The Internet is full of useless videos that can be interesting: this is the case of the video in question, shot by YouTuber and technology lover mryeester. The content creator is no stranger to unorthodox tests, but on this occasion he outdid himself, putting to the test a completely frozen graphics card in a block of ice.
The test, loudly requested by its followers, led to interesting results and the GPU managed to reserve some surprises. Here are the details.
GPU al fresco
Before running the test, mryeester connected a PCIe extension cable and a video cable to the graphics card, then immersed the whole thing in a container filled with tap water, without using chemical compounds or distilled water.
A few days later and with the GPU completely frozen in a block of ice, the YouTuber used the conveniently left free extension cables to connect the motherboard and the monitor.
Despite using ordinary water, which is much more conductive than distilled water, with the fans completely blocked and despite the expansion caused by freezing which could have damaged the internal components, the video card was found to be fully functional.
The NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS used for the test is an extremely dated and cheap card, but it managed to achieve ben 4 fps in the benchmark used, at a temperature of 2 °C. As can be seen from the video, however, after more than 30 minutes of testing, the benchmark still seemed not to be finished, probably due to the slowdowns caused by the humidity on the GPU, generated by the defrosting.
In short, the frozen graphics card has still proven to be extremely resistant and with a few more adjustments it could have achieved slightly better results. For a GPU that can be bought for less than 30 euros, the outcome was more than positive.
