How much does cooling is realy needed?

[MsNath]

I'm very curious as to how much cooling is really needed or benificial when OCing.

If you keep a chip at say below 30c can you reach its max OC potential. Or does maz performance really equate to sub zero temps? In other words the colder the better?

[JML]

You can normally reach higher speeds supercooling, but there are other limiting factors, such as the chip just cannot support the speed you want, no matter how cool it is. You can only go so far...

But yeah, cooler is better =D

[tweak]

Aggressive cooling such as peltiers and water cooling pose a serious threat, Condensation.
Buy one from a good reseller and do alot of reading before trying to install one. The way cpu prices are falling, I would recommend buying a good HSF, OC the cpu as much as possible, save and get a new cpu in a year or so.

[klosters64a]

For maximum OC'd performance, one degree above absolute zero is ideal. I read a fascinating account of cooling a Celeron to -200C. The Celly 300A ran solidly at more than 800 Mhz. I sincerely wish I bookmarked that site! It was written in perfect English, as well as Japanese. The guy was a credit to the maddest overclocker's!
As most folks aren't comfortable handling liquid nitrogen... T-Birds and Durons run so hot that getting them to -200C may be impossible. Maybe not in space... I don't know any overclocking astronauts. Sigh.

[Tachyon]

Maybe NASA would be willing to conduct that experiment :)

[Fink]

How much cooling? For the Intel for absolute best preformance use peltiers and H20 cooling. Intels seem to respond well to supercooling. AMD's on the other hand seem to be rather insensitive to supercooling, and more sensitve to voltage. This is a dichotomy due to higher voltage = higher temps, but there seems to be a limit. I think that H2O cooling is the best for AMD systems, good cooling to ~28-35C, quitet and no condisation problems...

[Tomsawyer]

HAL9000 was a supercooled astronaut hehhehe

klosters64a (Feb 19, 2001 12:10 p.m.):
For maximum OC'd performance, one degree above absolute zero is ideal. I read a fascinating account of cooling a Celeron to -200C. The Celly 300A ran solidly at more than 800 Mhz. I sincerely wish I bookmarked that site! It was written in perfect English, as well as Japanese. The guy was a credit to the maddest overclocker's!
As most folks aren't comfortable handling liquid nitrogen... T-Birds and Durons run so hot that getting them to -200C may be impossible. Maybe not in space... I don't know any overclocking astronauts. Sigh.