View Full Version : g5 liquid cooling photos
windowsblowsass
2004-06-11, 23:36
posted on apple x.net i dont know if theyre real although they seem to be
http://apple-x.net/images/G5/G5cool2.jpg
http://apple-x.net/images/G5/G5inside1.jpg
http://apple-x.net/images/G5/G5inside2.jpg
http://apple-x.net/images/G5/G5inside3.jpg
http://apple-x.net/images/G5/G5inside4.jpg
The LCS cooling system fluid is predominantly water (80% or greater) with a mixture of corrosion inhibitors, antifreeze, and bacterial growth preventatives.
...So if your office air-conditioning system goes berserk you won't have to worry about your processors exploding...
Of other interest, "Nitrile or rubber glove should be worn when handling an LCS module that is leaking or suspected to be leaking. Evidence of leaks would include corrosion around fittings in the LCS coolant system, a light green or red liquid present, or a slick or slimy feel when handling the part. For leaks or spills, wipe up the fluid using rags, paper towels, or other suitable materials. Dispose of all cleaning materials according to local laws and regulations (Refer to laws and regulations pertaining to disposal of Antifreeze). Do not combine used coolant with any other chemical.
Place the failed LCS module (leaking or not) in the packaging that the replacement module came in. Follow the packaging instructions included with the replacement module. Failure to follow the instructions could damage your equipment and void warranty coverage."
More images coming very soon! Get this one, at least, while you can.
--Eoban
The complexity of that set-up bugs me enough to hold off on buying a new computer. Seriously, they couldn't just build a huge honking heatsink and fan combo a la standard PCs? Dual 2.4 GHz Opterons with twice the cache don't require this much cooling.
This is such an inelegant cooling method. What happened to simplicity?
They can't just use something like this (http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mcx6400-V.asp) or this (http://www.alphanovatech.com/cat_opterone.html) x2?
Eugene, I think the short answer is, Apple is over-engineering its cooling systems on purpose.
WHY?
Think about it. Peak CPU temperature is coming, and probably sooner than Peak Oil. The GHz war is going to become... that's right... the CPU cooling war. Whoever cools the best, runs the fastest.
IIRC, there was some grumbling about the 9 fans being overkill when the G5 first came out. But, it was pretty clear that it was state-of-the-art cooling tech. Now, they've set the bar another notch higher, and there's the same grumbling about overkill.
I see a trend here - and I like it! :smokey:
:wow: Sweet Jeebus!
Is this from Apple or NASA!?
Also: Not to be a pest, but could we make these smaller in dimensions and kilobytes? Pretty please?
As to the over-engineering, this is not for just the 2.5GHz chip. I imagine this cooling system is for the next year's worth of revisions.
Take a deep breath, children. The dominance of fan cooling is passing by.
Screed
I'm happy to see a liquid cooling system. It's more effective than traditional fan and heat sink methods, and I'm glad to see Apple attempting to innovate in that area. You have to start somewhere, and while this isn't the most elegant method, it's a start.
I'm happy to see a liquid cooling system. It's more effective than traditional fan and heat sink methods, and I'm glad to see Apple attempting to innovate in that area. You have to start somewhere, and while this isn't the most elegant method, it's a start.
More effective at what? Breaking down? Instead of just worrying about wearing out the bushings or bearings on a fan, we now have to worry about extra weight, corrosion, leaks, bacteria and toxic fumes too?
FFL, sorry, but the MHz war is not going to turn into a cooling war. Radiators, pumps, refrigeration will not be the norm in the coming years. I'm sure chip design can overcome MHz and transistor size limitations and eke out performance another way.
I want my system as simply engineered as possible. When I was shopping for PC motherboards, I shuttled fan-cooled northbridge models to the bottom of the list. My Asus P4PE uses just a heatsink. Now there are PC mobos that require fan cooling on the VRMs. It's getting ridiculous.
