Extreme overclocking is wild enough as it is, with liquid nitrogen the go-to cooling source for chasing crazy-high clockspeeds and setting benchmark records. Even more wild, however, is a semi-closed loop that EVGA's engineers and a couple of professional overclockers developed.
In a video posted to YouTube, well-known overclockers Vince 'KINGPIN' Lucido and Illya 'TiN" Tsemenko talk about designing the contraption. It was not their goal to make LN2 cooling more accessible, necessarily, but to streamline the process so they wouldn't have to constantly pour LN2 into a pot while attempting record overclocks and benchmark runs.
What they developed is a semi-closed loop that is somewhat similar to a self-contained water cooler, except instead of a radiator and reservoir, the tubing is connected to a pair of massive LN2 tanks. One tank serves as the intake, and the other is the output, or gas.
GamersNexus had a chance to check it out in person and says the cooler, called Roboclocker, has been in use for months. It's actually functional, not just a show pierce, and has been used to break five 3DMark records so far.
Moisture is a still a problem, which is one of several reasons why something like this is still not practical. That said, KINGPIN has aspirations of further developing Roboclocker to a point where it's "plug-and-play so anybody and can take it and bench for records."
That's probably a bit ambitious, but it's still really neat. Check it out:
