When overclocking with sub-zero cooling and liquid nitrogen specifically there is a chance of running into so called “coldbugs”. The system refuses to work below a certain temperature, not because they can’t handle lower temperatures but the system simply shuts down when it gets too cold. There have been some problems with this with MSI’s motherboards for the Intel P55 platform and there is a now hardware mod to remedy this, from MSI.
MSI have localized the problem to a resistor that sits on the back of the motherboard near the processor socket. By removing the resistor and shorten two pins the coldbug will disappear and allow overclockers to experiment with even lower temperatures. The problems have mainly been with Clarkdale processors.
The four affected and tested motherboards are as follows;
– MSI MSI P55-GD80
– MSI MSI P55-GD85
– MSI Big Band Trinergy
– MSI Big Bang Fuzion
At XtremeSystems there are some explanatory pictures for the different motherboards and which resistor to remove. Our own tests haven’t shown the same great results, but we haven’t been able to test it thoroughly just yet.
It’s still exciting to see MSI’s commitment to enthusiasts where it launched a microsite explaining how to unlock cores with AMD’s processors and now shows how to physically modify their motherboards for better overclocking potential.
