<p>Does anyone here know what the electrical conductivity of Liquid Nitrogen is? I tried searching the internet but all sources about nitrogen do not state it. Currently, I am contemplating building a super computer out of my PC by extreme overclocking. Just want to know if the mother board will short circuit or not if it gets submerged in liquid nitrogen.</p>
<p>Well Working with computers, Ive never heard of anyone submerging their computer in liquid nitrogen. Since It would reduce the heat considerably, I would say that it probably isnt safe to get any of it on your Motherboard ;).</p>
<p>also if you spilled the liquid nitrogen youd run a risk of actually making your motherboard too cold lol :P</p>
<p>How extreme do you want to go? And with what CPU? it makes a big difference. (Pentiums tend to have a higher heat threshold, but AMDs tend to not run as hot and not need to run as hot)</p>
<p>sorry Im starting to get off topic :P</p>
<p>Oh, gimme a break, dude. Haven't you had chemistry? It's NITROGEN. A non-metal. And it's N2, which means that it's not going to be polar, like water is, hence, NO! No electrical conductivity! Which brings me to a couple of other things...</p>
<p>a) That's not a good idea.
b) You're going to be hard-pressed to get a steady supply of liquid nitrogen. Got any Dewar flasks laying around? I didn't think so... It'd evaporate before you had any time to do anything with it, anyhow. You don't have the sorts of refrigerant systems to be able to <em>sustain</em> that kind of cold. It'd be about as effective as using ice, in terms of the logistics involved.
c) Overclocking to the degree that you're talking about is dangerous. Don't try it, or things will melt and explode.</p>
<p>I took Chemistry and Dr. Horvath was the professor in University of Florida.
Even though nitrogen is non-polar and non-metal does not mean that it will be non-conductive. It if proves to be conductive than by set up might be compromized. I need proof of what its resistance is and I just can't find any.
A). Really? Well that's just your opinion, I think it's a great idea.
B). I need just enought to last 5 to 10 minutes at a time.
C). Exlode? LOL hahahahah ahahahah. I never heard of computers exploding from overclocking. And things would not melt if they are kept cold. Now about the dangerous part: The fact that it might be dangerous is why overclocking is fun and exciting.</p>
<p>Nitrogen is non-conductive. Look up "electrical conductivity," because Dr. Horvath apparently taught you nothing about it. LN2 is about as electrically conductive as air, primarily because... air is primarily made up of nitrogen! Intelligence abounds.</p>
<p>Man, you take me way too literally... "Explode," as in, "go fubar". The chip's gonna crack, if you're not careful. That'll set you back a fair chunk of change.</p>
<p>Again, where are you going to get the liquid nitrogen? It's cheap, but you can't get it unless you've got a Dewar flask, and those are expensive.</p>
<p>Sigh.</p>
<p>If you <em>do</em> happen to get the LN2, and if, as a college student, you've got the money to sacrifice a fairly expensive processor to the gods of experimentation, then here.</p>
<p>Learn to use Google.</p>
<p>You were cheated out of a good chemistry class w/ Horvath. I took it w/ Keaffaber, and he actually showed us a demonstration of the effects of liquid nitrogen. After just a few minutes worth of immersion, a rubber gas tube (those you attach to Bunsen burners) was petrified and shattered at the lightest touch. I wouldn't want any of that crap near my 'supercomputer'. </p>
<p>And besides, you really think that if liquid nitrogen was such a great coolant for computers, that it wouldn't already have been exploited by someone by now? Hm.</p>
<p>That was NOT an answer- “an educated worthy”!!</p>
<p>Ever heard of the unwritten law; “There is no stupid Q only stupid Answers!”</p>
<p>An educated (wo) man, has his self-worth by his/her education, and- will answer in respect and in best effort!</p>
<p>An uneducated (wo) man, has his self-worth by his/her devastation of his/her fellow people. The person will then have a “hidden vainglorious” image!