I don't care if it's paranoid future-proofing at work here. A 2.5 GHz PPC970 shouldn't utilize that insane "LCS" if a 2.4 GHz Opteron can easily get by with a fist sized heatsink and fan combo.
windowsblowsass
2004-06-12, 09:20
do yu understand the concept of heat density the thing is the 970fx is the only consumer chip currently at 90nm
that means you have the same amount of heat coming from a smaller area.
now this system isnt neccesarily needed on the 2.5 ghz but you can bet in the future it will be
And thus the CPU Upgrade makers witnessed the beginning of their own downfall... I had a feeling when the first G5s came out that creating user-installable upgrade would be near impossible. Now I know it it's impossible. Although, I suppose there will be enough G4 towers out there for a long enough time, that they may continue to turn a small profit selling those.
do yu understand the concept of heat density the thing is the 970fx is the only consumer chip currently at 90nm
Aside from Prescott you mean?
Quagmire
2004-06-12, 09:59
I think apple is using the LCS now because they are testing it out now. So when something goes wrong with the LCS in the 2.5 Ghz they can fix the problem before the LCS in definetly needed when the G5 reaches 3.0 + Ghz. If the LCS fails in the 3.0+ Ghz G5 all hell will break in the G5. So apple is just testing it in a machine that doesn't really need it.
Well, I think they'll see their AppleCare percentages go up like mad with this new G5. No way in hell would I own one that wasn't under warranty.
:)
curiousuburb
2004-06-12, 11:37
I'm happy to see a liquid cooling system. It's more effective than traditional fan and heat sink methods, and I'm glad to see Apple attempting to innovate in that area. You have to start somewhere, and while this isn't the most elegant method, it's a start.
No Worries. We'll poach a few engineers from NASA's Project Prometheus and move to liquid sodium heat exchangers adapted from Space-rated Nuclear reactors by 2009. :p
Well, I think they'll see their AppleCare percentages go up like mad with this new G5. No way in hell would I own one that wasn't under warranty.
:)
Well, Murbot, I gotta disagree completely. I think the LCS will lead to less AppleCare work, and not more. I say that because I've seen too many high-end G4s and G5s (especially ones with dual hard drives) in for intermittent problems with stability from what appeared to be heat issues.
Further, this thing looks like a closed system with no more moving parts than the non-LCS variety - so I don't really see it as a failure-prone module.
Oh, by the way, you might have noticed how the last image from the service manual, a portion of the Exploded View, shows the repair part number scheme used by Apple. The part numbers starting with 922- are modules that don't need to be returned, and the 661- part numbers are modules that are swappable, meaning you must return the old dead part to Apple. They've used this numbering scheme for many, many years....
What about laptops? Does liquid cooling have any future in laptops? If not - and I am assuming it is not possible in laptops - does this mean that laptops will hit a wall in processor speed?
windowsblowsass
2004-06-14, 11:45
What about laptops? Does liquid cooling have any future in laptops? If not - and I am assuming it is not possible in laptops - does this mean that laptops will hit a wall in processor speed?
its already happpening, and ibms doing it they call it the thermal hinge http://www.research.ibm.com/thinkresearch/pages/2001/20010808_cooling.shtml
Crusader
2004-06-14, 14:52
Hmm, well I for one hope we get a bump to 3 Ghz before a year from now. No sense in putting in a LCS if ya have a update cycle of one year, now is there?
Liquid cooling seems very reasonable from both an end cost and a durability standpoint.
Making such systems cheap and durable is absolutely elementery. Simply machine a block of aluminum to the proper shape, fill with fluid, and seal with a bolt. Any damage severe enough to compromise the systems integrity would have already ruined attached electronics.
Liquid cooling isn't terribly complex or costly. It hasn't been popular only because fans are even simpler and cost even less (virtually nothing in bulk).
If heat density starts to cramp moore's style, we should expect to see manufacturers coupling new processors with liquid cooling.
I still wonder if liquid cooling is just a temporary solution, until they come up with a way to make a cooler-running chip. I remember back when the organization I was working for received its first server with a Pentium processor. The processor ran at maybe 100 MHz – and I remember our systems guy telling us in a grave voice that the processor was so fast and hot that it would have to be kept on its own in a special chilled room. Funny to think about now. Of course, advances in design made that machine – and its heat problems – redundant in less than a year.
