Certain components will not work below a given temperature. E.g. certain CPUs will only work down to -130ºC. If you accidentally make it colder than that and the system crashes, you need to heat it back up again. Also if you want to take out the CPU and put in a different one, or if you are packing up for the day.
Sometimes the cold boot bug (the temperature at which the system fails at boot) is much higher than the cold bug (the temperature the system fails in OS). So if you need -60ºC or above to POST, but can go down to -110ºC for the benchmark, if you restart the system it needs to be warmed up.
LN2 overclocking is all about managing temperatures. If you have a nice architecture and a lucky chip that does not cold bug at all, you still need the blowtorch to warm everything up at the end of testing.
This is one of the reasons LN2 overclocking is largely pointless. It requires constant attention and it's never going to be "stable". I'm not sure when overclocking competitions became about momentary glory over everything else but I personally no longer care about them. If maybe the system had to survive a 12 hour benchmark run to qualify, that would have some relevance to real world overclocking.
For an application perspective, its absolutely pointless. But for the sheer fun of it, its cool. Why do people play games? Or care about sports? There's no application but yet there's a large audience simply for the cool factor. That's one thing I've learned growing up as an engineer.
In the pic, 3rd from the bottom, why are the two PSUs on the left "bridged?" Looks like one connector goes back into the unit.... For more power on a specific rail?
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MichaelD - Wednesday, June 11, 2014 - link
I know what the nitrogen does, but how does the blowtorch factor in? Isn't the purpose to make the components as cold as possible?Ian Cutress - Wednesday, June 11, 2014 - link
Certain components will not work below a given temperature. E.g. certain CPUs will only work down to -130ºC. If you accidentally make it colder than that and the system crashes, you need to heat it back up again. Also if you want to take out the CPU and put in a different one, or if you are packing up for the day.Sometimes the cold boot bug (the temperature at which the system fails at boot) is much higher than the cold bug (the temperature the system fails in OS). So if you need -60ºC or above to POST, but can go down to -110ºC for the benchmark, if you restart the system it needs to be warmed up.
LN2 overclocking is all about managing temperatures. If you have a nice architecture and a lucky chip that does not cold bug at all, you still need the blowtorch to warm everything up at the end of testing.
Flunk - Wednesday, June 11, 2014 - link
This is one of the reasons LN2 overclocking is largely pointless. It requires constant attention and it's never going to be "stable". I'm not sure when overclocking competitions became about momentary glory over everything else but I personally no longer care about them. If maybe the system had to survive a 12 hour benchmark run to qualify, that would have some relevance to real world overclocking.Jedi2155 - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
For an application perspective, its absolutely pointless. But for the sheer fun of it, its cool. Why do people play games? Or care about sports? There's no application but yet there's a large audience simply for the cool factor. That's one thing I've learned growing up as an engineer.endlesszeal - Wednesday, June 11, 2014 - link
In the pic, 3rd from the bottom, why are the two PSUs on the left "bridged?" Looks like one connector goes back into the unit.... For more power on a specific rail?Ian Cutress - Wednesday, June 11, 2014 - link
Probably so they are all turned on at the right time together. Each one of those PSUs would be more than enough to power a card each.