Dry cryogenic overclocking box

Overclockers sometimes use liquid nitrogen or even liquid helium to cool their CPUs in pursuit of higher speeds. An issue with doing this, or even with using a heat pump or TEC to lower the CPU temperature much below ambient, is that humidity in the air starts to condense on the cold parts, making the motherboard wet, which is counterproductive when you're trying to keep your computer running stably by chilling it. This means that cumbersome insulation, against not just heat but also moisture, needs to be wrapped around the CPU and cooler.

A solution could be to fill the computer with dehumidified air. The most obvious way, and what you might do in a regular-use computer with a below-ambient CPU chiller, is to pipe the output of a dehumidifier into the computer case, and let it push out any humid air in there before you start the chilling process. But this means the dehumidifier has to run constantly to provide positive pressure in the case. And cryogenic overclocking attempts are often done with the case open or not even in existence, which would make it very hard for the dehumidifier to keep up. So an alternative is to make a box with an open top (for easy access by hands) that can be filled with dehumidified air. To keep it inside, it can be chilled too, or an air curtain can be installed to blow across the top of the box.

N/A [2019-04-25]