Processors On The Rocks VOL. 2

Results

  • Intel Celeron

  • We tried all kinds of different Celeron processors, but never managed to get any further than 1100 - 1150 MHz . It turned out that the Celeron hits some magical barrier at this clock, which it is not able to pass. The voltage was raised up to 2 V, the evaporator temperature was about -15°C / 5°F at 1133 MHz.
  • Intel Pentium III

  • We ran into the same problems as with Celeron. 1150 MHz is the limit, regardless which CPU is used. Therefore it seems as if a Pentium III 850E is the best Pentium III processor for usage with Vapochill, as it runs reliably at 1133/133 MHz with an evaporator temperature of about -14°C / 6.8°F. The voltage was raised to 2 V.
  • AMD Duron

  • It turned out that current Durons are by far less overclockable than their big brothers. Duron goes up to 1066/133 MHz and that's it. Even 1100 MHz would never run reliably, more was simply impossible. The voltage was raised to 1.85 V, the evaporator temperature was about -9°C / 15.8°F at 1066 MHz.
  • AMD Athlon

  • Athlon was clearly the processor with the highest potential. We were able to run Athlon 1200 processors at up to 1485 MHz reliably. It seems to hit a magical barrier at around 1500 MHz. Some Athlon 1100 or even Athlon 1000 processors were able to reach 1333/133 or even 1400/133 MHz as well. The voltage was set to 1.85 V, the evaporator temperature was about -7°C / 19.4°F at 1485 MHz.
  • Pentium 4

  • We managed to run Pentium 4 successfully at 1888 MHz with a slightly modified bracket. I am sure that Pentium 4 would have even reached 2 GHz if the multiplier would not be restricted to x16. Therefore I had to increase the clock of the quad-pumped processor bus to 118 MHz. At 1920/120 MHz Pentium 4 would crash in Windows, at higher speeds it wouldn't even reach POST. The PC800 RDRAM was clocked at only x3 = 354 MHz, because it would not run at x4 = 472 MHz. The speed was increased to 1.85 V, the evaporator temperature was about -10°C / +14°F at 1888 MHz.
    I was just informed by Asetek that they have successfully mounted Vapochill on Pentium 4 as well.

This is a first Vapochill/Pentium 4 picture.

When I say that a processor runs 'reliably' I don't mean that I can just about reach the Windows desktop or even only POST. Each 'thermicly accelerated' processor had to go through the same tough validation as Intel's good old Pentium 1.13 GHz . I know that there is a lot of youngsters out there that consider it successful overclocking once they managed to take a screen shot of the POST-screen. What we do here is real stuff.