The point is just to enjoy the hobby really. The score is just to try to set records by seeing how far your hardware can go if ran correctly. We have a benchmarking team here so as a group we all compete against eachother, and against other benchmarking teams.
I do it because there have been over 60,000 CPU frequency submissions at hwbot.org. Out of those submissions, I'm currently ranked 13th. I think that is kind of neat. The challenge along the way was the best part though, even if I never got that high of a score I've had a fun time learning - finding other guys around here to teach me, learning how to insulate, learning how to run the system on LN2... figuring out which voltages it helps to tweak, and what combinations of frequencies work the best.
So if you were just starting out, you'd see how high your clock speed can go on air cooling. Then maybe you'd see how high you can set it and still run superpi or wprime. Then maybe you'd try out watercooling and see if that increases your limits. Ultimately if you are into the tweaking, you run benchmarks just for the fun of the hobby and competition, and compare your scores to everyone else running those same benchmarks on hwbot.org.
As for cost, I paid $300 for a 50L container I can get filled with LN2. I paid a bit over $200 for a copper evaporator to mount on my processor and pour the LN2 into. I pay 75 cents/liter for the LN2 each time I get my container filled up. It was expensive starting out to get the container and the cooler. But for less than $40 for 50 liters, I can spend a few nights playing with a computer thats on the very edge of stability and see what I can make it do.
, that is an accomplishment to be proud of, I sure am gald you are on our benching team
