that one person on the table using liquid helium - bet they did it for a laugh

...a very high-pitched laugh.

indeed! I was confusing it with nitrous oxide

Actually they did it for a PR event with ASUS to get the record when the platform launched.

Liquid Helium is too expensive and difficult to handle otherwise. Even for extreme overclocking.

Will is strong, but the body is soft and flabby

Those Celerons were not known for running cool when stock, either.

Evidently the Celeron D is very overclockable. Still, 8ghz. Wow.

Having a longer than average pipeline for the frequency (and the longest pipeline ever made for a production CPU, in the case of the Celeron) certainly helps. They have a 31-stage pipeline, and the AMDs have 20, while other CPUs are around 15:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CPU_microarchite...

Imagine a liquid deuterium cooled Mill CPU running Half Life 4!