That person and will answer in disrespect and non effort!</p>
<p>Congratulation, you just blew away “the secret of your bad self-esteem”</p>
<p>Best regard
A Norwegian ruminator</p>
<p>As I recall, this guy had asked an increasingly ridiculous series of questions, pumping the people here for information without regard to the forum’s intended purpose. Further, it’s general forum courtesy to run a cursory Google-search to see if there are existing answers to your question before you ask people to give up their own time to type out a response. Typically around here, we answer repeat questions, but the original poster was abusing the privilege.</p>
<p>Of course, I could be misremembering, since this post is three years old…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Liquid nitrogen actually is used as a coolant for extreme overclocking for short periods of time. I’ve never seen one submerged in it though. That would probably crack the motherboard due to differences in thermal expansion coefficients.</p>
<p>Agree with aibarr though, this fellow wasn’t very respectful</p>
<p>edit: whoops I responded to a three-year-old post.</p>
<p>You guys need to learn your physics and chemistry. Liquid nitrogen is used as a coolant for conductors. When conductors are cooled their resistivity is lowered, making their conductivity better. If the temperature drops so low that their resistivity drops to zero, it becomes superconducting. Too bad we haven’t found any material yet that will become superconducting before the temperature hits absolute zero but we are working it.</p>
<p>Example of use of liquid nitrogen:
The wiring of MRI machines. They are usually surrounded in liquid nitrogen.</p>
<p>Umm…there are lots of materials which become superconducting before absolute zero. [Here’s</a> a quick list.](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superconductors]Here’s”>List of superconductors - Wikipedia) [Here’s</a> what’s probably the most famous.](<a href=“Superconductivity Examples”>Superconductivity Examples)</p>
<p>Guess again, nasal has some ceramic compounds than insulate chips from the nitrogen but a lows supercooling, kepping the nitrogen under pressureview solves evap, and despite our accepted physical laws check what materials are when SUPERCOOLED, now possible with Lazar deflation 1 degree above measurable absolute 0!!?? Tr adanced concept center.tr</p>
<p>Fuck. Predictve.texttr</p>
@aibarr : I think you’re being a little too overconfident there…
First, water, and I mean pure water has actually a pretty high resistance, what makes it conductive is the ions dissolved inside. The polarity of water makes it a good solvent for lots of stuff, but it’s irrelevant regarding electric conductivity. Pure chloroform is pretty damn polar, but I don’t see how it could conduct a single electron.
Second, air is indeed not conducive, buy you know it can be ionized and conduct electricity right ? That’s what lightning and electric arcs are. Sure it takes a huge amount of energy, but air is a gas, liquid N2 is…well liquid. That means the molecules are a lot closer from each other than in a gas, therefore it’s not aberrant to say that maybe liquid N2 can be ionized easier that air would.
What makes something conducive is either ions able to do oxido-reduction on whatever would be the anode/cathode, or the ability to have electron jumping from one atom to the next one in a chain. The π bonds in the N2 molecule can do that, and a ionized N2+ molecule could easily do an electrophilic attack on a neighboring normal N2, effectively resulting in a local electron transfer that is not so different from what happens in metals.
So “is liquid N2 conductive” is far from being a stupid question. and yes, there is no stupid questions (almost), only stupid answers.
But to go back at the original question : extreme overflowing is not going to turn a home computer into a supercomputer (not an expert though), you most likely have no way to store liquid N2, and the cold is probably going to shatter your motherboard, CPU, and pretty much everything in your computer.
Plus there’s no such thing as “I need to overcloak it only for five minutes”, just have it run at normal speed for 20 min and you’ll be done. That would also save the time and money you’d need for the other option.
Oh, crap. I didn’t check how old this post was…
The post you replied to is 10 years old, long dead. It’s best to let it stay that way. 
Necromancer alert! Someone please apprehend this user for practicing the dark arts.
I guess the OP did find some LN2 and fried his computer. His last post was April 2006, not long after he started this quest for computing greatness.
I like how he edited it 3 years later too
Stats on the OP showed he joined in January 2006 and was last heard from in April of that same year.
Well according to my little research about liquid nitrogen i believe the best way to start working with it you may have to immerse on liquid nitrogen every single metallic component by itself because if u immerse all the components already attached to the board system you will mess your whole project due to the fact of the density of the board system itself it will loose the elasticity and maleability that it has and it needs to be able to support the temperatures that the electric components will produce when it be in function…