Tuesday 2nd September 2008

VIDEO: 6GHz plus: Overclocking the E8600 with liquid nitrogen

Posted at: Tuesday 2nd September 2008 by Antony Leather

CustomPC and BenchTec overclocked the Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 as far as it could go

The next milestone we achieved was a score of 7.7 seconds, with the E8600 clocked at 6.05GHz. After this, Paul and Barry managed to push the E8600 to 6.07GHz and Corsair Dominator DDR3 PC18000 up to 972MHz (1.94GHz effective). We managed to keep memory timings at 7-6-5-15 and still successfully complete a run of SuperPI 1M.

The fastest speed they achieved with this setup was 7.6 seconds, one of the shortest times to calculate one million decimal places of PI we've ever seen. Paul and Barry were able to boot into Windows with the E8600 running even faster, at 6.16GHz using an FSB speed of 616MHz but as we were running out of time, there wasn't enough time to ensure the system was stable. With some more tweaks, the E8600 could go even further.

The day had been an outstanding success. We had achieved an 85% overclock for a CPU that already is no slouch with a default clock speed of 3.33GHz.

We'd like to thank Intel for providing us with a huge set of CPUs to test, Asus for providing the Rampage Extreme motherboard, Corsair for providing the memory and Armari for being an excellent host.

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Intel E8600

Liquid nitrogen cooling pot with fittings

Everyone overclocking

Paul about to pour

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Comments

@savagehenry

Its similar to Formula 1 - Petrolheads would love a reliable, affordable car with the outragous performance of an F1 car. Just because we can't have Formula 1 performance in every day cars doesn't mean Formula 1 isn't interesting and fun to watch.

Comment by combatus at 7:49pm 9th September 2008

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fan dabby dosie!

If only we could get a quad core to overclock that far? Better yet we should try get this kind of overclock for our home computers. Crysis would go of the rails!!!

Comment by Nickuk1987 at 5:34pm 9th September 2008

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Very Impressive.. But what's the point ?

Very impressive.. 6Ghz. Woot!. wouldn't we all love these sort of speeds at home. However, unless you can constantly cool your CPU with Liquid Nitrogen. This demostration serves no real purpose other than to show off. What would be more impressive if you we could see the overclock potential with current cooling solutions that users can run outside lab conditions.

Comment by savagehenry at 11:13am 8th September 2008

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Ln2 is not as dangerous as you may think (SoulCruiser) in small amounts it bounces off your skin instantly because you are 37c and Ln2 is -196c! As for evaporated nitrogen you have to remember that 80% of the air we breathe is the same stuff but of course in high doses can pose a serious health risk as can too much of anything. You could pour Ln2 over your hand and nothing would happen (get a little chilly at the most, but don’t try this at home!), however if you submerge you hand into a container with ln2 that is already at a stable temperate it would be dangerous because it is your hand that is getting colder not the Ln2 getting hotter and evaporating off your skin. It takes a surprisingly large amount of Ln2 to bring something down to temperature, now it was not shown in that video but every time we poured Ln2 into one of the pots it evaporated within a matter of seconds, the idea being to get the pot down to temperature because it is easier to control that way. It is important to carefully control the temperature of the pot and the CPU because as said in the video if the CPU gets too cold it will reach a “cold bug” point where it stops working. All CPUs have a different cold bug point, xtreview.com reported that Intel Nehalem chips work happily at -120c whereas most processors tend to show cold bug at around -100c. That is not to say that Nehalems have no cold bug (the title on xtreview could be a little misleading), but they certainly respond well to low temperatures which is great news to overclocks. In the above e8600 experiment the cold bug was showing between -110c and -120c which is very good considering.

Comment by tcorbyn at 8:26pm 5th September 2008

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@Cerberus_xiii

The default clock of the E8600 is 3.33GHz The final frequency was 6.17GHz, a 2.84 GHz increase, which works out (if my maths is right) to 85.28% over default

Comment by OB_Writer at 3:01pm 5th September 2008

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LN2 ain't that dangerous SC, it evaporates before it does any real harm if spilled - its submerging stuff in it that will do the damage! and its often advised not to wear gloves when using the stuff in case the LN2 gets into the gloves and freezes your hands! The most dangerous risk associated with using LN2 is spilling it and it evaporating in a room with limited ventilation as it will cause you to suffocate - there was a story years ago of a LN2 dewar breaking in a lift and the person in the lift with it died of asphyxiation....

Comment by matt___ at 1:46pm 5th September 2008

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Errrr guys that stuff is dangerous!

Outstanding results! I have to admit you showed that CPU who's boss. But you guys are a health and safety nightmare! One splash or spill and the conversation would go from "Wow look at the speed of that sucker" to "Hey guys who's seen my Footcicle" Method 3/10 Results 15/10 ;)