Goal: 250 (500) FSB

Goal: 10x250 Athlon XP system

Current parts: Epox 8RDA+ (need to RMA, CMOS error, GRRRR!)
Athlon 2400+ (AIUCB) ... should probably look for a G or H
Corsair PC3500 ... couldn't get it past 202 FSB

Eheim pump
Lots of 1/2" reinforced tubing
White Water block (thank you, Cathar!)
Chevette heater core with shroud
Innovatek Reservoir (dumb purchase)

When I get my 8RDA+ back, I plan to burn it in for several days. This one didn't last two days, which is pretty frustrating. I wasn't doing anything extreme -- it just never came back from the last reboot. Stops boot sequence at "05" every time. Anyway, once I'm sure I have a good board, I plan to do the VDD mod. I've heard around the forums that this will make the northbridge very hot, but also the voltage regulators and southbridge. However, this should let me get to very high FSB, everything else being equal.

The problem is, of course, nutty amounts of heat for cranking the board up this far. My idea is to use two Bayres reservoirs and a water chiller to circulate COLD water into the system.

Two questions: Lets assume an absolutely insane case where I wanted to watercool my CPU, northbridge, votage regulators (mosfets), GPU, and Video memory. The first question is, how should I build a circuit to do this? Should I just run the water from one block to the next, in serial? Or should I create a second water circuit and split the load? Would I need two pumps to do the latter?

The second question is, assuming ludicrous water chilling (say, 1-5C), what are the most effective ways of fighting condensation?

Now, I'm sure that not every bit of this will get done. However, my environment is such that temps can get to 35C ambient with significant humidity. (Summer in St. Louis SUCKS) So, even if the water were "only" chilled to 15-20C, condensation could still be an issue. Since I'll be doing the VDD mod, I may want to throw a heat pipe or water at the voltage regulators ... and certainly, moisture there could fubar a lot of things.

Yep, the MOSFETs and northbridge get pretty durn hot. OPPainter at XtremeSystems had to pelt+H20 his north bridge and H20 cool his MOSFETs just to get 240 FSBTo get the most outta of the system a serialized loop would be the best route,

I think this will be a very difficult goal to pursue. Besides the fact that it is pretty difficult to watercool small MOSFETs and similar tiny chips at all sorts of odd locations, it is also not obvious exactly which chips get hot on your mobo and which do not.
Back in the day, some guy made IR pictures of a couple of boards, including the Asus CUSL2 which I had in my main rig at the time. His pictures showed some totally unexpected heatspots, while others (like the Northbridge) stayed amazingly cool. In short, I think you will need this heatsource information before cooling anything.
Furthermore, even with the heatsource located, watercooling will only remedy overheating components- it will not provide a big difference in attained clockspeed as active cooling would do. As a method of testing this I would recommend using some custom heatsinks epoxied to the crucial chips and see what kind of difference that makes if any at all (assuming good case ventilation). This will give you an idea what getting closer to room ambient temp will do for you.

Yeah, I know it's a tough goal. That's part of why I want to, right?

The heat map is a WONDERFUL idea. I *think* I can do that using the NightShot ability of my Sony Handycam ... primitive, but it should serve the purpose.

The mosfets are not too much trouble on the 8RDA+ ... but I have worried a bit about the little clock chips running at that speed. Not sure what I might do to cool them ... maybe capillary heat pipes ... who knows.

I think if I got to 240 and it was stable, that might be "close enough." Then again ... maybe it isn't.

from what penguin is saying, itll be mighty hard, you might want to get a 36watt peltier from bgmicro(that should do it) and whats this heat mapping?

Paazabel said:

Yeah, I know it's a tough goal. That's part of why I want to, right?

The heat map is a WONDERFUL idea. I *think* I can do that using the NightShot ability of my Sony Handycam ... primitive, but it should serve the purpose.

The mosfets are not too much trouble on the 8RDA+ ... but I have worried a bit about the little clock chips running at that speed. Not sure what I might do to cool them ... maybe capillary heat pipes ... who knows.

I think if I got to 240 and it was stable, that might be "close enough." Then again ... maybe it isn't.

Click to expand...

Heh then I wish you good luck! It sure is a fun goal to pursue. One thing I would pay attention to myself is to whether or not the goal state will still be a pc usable in normal conditions- that is making sure the cooling system can run without constant maintenance, but also keeping a stable PCI/AGP bus.

JFettig said:

from what penguin is saying, itll be mighty hard, you might want to get a 36watt peltier from bgmicro(that should do it) and whats this heat mapping?

Click to expand...

It is a picture of the mainboard, but taken with a infrared camera. Heats is picked up by such a camera and shows up on the picture. The hotter something is, the more intense the IR emission at that spot.
This picture provides insight in what areas of a mainboard get hot and which don't, so that you can apply appropriate cooling.

how do you get this picture? what kind of camera, Im interested in doing this, Can you see thru something with it, like if i pointed it at my cpu with a wb on, would I be able to see the cpu being hotter than the wb and whatnots?

Heh then I wish you good luck! It sure is a fun goal to pursue. One thing I would pay attention to myself is to whether or not the goal state will still be a pc usable in normal conditions- that is making sure the cooling system can run without constant maintenance, but also keeping a stable PCI/AGP bus.

Click to expand...

I should say that, yes, the goal is to be USABLE at 250. Now, if it's usable at 245 but only boots at 250, okay, I can live with it. But, that is the "holy grail" for the project -- a 10x250 Athlon as my primary gaming PC. I could probably live with 10.5x 240 ...

Mostly, it's a project to find out 1) if it's possible, or is having a 250 BIOS setting just sort of taunting us, and 2) what it would take to cool the various parts for a super high FSB OC. Even if I don't succeed, someone with a little more know-how probably will. That's sorta what posting things out here is about. Trying to give a little back ... considering all the stuff I've learned.

I did a Google search for "Infrared camera" and got this, as well as aweb site. here is the pic of a kid that just ate Ice Cream

JFettig said:

how do you get this picture? what kind of camera, Im interested in doing this, Can you see thru something with it, like if i pointed it at my cpu with a wb on, would I be able to see the cpu being hotter than the wb and whatnots?

Click to expand...

Check out the website the other guy posted. The answer to your question is no- you cannot see through anything with it. You simply see the heat radiating from a surface, in this case the surface is the wb, though heated by the cpu underneath it etc.