Gigabyte Z97X-SOC (LGA 1150) Sub-Zero Overclocking Review

LN2 Testing

I had been happy with the dry ice results, but I knew that there was much more to be had with even colder temps on this CPU. I decided to test it with some LN2, though as I hadn’t used it in a long time the run was more of a getting antiquated type event for me. The biggest difference in LN2 to dry ice is that LN2 is a much more hands on and physical activity since you are always pouring into the pot to maintain those temps that you are wanting to run at. With dry ice, it is pretty much as simple as pack the pot and kick your feet up while adding when necessary; Well maybe not that simple but you get the idea.

The 4790K ES was topping out right at about 6GHz @ -110C on the Z97X-SOC and I am interested to see if the Force variant of the board with more voltage options would allow for an even greater OC. This board I believe I may have reached my limit with when trying to push the CPU. This is not a bad thing since these are normally not that great so the results that I did get were actually pretty impressive. When benching, I did experience a CBB (Cold Boot Bug) on temps lower than -95C, so I needed to wait for it to come back to that temp before it would boot. Luckily I didn’t take it cold enough to find the CB (Cold Bug) which would have shut it down for being too cold, and I got down to -119C .

I only have a few results for LN2, as I was mainly focused on regaining my skills with the LN2 and getting the results I wanted in my mind were proving to be fairly hard. This was the validation I was able to get saved at 6GHz early on though when the file saved you can see it was 1.4MHz down.

Here is Super Pi 1M run at 6GHz, though I am sure it could have been faster due to forgetting to retweak the RAM.

Here is PiFast ran at 5,798MHz, I was running the memory a bit faster here and could probably do better if I tweak some sub-timings next time, either way, we’ve still got some great results and it’s nice to know this board can handle the extra loads.