Dry ice OC

[da na]

It’s fine to literally submerge a motherboard with a soldered CPU in a bucket of dry ice, right? I don’t really care if the board dies after my experiment, I just want it to last long enough to run a few Cinebench tests. If I can get it above 2ghz it’s literally getting hung on my wall anyway.
Thanks in advance!

[adarw]

why dont you try it and tell us the outcome?.......

[da na]

8 minutes ago, adarw said:

why dont you try it and tell us the outcome?.......

I'd rather not try it without knowing whether or not it'll immediately break - I know the board'll probably be done for afterwards but I'd like to at least get some tests in. 

I've seen boards literally submerged in liquid nitrogen, I've seen overclockers washing LN2 mess off of boards with soap and water... but didn't know if solid liquid nitrogen would be the same. 

But once I finish I will definitely post the outcome - even if it does mean murdering my thin client.

Oh and the funny part: CPU I'm cooling is only a 2.2w chip. I may or may not extend the voltage limit...

[Freakwise]

12 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

It’s fine to literally submerge a motherboard with a soldered CPU in a bucket of dry ice, right? I don’t really care if the board dies after my experiment, I just want it to last long enough to run a few Cinebench tests. If I can get it above 2ghz it’s literally getting hung on my wall anyway.
Thanks in advance!

Technically fine as long as it's still "submerged" between the Ice but after that condensation really becomes a problem

 

And while cpu is probably fine but other smaller stuff like usb controller/ switch is probably not

[adarw]

i would just put the heat sink in dry ice if possible.

[da na]

2 minutes ago, Freakwise said:

Technically fine as long as it's still "submerged" between the Ice but after that condensation really becomes a problem

 

And while cpu is probably fine but other smaller stuff like usb controller/ switch is probably not

OK, thank you. 

Should I 3D print a funnel that fits around the CPU to hold most of the dry ice directly on it? I'd also make smaller ones for the excuse of a northbridge and controller it has. 

[Demonic Donut]

RAM generally doesn't like to be too cold, same with some other components. You're better off with a dedicated pot for your CPU. I've never seen a system submerged in LN2.

 

Also, dry ice is solid CO2, not nitrogen.

[da na]

1 minute ago, adarw said:

i would just put the heat sink in dry ice if possible.

Can't - doesn't have a heatsink sadly as it is a thin client board.

Plus direct contact and/or literally submerging the board would make for better youtube content make for better cooling.

[da na]

2 minutes ago, Demonic Donut said:

RAM generally doesn't like to be too cold, same with some other components. You're better off with a dedicated pot for your CPU. I've never seen a system submerged in LN2.

 

Also, dry ice is solid CO2, not nitrogen.

My bad on the CO2. 

Also, by "submerged" it's not 100% underwater but there's a good bit of LN2 on the whole board. 

Because the layout of the thin client board is so weird (cpu, ram, and SSD are all soldered millimeters away from each other) there's not much I can do about not freezing the whole thing since the CPU die is less than an inch wide.

[Demonic Donut]

1 minute ago, Mel0nMan said:

My bad... 

I highly recommend a purpose built copper pot. You can't just set a piece of dry ice on the cpu and expect it to work well.

[char3327]

1 minute ago, Mel0nMan said:

Should I 3D print a funnel that fits around the CPU to hold most of the dry ice directly on it? I'd also make smaller ones for the excuse of a northbridge and controller it has. 

Probably a good idea considering that you don't wanna get your RAM too cold since it doesn't like that. "Submerging" the board would actually be ok, (theoretically speaking) it is when you take it out and condensation happens is when you get problems...

[Freakwise]

4 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Should I 3D print a funnel that fits around the CPU to hold most of the dry ice directly on it

Technically you should like some already said but I'm curious, are you going to place the ice directly to the cpu or is there going to be some sort of thermal "interface"?

[da na]

7 minutes ago, Demonic Donut said:

I highly recommend a purpose built copper pot. You can't just set a piece of dry ice on the cpu and expect it to work well.

I'm a high school student with $15 just looking to have some fun - I would definitely do that if I were a professional overclocker. But I'm thinking I'll break the dry ice at an even point or sand it down or something so the area of contact is as flat as I can get it. 

[da na]

6 minutes ago, Freakwise said:

Technically you should like some already said but I'm curious, are you going to place the ice directly to the cpu or is there going to be some sort of thermal "interface"?

Planning to create as flat as possible of a contact point to the dry ice. The only thermal interface I have is a tube of Corsair TM30 and I have a feeling that that wouldn't increase performance by too terribly much... 

[manikyath]

you cant "submerge" something in dry ice -- as the name implies, it doesnt form a liquid. no liquid, means no submerging.

