sb55mv
08-24-2004, 11:04 AM
Hi All.
I just thought I'd give you some information and a bit of news on what I've done,and the differences it's clearly made to my system,
you can see from my signature that I have IMHO a pretty good and very stable system, however I had read and heard about the amount of people going in for Water Cooling and wondered what all the hype was about, remembering here that our cars,or automobiles for the American fraternity, are of course cooled this way, well, I can report some fantastic findings and temperatures that are absolutely astounding, I am of course in the UK so these will be different from the ''higher climate'' countries, well here in the UK we pretty much get poor weather for a lot of the year,in fact England is the only country I know where we can get all four seasons in one day. we don't get the tropical storms of hurricanes that some of you get, but it does get pretty darn cold all the same, so here's what I did.
I bought a Black Ice Extreme II Radiator as it was the biggest I could find here. then a Swiftech CPU water block and Swiftech GPU block, I never bothered with the chip-set as this never seemed to be very warm to the touch.
I use a Hydor L30 water pump with 1/2" throughout the whole system, the route is as follows,
from the pump discharge outlet(top) along a two foot length of pipe through the wall to the bottom inlet of the rad, then from the top outlet of the rad along another two and a half foot length of pipe into the PC case then up onto the lower in-let port of the water block,then out the top port of the water block to the inlet of the GPU water block, and out the other port, this then went out of the PC case and into a reservoir, from which it came out of there again and into the suction side of the water pump(lower inlet) I describe all this in this way as it's important to make sure you are making the water run ''up hill'' as it were, if you let it run in the downward direction you are not making the water cool, just rush in and out instead. (I did not split the water in-let pipes to make them go seperately to the CPU / GPU as I was running 1/2" throughout and it doesent make the CPU water heat the GPU block at all as the water is not staying in there long enough,and you have to be very carefull not to ''starve'' the CPU block of a good flow rate here)
the radiator on the outside wall just below the window ledge has a pair of 120mm high flow fans on the back of it sucking the air through it, with the water being of a 40% anti freeze and 60% de-ionised water, the fitting of all this is literally child's play with some caution and common sense and taking you're time
I can report however that my system temps when I was on air cooling and the heat sink and fan were typically 58/65 degrees Celsius depending on the weather, well not anymore. now my temps are typical 41 on a very hot day, and today it has remained pretty stable around the 32-36 level,and that was after running medal of Honor allied assault for an hour or so,and then FS9 with a PSS A340,FS Nav,SB Relay,AVC,S Box host,S Box main etc for a flight of 4.5 hrs with real world weather turned on and auto up-dating every fifteen Min's.
I also have been running the Winbond Hardware Doctor Ver 2.73 that came with my IC7-Max3 board, I run a Hercules 3D Prophet 9800Pro with the latest ATI drivers,and DirectX 9.0C.
even now straight after the flight my temps according to Winbond are as follows
System - 28C, CPU - 33C, PWM - 27C,(don't actually know what this is, do you?)
I run all this in a full size server tower as I wanted plenty of room, it has a Vantec 520W Stealth PSU,which has three fans of it's own,then a pair of 120mm fans on the top as exhausts,and a another pair of 120mm fans at the side by the graphics card / mobo mid point.these are all Vantec Stealths again with them being controlled by a rheobus with the top fans being constantly set to low,and the side ones at mid point all the time.
I apologise for the length of this post but just thought I'd do it in case some were thinking of going to water cooling but wondered of it was worth their time and efforts, well it IS.
I know as well that my equipment will last longer as well as a result of it not being run at a very hot temperature, so it has other benefits to it in the long term,and it is also Silent Now Too.
thanks for taking the time to read this.
Steve.
I just thought I'd give you some information and a bit of news on what I've done,and the differences it's clearly made to my system,
you can see from my signature that I have IMHO a pretty good and very stable system, however I had read and heard about the amount of people going in for Water Cooling and wondered what all the hype was about, remembering here that our cars,or automobiles for the American fraternity, are of course cooled this way, well, I can report some fantastic findings and temperatures that are absolutely astounding, I am of course in the UK so these will be different from the ''higher climate'' countries, well here in the UK we pretty much get poor weather for a lot of the year,in fact England is the only country I know where we can get all four seasons in one day. we don't get the tropical storms of hurricanes that some of you get, but it does get pretty darn cold all the same, so here's what I did.
I bought a Black Ice Extreme II Radiator as it was the biggest I could find here. then a Swiftech CPU water block and Swiftech GPU block, I never bothered with the chip-set as this never seemed to be very warm to the touch.
I use a Hydor L30 water pump with 1/2" throughout the whole system, the route is as follows,
from the pump discharge outlet(top) along a two foot length of pipe through the wall to the bottom inlet of the rad, then from the top outlet of the rad along another two and a half foot length of pipe into the PC case then up onto the lower in-let port of the water block,then out the top port of the water block to the inlet of the GPU water block, and out the other port, this then went out of the PC case and into a reservoir, from which it came out of there again and into the suction side of the water pump(lower inlet) I describe all this in this way as it's important to make sure you are making the water run ''up hill'' as it were, if you let it run in the downward direction you are not making the water cool, just rush in and out instead. (I did not split the water in-let pipes to make them go seperately to the CPU / GPU as I was running 1/2" throughout and it doesent make the CPU water heat the GPU block at all as the water is not staying in there long enough,and you have to be very carefull not to ''starve'' the CPU block of a good flow rate here)
the radiator on the outside wall just below the window ledge has a pair of 120mm high flow fans on the back of it sucking the air through it, with the water being of a 40% anti freeze and 60% de-ionised water, the fitting of all this is literally child's play with some caution and common sense and taking you're time
I can report however that my system temps when I was on air cooling and the heat sink and fan were typically 58/65 degrees Celsius depending on the weather, well not anymore. now my temps are typical 41 on a very hot day, and today it has remained pretty stable around the 32-36 level,and that was after running medal of Honor allied assault for an hour or so,and then FS9 with a PSS A340,FS Nav,SB Relay,AVC,S Box host,S Box main etc for a flight of 4.5 hrs with real world weather turned on and auto up-dating every fifteen Min's.
I also have been running the Winbond Hardware Doctor Ver 2.73 that came with my IC7-Max3 board, I run a Hercules 3D Prophet 9800Pro with the latest ATI drivers,and DirectX 9.0C.
even now straight after the flight my temps according to Winbond are as follows
System - 28C, CPU - 33C, PWM - 27C,(don't actually know what this is, do you?)
I run all this in a full size server tower as I wanted plenty of room, it has a Vantec 520W Stealth PSU,which has three fans of it's own,then a pair of 120mm fans on the top as exhausts,and a another pair of 120mm fans at the side by the graphics card / mobo mid point.these are all Vantec Stealths again with them being controlled by a rheobus with the top fans being constantly set to low,and the side ones at mid point all the time.
I apologise for the length of this post but just thought I'd do it in case some were thinking of going to water cooling but wondered of it was worth their time and efforts, well it IS.
I know as well that my equipment will last longer as well as a result of it not being run at a very hot temperature, so it has other benefits to it in the long term,and it is also Silent Now Too.
thanks for taking the time to read this.
Steve.