Gigabyte GoOC 2008

Each team quickly set about voltmodding their cards, and the USA team can be seen here hurriedly soldering away:



The next step was to prepare the boards for subzero temperatures. Because of the temperature difference, water will condense, and can potentially fry the boards (think of an ice-cold can of beer on a hot summer’s day). There were many variations on how to do this, but a popular one was to coat the inside of the CPU socket and all surrounding components (power regulation, mosfets, everything that didn’t need something plugged into it really) with something water-proof. Deanzo is shown here doing just that:



Then a small amount of rubber putty or Blu-Tack is applied around the CPU socket, and the northbridge (with heatsink removed), and a thick piece of foam cut out to leave just the socket, northbridge and high capacitors sticking out. Most competitors stuck with this conservative approach, but the Turkish team took this one step further – completely smothering their board in the stuff. Here’s a work-in-progress shot:



And finally, when all this was done, the CPU was installed, and the LN2 pots were installed over the top. Paper towel (one team used this in conjunction with toilet paper!) is wrapped around the pot to absorb as much condensation as possible, and fans are arranged around the motherboard to cool the few parts not already under LN2. Keep in mind that the temperature of Liquid Nitrogen is lower than -196°C. In other words, bloody cold! Most competitors used this kind of tall, narrow pot with large holes in the center: