Question Will too cold of temperature kill a CPU?

shafe88

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Jul 6, 2010
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I was informed after cooling my laptops heat-sink with an ice-cube that it was a bad idea cause too cold of temperature will kill a processor, seems strange to me too cold of temperature would kill a processor. The reason I cooled the heatsink is the laptop has a problem to where it will power off about a minuet after booting into bios and than will power off after a second or two until you let it sit 5-10 minuets, than I'll boot back into bios where it will shut off again after a minuet. Their are a couple of event logs in bios for for system board thermal shut. Cooling the heatsink didn't seem to make a difference. Just to clear things up, the ice-cube was inside a zip-lock sandwich bag and not directly on the heatsink and I made sure the their was no moisture on the sandwich bag and Heatsink/processor(would of been surprised if their was since the air is extremely dry right now) before plugging the laptop back in and turning it on.
 
I was informed after cooling my laptops heat-sink with an ice-cube that it was a bad idea cause too cold of temperature will kill a processor, seems strange to me too cold of temperature would kill a processor. The reason I cooled the heatsink is the laptop has a problem to where it will power off about a minuet after booting into bios and than will power off after a second or two until you let it sit 5-10 minuets, than I'll boot back into bios where it will shut off again after a minuet. Their are a couple of event logs in bios for for system board thermal shut. Cooling the heatsink didn't seem to make a difference. Just to clear things up, the ice-cube was inside a zip-lock sandwich bag and not directly on the heatsink and I made sure the their was no moisture on the sandwich bag and Heatsink/processor(would of been surprised if their was since the air is extremely dry right now) before plugging the laptop back in and turning it on.
Some CPU's have what is called a 'zero bug', where it won't POST if at 0 degrees C or so temperature. Those have to be started at higher temp before pouring the LN2 in the pot. But it doesn't break the CPU, as soon as temp returns to normal it will POST normally.

If playing around with any sub-ambient cooling just be very careful about condensation around the CPU socket; it doesn't have to be the ice cube melting. If you haven't go watch some extreme overclocking videos on the 'tube and check out what they have to do to protect against condensation with LN2 cooling.
 

shafe88

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Jul 6, 2010
854
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19,015
Some CPU's have what is called a 'zero bug', where it won't POST if at 0 degrees C or so temperature. Those have to be started at higher temp before pouring the LN2 in the pot. But it doesn't break the CPU, as soon as temp returns to normal it will POST normally.

If playing around with any sub-ambient cooling just be very careful about condensation around the CPU socket; it doesn't have to be the ice cube melting. If you haven't go watch some extreme overclocking videos on the 'tube and check out what they have to do to protect against condensation with LN2 cooling.
The only purpose of the test was to get the heatsink/processor back to room temperature(which only took about 15 seconds). Like I said their is almost no moisture in the air and I double checked to make sure their was no moisture on the heat-sink processor.