Our tests and results under cold conditions:
As I often say, you don’t start a cold test without having done some tests beforehand. So I have with me my notes from the watercooling tests. It is very important to have this base in order to compare performance numbers. If you decide to upload your scores to Hwbot afterwards, always keep an eye on the tests of other overclockers. It is interesting to compare your results with theirs at the same frequency. To do this, go to the search submission page. For example, I searched for the Cinebench R20 benchmark with an i9-12900K processor to get the results of my future opponents.
Here we go: a little protocol
Personally, before filling the pot, I always go to OS and run a little Cinebench R15. “But are you completely crazy?” No, if your pot is set up properly, it will heat up a bit, but it won’t heat up all the copper. The idea is to heat up the thermal paste so that it sets up properly. During this test, with no load, the CPU went up to 81°C. Another tip is not to change several parameters at the same time such as frequency and/or voltage. The idea is to know in case of a crash what is responsible for it. So we will fill the bottom of the well with acetone and fill it with dry ice. The temperature drops very quickly and our thermometer shows -63.8°C. Be careful, this is not the temperature of the CPU but the temperature of the pot.
Our CPU to start the tests is at 5.0 GHz for a voltage of 1.18 volts. I estimate that the CPU should be between -25 and -30°C. We have no way of reading this temperature. The BIOS and Core Temp simply show us 0°C.
As far as dry ice consumption is concerned, it is mainly during benchmarks that it decreases. The advantage of this type of extreme overclocking is that it’s really stress-free and you can take breaks as you like by just leaving the pot full.
The results with our i9-12900K :
Here’s a table of most of my readings during this 2.5 hour session. If some boxes are empty, it’s because I didn’t run the benchmark. Looking forward to continuing with liquid nitrogen.
Please note that when running Cinebench at 5700MHz in 8P+8E, the CPU temperature turns positive again and rises to 15°C. The best results have been uploaded to Hwbot in order to get personal points as well as for our overclocking.com team. Here are the different screenshots.
It was really fun to prepare this tutorial on how to use dry ice. It’s really fun and if you want to get into extreme overclocking for beginners, I can only advise you to go for it!
The end of the session :
If you have the opportunity to take everything apart and dry it at the end of your overclocking session , do it! Here, the insulation proved sufficient as I had almost no moisture around the socket. Just in one place where the fan was blowing on the memory sticks.
As you can see, there was nothing on the back of the motherboard either, despite a 2.5 hour session. Even if it’s never the most fun part, don’t botch the insulation of your components.