 

also, pooring ice all over a motherboard seems a rather poor attempt at trying to cool it..

 

if it's a short term experiment, i'd just find one of those pin style heatsinks, zip tie it to the board, and upside-down can of air duster it down to the negative temperatures. i assume since it's a soldered cpu it's relatively low power?

[da na]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

you cant "submerge" something in dry ice -- as the name implies, it doesnt form a liquid. no liquid, means no submerging.

 

also, pooring ice all over a motherboard seems a rather poor attempt at trying to cool it..

 

if it's a short term experiment, i'd just find one of those pin style heatsinks, zip tie it to the board, and upside-down can of air duster it down to the negative temperatures. i assume since it's a soldered cpu it's relatively low power?

Submerging meaning the whole board would be covered in small chunks of dry ice.

And yea, it’s a 2.2 watt cpu.

Heh.

[Demonic Donut]

Just now, Mel0nMan said:

Submerging meaning the whole board would be covered in small chunks of dry ice.

And yea, it’s a 2.2 watt cpu.

Heh.

Ah, so you're talking a raspberry pi or something similar?

 

Use clear nail polish to protect the board from condensation, brand etc doesn't matter, just nothing with glitter in it. Treat it like a conformal coating.

 

You can try placing pieces of dry ice on the chip to cool it between OC runs. You could also dump a bunch inside of a cooler and place the board in it with a fan to circulate air and drop ambient temps really low. A small heatsink will really help in this case. I really like the alphacool finned copper heatsinks on Amazon.

 

I was worried you were trying to cool a 10700k or something by placing dry ice on it.

[da na]

1 minute ago, Demonic Donut said:

Ah, so you're talking a raspberry pi or something similar?

 

Use clear nail polish to protect the board from condensation, brand etc doesn't matter, just nothing with glitter in it. Treat it like a conformal coating.

 

You can try placing pieces of dry ice on the chip to cool it between OC runs. You could also dump a bunch inside of a cooler and place the board in it with a fan to circulate air and drop ambient temps really low. A small heatsink will really help in this case. I really like the alphacool finned copper heatsinks on Amazon.

 

I was worried you were trying to cool a 10700k or something by placing dry ice on it.

Yeah, it’s an Intel Atom. Issue is it’s 4 cores in a small die package with no IHS - so it’ll be pretty integral to get good contact. And thanks for the heat sink recommendation - I will look into buying one of those.

[manikyath]

15 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Submerging meaning the whole board would be covered in small chunks of dry ice.

And yea, it’s a 2.2 watt cpu.

Heh.

tbh.. at that level, just have a clump of dry ice squeezed to the cpu...

 

EDIT: PS, dont expect temperature to make a darn difference on that sort of CPU.

[da na]

7 minutes ago, manikyath said:

tbh.. at that level, just have a clump of dry ice squeezed to the cpu...

 

EDIT: PS, dont expect temperature to make a darn difference on that sort of CPU.

Yeah - passively cooled in its thin client case, it runs at about 80c max under full load for hours (I run a small MC server on similar machines). I just want to guarantee it's absolutely not limited by anything. 

[Cyracus]

To do dry ice cooling the standard method is to use a liquid that won't freeze, like acetone, in a pot, this way the cold from the dry ice can effectively transfer to the pot, and the pot absorbs the heat from the cpu.

Here's a video of JayzTwoCents doing dry ice cooling

 

[BuckGup]

15 hours ago, Cyracus said:

To do dry ice cooling the standard method is to use a liquid that won't freeze, like acetone, in a pot, this way the cold from the dry ice can effectively transfer to the pot, and the pot absorbs the heat from the cpu.

Here's a video of JayzTwoCents doing dry ice cooling

 

I was going to comment this. Submerging a whole board in crushed dry ice is a terrible idea and will not get the OCes you are looking to achieve. OCing with exotic cooling isn't just about getting it colder than usual. You need to get it cold enough so the materials used in the CPU/GPU actually turn into a superconductor. This allows way higher voltages to be run safely and all the juicy word records

[tone_bender]

Crushing dry ice is kind of a pain, and considering the size you would want most of it would be gone by then. 

If you wanna do a crazy experiment maybe something like the watercooled air cooler dipped in cold water (even with dryice if you must)

On 9/14/2021 at 7:43 PM, Cyracus said:

To do dry ice cooling the standard method is to use a liquid that won't freeze, like acetone, in a pot, this way the cold from the dry ice can effectively transfer to the pot, and the pot absorbs the heat from the cpu.

Here's a video of JayzTwoCents doing dry ice cooling

 

this is best method, but i would avoid pure grade acetone because it can be dangerous to handle in larger volumes, irritates skin and so
maybe some mixture of ethanol + PEG antifreeze