Generally, the CPU of a computer is cooled using some sort of heatsink. The principle behind a heatsink is that it takes the large amount of heat created by the processor, and distributes it over the largest surface area possible. In order to achieve the largest surface area, heatsinks are not made out of solid metal, instead, they have a metal base, and lots of skinny fins. The base/fins are generally made of copper or aluminium, because these metals transfer heat very well. For bigger processors, a fan is attached to the top of the heatsink in order to move air across the fins.

Okay, lets say that for overclocking purposes, we need to get the CPU much cooler than possible with general air cooling. Lets look over our options, first off, air cooling, NO. Okay, option number two would be water cooling. Water cooling would be good, it keeps the CPU nice and cool, even when overclocked, and the tubes look pretty neat, but we can't use watercooling because then we would not have an article. Thermoelectric cooling uses electricity to make one of two metal plates very cold and the other very hot, which would work, but normally runs towards $1000. NO! Well, besides putting the computer in the freezer (doesn't really work, trust me), we could try to put it in some dry ice or something.

Okay, for those of you who do not know, dry ice is not "ice" as we normally refer to. Dry ice is carbon dioxide that is put under high pressure and frozen, resulting in a block of hard cold stuff. The reason dry ice is called "dry" ice is because when it warms up it subliminates, which means that it goes straight from being a solid to a gas. Thus, it does not get stuff wet when it melts.

We need to find a way to get dry ice onto the processor of a computer. Holding it in your hand is pretty much out of the question. We need to build some sort of system that will hold the dry ice against the CPU, and not let water condense around the rest of the mobo (for you noob haxors out there, a mobo is short for motherboard). Well, I had a marvelous idea, why not take a soda can, put dry ice in it, and attach it to the CPU, it is all metal right. And for the most part, this is what I did. I took the can of soda,

and cut the top off.

Because the bottom of the can has kind of a parabolic shape, it would not be able to touch the entire processor, so we took a screw driver, which has a sort of rounded handle and used it to pound the bottom of the can flat.

Okay, now just as a heads up if you are following this project at home, putting dry ice in this METAL can right now, and holding it would probably result in you freezing your hand to the can. Anyone here remember the 7-11 double gulp mod in which we had to cover the cup in insulating foam in order to keep the slurpee cold? Well, I had some leftover foam from that project that I put on the metal can.

Okay, I was originally just going to put dry ice into the can and put that straight onto the processor, but then I realized that there would be quite a bit of "coldness" just going into the air, and air is a bad conductor of heat, so I decided that for the final project, I would add some water to the dry ice. I also wanted to have some fun and play with my dry ice, so I went ahead and put some water in with some of the ice.

Alright, now it was time to figure out some way to mount this can to the motherboard. I ended up taking the metal retention clip that came with the original heatsink, and I put it ontop of the can. Then I took some rubber bands and attached them to the end of the retention clip, and strapped them down to the mounting clips on the motherboard. It worked great!

Alright, now it was time to test it "in the field". And this was one of few mods that actually worked the first time I turned it on, well sorta. I wired it all up, put in some old parts, and added dry ice and water.

I plugged it in and nothing happned. It tooke me a minute or two to realized that the reason it wasnt turning on was because I had never pressed the "power" button on the computer. And there was none to press, but luckily, I knew where the jumpers were where the power button would plug in, and I simply comepleted the circuit by touching a metal pair of scissors to the jumpers. It worked!

I was too lazy to install windows, and run some system performance program (this modo was like a pentium..., thats right NO number, just a pentium). Instead, I went into the bios, and just looked at what the PC health stats were. To my amazement, my 20 minute to make dry ice cooling system kep the CPU at 37 degrees F for about 3 minutes until I got bored of it and shut if off. Another mod complete.