The newbie starting to prep for LN2

Check it out and let me know what you guys think, anything that I need to redo, or things I could do a better job at. Thanks

to Vince on his great pots, these things are a work of art !
Vince's service is second to none and provides the highest quality items that you can find

First a look at the equipment on the Dimas Bench table setup for stock cooling. I have installed Vista Ultimate 32 and all benching programs. Tweaked it all out as best as I could, taken the OC up to 3.5 and the GPU to 631/1531/1022 and ran it for most of the day with a load and everything was pretty stable, no crashes etc so I figured I was good to go to start prepping for some LN2 action.. WAAHHOO !!

I do need a better camera and lighting

So here is the Bench before


And some equipment laid out


Ok I have the MB & GPU all clear finger nail polished up with 2 layers, pretty hard to see pictures of all that.

I will now start with the GPU Pot.

First I needed to drill a hole for the temp probe. It fits just inside the hole and deep enough to get right to the insulation.



Here I have filled the hole with Ceramique, inserted the probe and taped down everything to secure it.


And now starting to make the tape wrap around the pot.


And now the whole pot is taped


Ok so Blue Painters tape has been applied to the Pot. That was a tip from Philly, as the Armaflex adhesive is pretty much a pain to get off and using the tape first will make it much easier to remove the Armaflex if I ever have to.

So here I have applied the first end cap layer of Armaflex


Now it’s fully covered with Armaflex, 2 layers thick


Mounting bracket applied and sitting next to the BFG 8800GTX OC


Oh did someone say close up please ?


And now I have a layer of shop towel wrapped around the pot and taped up.


Now I have applied 2 layers of Frost King around the GPU


Here is when I started running into a few problems.

With the screw set that came with the pot there was a spacer that the screws would screw into and give a lift off space from the PCB board about the thickness of the Frost King. However when I used these spacers and the longest screws it simply was not long enough to go all the way to the Pot on the other side to mount it.

I did have two layers of Frost King on the back side of the PCB board, I cut holes into that for the spacer to fit into but it still would not reach. I will post a picture of the screws with spacer tomorrow so you guys can see what I mean.

So taking the spacer off, the short screws fit just fine and I will go with that. I do have some ½” think foam coming that I will make a seal between the pot and PCB so I might need to go with the longer screws. I stopped here for the night as I found that I need to redo the Frost King stuff.

Armaflex and Frost King are kind of a pain to use, very sticky stuff that Armaflex is. Having to cut through the layer of foil on the Frost King and then peel it off is also a big pain. So my first trys at this stuff was a bit crude but I feel I can deal with the Frost King better now after I have cut a few pieces to fit now.

I figured out that I was doing the assembly wrong and that’s why the screws where not long enough. So here it is the correct way.


And you can see that they are now long enough to reach through the mount and screw into the thumb screw spacer the correct way.


So now I will hold off on the GPU pots until the foam arrives.

On to the CPU pot.

First I have to drill a hole for the temp probe. Kind of scary drilling a hole into these pots


Next installing the probe and taping it up.


Now onto the Motherboard
First thing I did was make a template of the cutout I wanted, using that I first made a layer of shop towel and positioned that on the board.
Next was a layer of Frost King


And then the second layer of Frost King. Havening a template made cutting all 3 of these layers much easier.


Next was the back plate. For this I drilled holes into the rubber plate for the rods to go through. Pushed the rods through and screwed them into the back plate.


Then placed 2 layers of Frost King on the back side of the motherboard and punched 4 holes through all the layers so the screw rods could go through the motherboard.


And last shot for the night is the back plate installed and the rods installed through the layers of insulation and the motherboard holes.


Over all that will be another layer of shop towel, then the foam that goes around the CPU block.

Still a little bit of clean up work to finish up, more Frost King to be placed inbetween the caps and what not, and replace the pieces that got messed up when I was punching the rods through. Shop towel strips need to be placed under the other sides of the NB heat sink for added protection. But all in all I think it came out ok.

So far this has been a rather fun experience, though there is much involved and it is not as easy as it looks. I am not sure how these guys can do all this stuff so fast, but I guess after doing it as often as they do it becomes easy as they know what they can get away with. For me this is my first attempt at this and I am pretty much only using guides that I have found, most on XS so I am doing the best that I can to make sure that everything will work fine when the LN2 hits the pots.

The socket all greased up. I did this several times and added grease until it covered real good. I would pull the CPU off to double check how it was all filling up.


Layer of blue shop towel added


And now the ½ think layer of foam I had been waiting for.


Double check to see how everything fits, seems ok.
MickyMouse Rev 3 pot & Northbridge pot in the background that I picked up from BlueAqua.
BlueAqua is a very cool guy
I was looking for information on who made that poy, anyone know ?


Just checking to see how the new MickMouse Rev 3 Pot fits. It’s goes right on with no problem. The Foam would need to be redone to use it tho., as the F1 needs a bit bigger hole.


F1 all wrapped up in insulation


Ceramique now applied. I double checked several times after I would put the pot on to see how it covers.


Now the F1 is seated in it’s new home. All tightened down real good, seals all around all seem ok.


I thought I would check out how the new Northbridge pot looks. Sucker is tall !! :blink:


F1 all wrapped up in it’s final layer of blue shop towel and ready to go.


Let’s finish up the GPU

Foam gasket cut and in place for the GPU pot to be mounted.


GPU all mounted up and sitting in it’s new home ready to go.


Next I have to mount everything on the Dimas Bench, will do that tomorrow.

Looks like I will be ready for LN2 this weekend for my first run. WAAAHHHOOO !!!