Preparing your motherboard for extreme cooling

Let’s take a look at how to prepare your nice new MARS motherboard for extreme cooling and overclocking.

First, you’d best have your backplate ready with insulation foam piece right behind it:
 

On the front, you notice that I have put in a thin extra piece of foam at the center. This helps to centralize the mounting pressure, and prevents the motherboard from bending too much from high clamping pressure.

Next, for additional safety, I slot in paper towel as shown:

This helps to absorb any moisture from behind the motherboard.

Slipping it through the motherboard you see this:

On the front, to be safe, I slip in paper towels as well:

Next it’s time to cut some foam tape out:

I put in the foam tape strips over the paper towel as seen.

Great! Now we put in the CPU:

After applying the thermal paste, we mount on the Cooler, be it an evaporator or a cooling container:

Tighten the nuts…

Fold and bind the paper towels down against the board and cooler nicely and you’re done!

Without cooling the cooler down, turn on the PC to see that everything boots up fine. Then you can start chilling the cooler down. That’s it!

After an overclocking session, turn off the PC when your cooler is still at -20C or so, such that any ice formed does not melt. Take off the cooler and CPU and blow dry everything warm and dry, to be ready for another session.