overclock speed
kjb434 @ May 28th 2009 12:17PM
Al Gore: Profiting from scaring people about a non-existing problem since 2000!
YES! finally someone understands! Follow the money baby!
Screw overclocking those things guys.. I want to overclock my G1.. Its effing slow.. Maybe when I get my cupcake tonight all my life's problems will melt away into a buttery bliss applesauce.
Yes, I think they were referring to the helium, which has built up in the Earth as a radioactive decay product and is constantly escaping into space.
"In these tough economic times it's good to see that one company at least is still willing to take things to great excesses at the expense of Earth's natural resources."
Yeah, all those anti-environmental balloon vendors using helium to waste on inflating their warz for the sake of humoring children, they just don't toe the line.
These kinds of statements like a bad religion: full of dogmas, presumptions, and condemnations.