LN2 Overclocking At Alternate – Hello 8Ghz CPU!

Tradeshow & OC events by piotke @ 2009-05-25

Last weekend Madshrimps was the main guest at Alternate; two of our experienced overclockers demoed their skills during live overclocking sessions. On Friday CPU speeds over 8Ghz were reached, on Saturday video cards were tortured. Read on to find out if world records were broken.

Time to break some records.

In for a world record ?

On Friday and Saturday, two of Belgians' finest overclockers went to Alternate. Friday Blind represented Madshrimps, on Saturday it was Massman who did his job. Both trying their best to reach the highest frequencies and scores by pushing the hardware to the maximum.

Massman had some bad luck. The Intel E8600 setup he brought with him worked fine at 6,4 Ghz at home, but on location he got it barely stable at 6,2 Ghz. After hours of fine tuning he decided to run the system at a mere 6,1 Ghz. Using a modded Nvidia 9600 GT he as aiming to break the world record 3D mark 01 in that cards' category. He cooled the video card with LN2 which helped overclocking quite well, benching at 1050 Mhz core and 2100 Mhz Memory wasn't a problem. It were the shader clocks that were holding him back. Nevertheless he achieved a very nice score of 95150 Marks. Not the world record, but a respectable (3rd place out of 100+ scores.


Madshrimps (c)


Madshrimps (c)
Massman preparing his setup.


On Friday Blind was very close to a world record, highest CPU speed ever…

Test platform and preparation


Test Setup
CPU Intel Celeron 352 (Cedarmill core)
Mainboard Asus P5B Premium with Vcore and Vdroop mod.
Videocard XFX 8800GT
Memory 2 Gb DDR2 Geil @ 338.2 MHz (1:1) @ 4-4-4-10
Power supply OCZ 1000 watt
Other
  • Windows XP SP3 minimum Install
  • Dragon F1EE with LN2


  • On Friday he started preparing the bench table and his setup. Using gum to fill up the gaps around the socket to prevent condensation, installing the CPU and the cooling tube, he was ready to start benching. The highly rated Dragon F1 Extreme Edition LN2 Cooler made by K|ngP|n was used.

    As he is a man of little words, he didn't write a step by step guide, he just started pouring the liquid nitrogen. Some time later we heard rumors that he achieved some nice scores, but we had to wait until blind himself got home and online.

    The result

    The cpu comes with a stock frequency of 3,2 Ghz and a bus speed of 133 (533) Mhz. On air the chip did about 5,7 Ghz (+78%), on the cascade phase change cooling speeds of close to 7 Ghz(118%) were reached, but the LN2 pushed the chip over the 8 Ghz barrier. To achieve this, the CPU was fed close to 1,9 Volt. Pushing it higher wasn't possible, as the overvoltage protection wasn't bypassed yet on this motherboard. But already a high voltage, seen that the stock voltage is around 1,3 volt.

    Clock and bus speed more then doubled. Power circuits heavily tortured. LN2 quickly vaporizing. And the chip pushed to an astonishing 8116 Mhz (+153%!):

    Madshrimps (c)
    This is not a modified screenshot, proven by the Validation link.


    This result is the second highest clock speed achieved as listed by HWbot!

    Madshrimps (c)


    Pictures of the action !

    Action !

    Our camera batteries weren’t charged Friday, sorry for that, but here are some pictures from Saturday.

    Madshrimps (c)
    Besides overclocking, Intel prepared 2 Core i7 965 setups for some gaming action.


    Madshrimps (c)
    And look who showed up. It's Jort, former compressor and phase change cooling magician.


    Madshrimps (c)
    Running the 9600 GT based system.


    Madshrimps (c)
    Controling the Videocard temperature. Making sure it wouldn't go below -50°C, as that caused the system to crash.


    Madshrimps (c)
    In action.


    Madshrimps (c)
    Getting the last drops of LN2 out of the dewar.

    Big thanks to Alternate for letting us bench at their place this weekend, and for their support.


    Madshrimps (c)

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