I will acknowledge that IBM, Intel and others seem to have hit something of a wall in recent ‘big-leap’ chip advancement, but perhaps another solution – other than liquid cooling - will come along soon. If not, as I said earlier, there are some implications, especially from the perspective of laptops. Maybe I am wrong, but I think that the bulk and weight of liquid cooling make it impractical for portables. Does this mean that portables and desktops will start to have some very large and insurmountable divergences in terms of speed?
windowsblowsass
2004-06-14, 16:23
lik i said earlier liquid cooling in a laptop is already in use by ibm.
they pipe the water out behind the screen to cool, its called the thermal hinge http://www.research.ibm.com/thinkre...8_cooling.shtml
Many current laptops use heatpipes. While not technical 'liquid cooling', it does demonstrate that non-fan cooling methods aren't rare.
How many more posts before someone brings up the car analogy?
Ok I'll bite... and do it myself. ;)
You'd figure that cars, with readily accessible air cooling wouldn't have to resort to complicated, pumped-liquid radiator systems. Yet they do. The main reason is to move heat to the exterior of the system and to then use other means to dissipate it entirely.
This is the exact same motivation for liquid cooled computers. We're going to start seeing the term 'heat density' everywhere in the next couple years. The solution to too much heat in one spot is to move it elsewhere. Liquid cooling allows heat to be moved to a convenient location, a location where an ideal radiator can be situated.
I'm actually quite surprised that we got to the point where seven fans in a computer seems more normal than liquid cooling and a single fan.
lik i said earlier liquid cooling in a laptop is already in use by ibm.
they pipe the water out behind the screen to cool, its called the thermal hinge http://www.research.ibm.com/thinkre...8_cooling.shtml
Sorry, I had misread your earlier post - and not had time to follow the link. That being said, having now read the article and dfiler's additional post, it is not clear to me whether this is the sort of liquid cooling that Apple is putting in the G5. Anyone have any further clarification of the difference?
The article does make the point that innovative heat dissipation technology - not just a cooler-running processor - is part of the solution. I was not aware of how far this had advanced on laptops - and that it had been around for some time.
I guess at some point, with all the juice runnning through them, there may be an inherent limit on how cool processors can run...and a need to look elsewhere for solutions. Specially-chilled rooms anyone? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3180872.stm)
SilentEchoes
2004-06-15, 11:44
Man I can see the need to want to move to 90nm for VT. They are going to save some 58KW of electricity from the move alone. :wow: I wonder how VT is doing with the supercomputer anyways.
Do you really think an institution such as VT would want to order 1,100 machines though if they all came with built in liquid cooling? It would seem that with 1,100 machines that have water flowing in them something would be bound to go wrong.
DMBand0026
2004-06-15, 11:57
They have xServes, correct? Those things are kept nice and cool just by the fact that it doesn't matter how loud they are. Two huge air intakes on the front, kinda makes me wonder if Apple is designing a car or a computer ;)
Seriously though, I don't think anything would go wrong, and they don't have to worry anyway, they aren't using PMs anymore. And the xServes are 90nm chips anyway.
SilentEchoes
2004-06-15, 12:39
I know thats what I said in my above post when I was mentioning how much electricity they are going to save by the move to the 90nm xServers.
My question was hypothetical, I was just wondering an institution would want to rush in and buy 11 hundred machines with them all being liquid cooled or if you guys think that wouldn't matter at all...
... would want to rush in and buy 11 hundred machines with them all being liquid cooled or if you guys think that wouldn't matter at all...With such a massive number of cpus, something is bound to fail. In fact, allowing for failed hardware is one of the largest hurdles in supercomputing.
With that said, known DOA and failure rates are comforting when making bulk purchases. While I don't view liquid cooling as inherently accident prone, it may not be the best choice until after Apple has at least one durable production run under it's belt.
The volume of liquid we're talking about here is absolutely miniscule. Worst case scenerio would be a single dead CPU.
However, I don't think leaks will be a problem whatsoever. A quick look at other common items with closed fluid systems seems to suggest that making a leak proof system is quite elementery. Refrigerators, Air Conditioners, Household heaters, automobile engine cooling, automobile lubrication systems, hydrualic systems on forklifts, car airconditioners, humidifiers, phish tanks... and best of all, the hydraulic brakes on my mountain bike.
curiousuburb
2004-06-15, 13:41
VT's original Dual G5 order meant they ordered 9,900 fans. Windy room.
Switching to Dual Xserve G5s would reduce fan numbers by more than half.
Methinks the room might be quieter if nothing else.
