I’ve had problems with computers and video game systems overheating over the years, so I’m all for good cooling systems. And while some computer modders have solved the problem by adding more cooling fans and heat sinks, I think this build might just be a bit more than most of us need.
What you’re looking at here is the Wind Tunnel Computer. It was built by Mike Schropp over at Total Geekdom, and it’s nothing short of awesome, if you ask me. Those giant ducts you see on the left and right are air intakes and outputs for the 6-foot-wide system, which is mounted in a contraction chamber in the middle designed to take full advantage of the increased air speed as it flows through.
The beefy Intel Ivy Bridge 3770k powered system is overclocked to a whopping 4.5GHz, along with overclocked Radeon 7970 GPUs running on Sapphire Dual-X cards. But it doesn’t just run fast, look cool and stay cool – Mike built it for a good cause. It’s connected to the World Community Grid project, and its CPU and GPUs spend their days and night crunching numbers to help cancer researchers find a cure. And thanks to the massive throughput of the system, it’s able to push through about 20x the workload of an average 4-core system. While that’s all awesome, I do wish Mike had actually built a small wind test chamber inside of it for other science experiments. Maybe for version 2.0.
He built the system using large MDF wood panels for the vent sections, and there’s a big box fan installed in one end of it to generate the wind. Mike assembled the main computer section using custom-cut Lexan so you can see through to it, and aluminum pieces to finish the look. It’s even got a control panel on the front with LED temperature gauges and key switches for turning the fans on and off.
Using a wind-speed tester, Mike was able to determine that the inlet takes in air at about 0.6MPH, and the exhaust port pushes out air at 1.4MPH. However, it’s the center contraction section where the computer is that really benefits from the design, where the wind reaches 12MPH – or 9MPH with the computer in place. He actually was able to push wind speeds as high as 26-30MPH with the fan set on a higher setting. He even used smoke testing to ensure optimal airflow over the components.
Check out the complete build log, along with many more photos over on Total Geekdom.
On Saturday evening, there was a story making its rounds that a hacker claimed to have nicked information from approximately 3 million Verizon Wireless customers which was in plain-text, and this hacker allegedly posted the information for 300,000 customers online from Saturday onwards. Calling himself “TibitXimer”, the hacker mentioned over Twitter (prior to the account being removed) some clarifications, stating that the names and information were taken from a list of Verizon FIOS customers, where content of such information include sensitive data such as serial numbers, names, addresses, starting date with Verizon, password to one’s account, and phone numbers among others.
The amount of raw computing power found in a 25-GPU cluster is more than enough to take a crack at 6.6 quadrillion password combinations. Just in case your mind is boggled by the amount, let’s just put it simply. That amount is more than enough to check just about every possible eight-character password, ranging from upper/lower-case letters to digits and symbols in a matter of 5.5 hours. Microsoft’s NTLM cryptographic algorithm that has seen action since Windows Server 2003, is relatively weak and particularly insecure in some enterprise settings by today’s standards. Let’s just say that access to a hash of a workstation password, this machine will most probably take less than a day to crack it.
