RE: Chasing the world record in overclocking CPUs with liquid nitrogen
You might have wanted to mention in the article that seriously extreme cooling (as you depict in the pictures) isn't a great idea under normal atmospheric conditions. While the concept seems sound there's mitigating factors to consider when doing this outside a lab and under real life use conditions.
Serious condensation can form and render your whole build dead in an instant if condensation starts to form and shorts any of the connections. This kind of extreme cooling is typically best done in a near to total vacuum where condensation isn't a seriously mitigating factor anymore.
Great insight none the less but I felt attaching a warning was the responsible thing to do before someone tries this out and learns the hard way that water + electronics don't mix very well... LOL.
I'm only mentioning this because some friends and I lost a rig one night to a similar experiment where we super cooled the liquid of a liquid cooled system after replacing the water with anti-freeze, only to watch the build die when water began to condense inside the system and completely ruined the machine...
On the bright side it was really fun for the hour or so that it lasted but it was a very expensive mistake that we would never again repeat outside of less than ideal environmental conditions.
Yep it is definitly NOT a good idea to mix water and electronics :D.
The good thing about dry ice and LN2 is that they are so cold that there is no condensation / water on the mainboard but just ice. I think condensing is more a problem in cases you described. So with liquids that are a lot colder than the air but still to warm to get covered in ice instantly.
Disclaimer:
That was exactly the problem. We closed up the case instead of using an open air build just like you have in the pictures. Beer and science don't mix very well either sometimes.
Like a bunch of idiots even though we should have known better, we used a closed case and minimal ventilation given the experiment we were about to perform.
It worked great until the lack of air circulation allowed fog to pool into mist, which then became drops of water inside the case. Had we taken the side off the case and kept the humidity down with fans we would have been all good.
Beer however had a much different plan in mind and we very quickly drowned the computer in a miniature rain storm while we drown ourselves in beer, completely oblivious to the total lack of common sense we had used when forming the idea in the first place.
Super cooled semi conductors are awesome and easy to OC when done right, but as you just stated:
And this tidbit of insight can be easily overlooked after a 6 pack or 2...
The sad part is we were very familiar with overclocking but were too drunk to see the flaw in our drunken plans until it was long past the point of no return. In any event it was still fun while it lasted and I literally live in home that looks like a Fry's Electronics collided with a NewEgg truck then spilled the entire payload into my home. In the end we looked at it as a no harm, no foul , but great story kind of an evening. ;-)