The shift to Xserves also meant a significant consolidation of rack space.
Unlikely they will shift again and need to expand rack space by moving back to PMs (since they don't need the extra drive bays or PCI or AGP, and IIRC, they even removed drives from the original PM G5s to save power).
They'd probably rather have higher density of GFlops/m^3 than the additional cost in time and $ to gain a few more MHz per PM.
SilentEchoes
2004-06-15, 15:15
VT's original Dual G5 order meant they ordered 9,900 fans. Windy room.
Switching to Dual Xserve G5s would reduce fan numbers by more than half.
Methinks the room might be quieter if nothing else.
The shift to Xserves also meant a significant consolidation of rack space.
Unlikely they will shift again and need to expand rack space by moving back to PMs (since they don't need the extra drive bays or PCI or AGP, and IIRC, they even removed drives from the original PM G5s to save power).
They'd probably rather have higher density of GFlops/m^3 than the additional cost in time and $ to gain a few more MHz per PM.
Err I know they wont switch back, Most importantly the 90nm chips are saving them upwards of 58KW of electricity.
Never mind. I should probably think out my posts before I submit them.
VT's original Dual G5 order meant they ordered 9,900 fans. Windy room.
Switching to Dual Xserve G5s would reduce fan numbers by more than half.
Methinks the room might be quieter if nothing else.
G5 towers run at about 30 dB, the Xserves run at what, 70-80 dB? I'm not sure, but the XServes are louder than the MDD G4s, which run at about 60 dB. A room full of XServes will unquestionably be louder than a room full of G5 towers... much louder.
G5 towers run at about 30 dB, the Xserves run at what, 70-80 dB? I'm not sure, but the XServes are louder than the MDD G4s, which run at about 60 dB. A room full of XServes will unquestionably be louder than a room full of G5 towers... much louder.
80 dB is painful. I doubt a single Xserve is that loud. Remember, every +3 dB equals double the perceived loudness.
80db is not painful. It is loud, and after hours and hours could be dangerous, but not painful. I am a soundboard operator and routinely get applause over 100db. 110=painful, 115=dangerous, 120=very dangerous, 130=near-instant deftness.
VT's original Dual G5 order meant they ordered 9,900 fans. Windy room.
Switching to Dual Xserve G5s would reduce fan numbers by more than half.
Methinks the room might be quieter if nothing else.
The "fans" in Xserves aren't fans so much as high-CFM blowers. They aren't designed to be quiet like the fans in the G5, they don't run at RPMs so slow that you can actually see the individual blades move like the fans in the G5s, they are just made to move a lot of damn air.
That's why they make sound-dampening enclosures for Xserves, because they are too loud for normal working environments.
more fans != more sound
80 dB is painful. I doubt a single Xserve is that loud. Remember, every +3 dB equals double the perceived loudness. Every 3dB doubles the power output. Perceived volume doubles every 10dB. I've measured about 80 dB just from road noise in my car, going about 40mph down city streets.
What is a decibel? (http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/dB.html)
Every 3dB doubles the power output. Perceived volume doubles every 10dB.
Woops!
So how loud is this new system going to be (LCS)?
They could have used large heat sinks and fast fans for the the dual 2.5GHz G5, but everyone would have been bitching about the noise. Apple is taking great pains, and probably adding at least $100 to the price, to keep the noise level of all the G5s low.
Mac users complain about the noise of the Mac even when it is outputting half the sound of most PC towers. This is forcing Apple to use multiple heat zones, slow moving fans, and now even water cooling to keep Mac users happy. On the PC side they just use constantly spinning loud high speed fans to get the job done (it might be loud, but it costs a lot less, and doesn't require complex engineering).
Normally I have several Macs and PCs running and it doesn't matter to me how quiet the Mac is. Unless I'm recording, in which case even the little fan in my powerbook becomes an annoyance.
DMBand0026
2004-06-24, 01:24
You're right. People need to shut up! ;)
That said, I'm spoiled by using a cube for many years. Moving from no fan to even a PB is kind of irritating, but no biggie. But if you want to truly appreciate the PM's cooling system, go listen to any PC and you'll fall back in love.
Example
http://images.apple.com/powermac/images/designcluttervertical060904.jpg
'nuff said.
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