I've decided that for the winter I'm going to take on the project of LN2 and dry ice cooling. I'm thinking over the design of a container for this stuff and was hoping to get some help from those more knowledgeable in heat transfer.
What's already out there: I've seen some of the containers used by the likes of Macci, sysfailur, and the Japanese guys. The containers end up being simply that: containers. It seems that none of the lessons we've learned in heat transfer have been applied - no heatsinks and no turbulence but that caused by the violent reaction of the dry ice or LN2 encountering heat. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems that while these containers definitely get the job done, they can be improved upon.
What I'm thinking about:[list=1][*]Taking my Alpha PAL8045 or Thermalright SLK-800 and welding copper walls around the edges. The only problem here is that with dry ice, it will displace the dry ice chunks a good distance from the CPU core. I'm not sure if there would be any drawbacks with LN2.
[*]Creating my own container out of a solid block of copper. It would stand about 9" tall x 4" wide x 4" deep. There would be a bunch of pins coming from the bottom. I wouldn't have any pins in the center so that I could throw dry ice chunks in the middle. Near the outer edge, I'd have a passage so that a mixing wand could be continually mixing the coolant in a circular motion. I made a really rough bird's-eye sketch to help you visualize this.
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Let me know what you think.