Think Intel wins the prize for the largest liquid cooler, using equipment designed for aquatic tanks...
Intel: We 'Forgot' to Mention 28-Core, 5-GHz CPU Demo Was Overclocked | TomsHardware
Intel's recent demonstration of a 28-core processor running at 5GHz has certainly stirred the pot here at Computex, particularly because the presentation appeared to imply this would be a shipping chip with a 5.0GHz stock speed. Unfortunately, it turns out that Intel overclocked the 28-core processor to such an extreme that it required a one-horsepower industrial water chiller. That means it took an incredibly expensive (not to mention extreme) setup to pull off the demo. You definitely won't find this type of setup on a normal desktop PC.
We met with the company last night, and while Intel didn't provide many details, a company representative explained to us that "in the excitement of the moment," the company merely "forgot" to tell the crowd that it had overclocked the system. Intel also said it isn’t targeting the gaming crowd with the new chip.
We tracked down the test system the next day and did the full deep dive analysis in our Intel's 28-Core 5GHz Processor And Test System Breaks Cover article. We learned that Intel had in fact used a water chiller to push the processor to 5GHz, which confirmed our suspicions.
It certainly wasn't a garden-variety chiller, though. The industrial one-horsepower Hailea HC-1000B can pull a peak of 1000W alone, which is a shocking amount of cooling power for a processor that Intel positioned (by omission) as a chip coming to market at 5GHz. We also learned that the test system required a 1300W power supply, so total system power draw for the demo could stretch up to 2300W. In fact, the hideous amount of juice required to power the demo system prevented our contacts from showing us the performance demo privately: The area we were in simply didn't have enough dedicated circuits for the task.
