2019 Featured Exhibit: OSU Overclocking Project

Be sure to check out this featured exhibit at NEDME 2019. It’s free with admission—register to attend today.

Oregon State University (OSU) Overclocking is the first and only collegiate computer overclocking team in the United States. Overclocking is essentially asking the computer to do a lot more than it was designed to do, and pushing the operational limits mandates exotic custom-built thermal management solutions in order to protect the sensitive electronics housed on the motherboard. The team has finished in the top 20 in the world in several events and are cumulatively ranked in the top 10% in the world.

OSU Overclocking will bring their highest performing machines to the NW Electronics Design and Manufacturing Expo (NEDME) to demonstrate the capabilities of the student competitors and the operation of top-end cooling solutions for high performance electronic systems. OSU Overclocking’s newest build, the first and only supercritical CO2 cooled computer, will be on display.

Thermal resistances as low as 0.1 K/W have been measured using a custom-build cold plate made with Additive Manufacturing (AM). AM is the future of high performance cold plate/heat sink design, and visitors to the exhibit will be able to see the exceptional thermal efficiency AM components can yield, even with a corrosive and high pressure coolant such as SCO2. While SCO2 is a harsh fluid, its thermophysical properties as a coolant are exceptional. If fluid delivery is tuned properly, as it is with the SCO2 build that will be on display at NEDME, the heated surface benefits from a theoretical “infinite” specific heat where heat transfer coefficients of two-phase heat transfer are exceeded without the fear of Critical Heat Flux (CHF).