Seems I fried something:)

[Archangel8]

So I have been busy of late and unable to finish my TEC project, have all of these TECS sitting around and on whim I decide to go ahead and setup one of the 85watt TEC on my ti4200 just for kicks thinking that my 520 watt psu will be able to handle the load I don't mess with setting up one of the psu's I bought for the task.


Well......after truning it on and doing a little oc'ing, got the core up 360:), I start to smell a little burning odor in the air.....beeps start to sound......bad.

shut down, unhook TEC from PSU, hook TEC to external PSU and start back up. Check my puter voltages and temps and it seems that my 5vsb is now running at 4.....not good.

Any clue as to what might of happened, and is the standby voltage really all that important?

[Archangel8]

Well booted this morning and its fine, I think it was just the psu overheating because I had the fan set to low.

TEC works great, even though the extra heat is significant with only 85watt TEC hooked up. I will definitely need to chill the water to do what I am planning. Feels chilly on the back side of the card under load, but the WB is toasty to the touch.

[lclark2074]

witch lines on the PSU are you using tor the TEC?
what is the max volts of theTEC?
what is the max amps on the difrent rails of the PSU?
it sounds like you burnt a rail in psu

[Archangel8]

Originally posted by lclark2074
witch lines on the PSU are you using tor the TEC?
what is the max volts of theTEC?
what is the max amps on the difrent rails of the PSU?
it sounds like you burnt a rail in psu

PSU is 520 TTGI; should be more than enough to handle the TEC; and I am running it off the 12v line; Its rated Imax 10 amps; and Vmax 15.2, but of course its not going to draw 10 amps at 12volts.

My 12volt line has remained stable as well as the 5 and 3 rail. It happened again when the temps rose. My air conditioning is out right now:( I live in Florida, still a little toasty here:)

[Ven0m]

Ohh... 360 on Ge 4200 core - cool :)
max what was ok (no artifacts) on mine was 325, but I have stock cooling now :)
And how do you see that: CPU cooled by normal block, but pelt on VGA? And what pelt I'd need for this Ge? I have shi-tty 300Watts PSU, but I'd buy / make additional one for pelt.

[Archangel8]

Yeah it was running sweet and I don't think I was maxed out. One of those spur of the moment, " I can't wait to get the whole thing running" things:). I unhooked from my puter PSU and used a lower amp adjustable industrial psu (15volts @ 6.7amps), and had to adjust down to 13 volts to prevent the overload proteciton from kicking in and shutting it down. The psu needs a fan to cool though, cause once it starts to overheat no power to TEC. . . very bad:)

I recently hooked the other one I have to a Antec TP550 for kicks and the temp went extremely cold, but alas I only had it sitting on an aluminum HS with no fan and of course the temp wouldn't hold. I can't wait to see what these TECs can do with chilled water running through their veins.

[Ven0m]

340 max for me on GPU on stock cooling, with pelts & vmod I bet it could do 380

[Archangel8]

Originally posted by Ven0m
340 max for me on GPU on stock cooling, with pelts & vmod I bet it could do 380

I would say that it is probably accurate. 340 stock is awesome though.

[Ven0m]

I'm still not assured if there can be in one rig - CPU block and TECed all-VGA block. Is that a rule that if you use TECs, they need to be on each block? I don't want to TEC my CPU, as TECs have so poor efficiency. But I could have one 80Watt Pelt in rig.

[Archangel8]

No, you can use a TEC on just the vid alone, and I am of the opinion that attempting to use two with only a rad to dissipate the heat won't work.

I am still in the process of building the water chiller. Once that is complete I will have a better idea as to whether I am going to use TEC on vga, cpu, and maybe even the NB.

We will see.....

[kayl]

i have a MSI GF4 ti4200 running at 594@300MHZ. i have heard people running them at this speed 6months or so and buring out.

i got a MZE4 GPU water block arriving any day soon. can wait to slap it on, i have a 80w peltier sittng her too, gonna water cool it first, then maybe a few months get a cold plate and use that peltier. post my results once i get it up and running.

also what heatsinks you using on the ram, what speed you got the ram running, what brand of gf4 have you

[kayl]

also forgot you know what temps you getting at core, do the graphics cards have temp sensors on them, know of any software to log these temperatures

[Ven0m]

Some ppl say that these cards can burn out after OCing for a long time, but... Mine was running 290/580 for a very long time (morethan half a year), then after I got better PSU, it ran 300/600 and 320/620 for benchmarking, I clocked it down to 290/580 when I wanted to check temp with finger, touching backside of card and there temp was high enough that my skin sticked to card. Now I run it 100/200, becasue now I do no benchmarking and don't play games too much, switching to 300/600 for games and 340/620 for benchmarks.

Card was running with no ramsinks, and stock GPU cooling, very overclocked for more than year and I could only realize OCing improvement when used better PSU. So I won't confirm that they "burn out". Imho they can burn out whe you use them with some artifacts on screen.

Now my idea of OCing cards is - if you can hold finger on any card part (not only chips, but also these coils) for at least 5 seconds, VGA is not hot :)

I don't know if my card has sensors, but you can download some MSI software for Ge4 and MBM5 plugin using it to get temperatures - all stuff should be avaible on MBM5 site.

[Tirbyren]

TEC? Sorry but I have to find out what it is somewhere :D

BTW Archangel8 - can the IC7-G handle PC3500+?

[Ven0m]

TEC - Thermo Electric Cooler, often called Peltier / Pelt

imho that board can handle it, eventually you can find help by ome more advanced mem users @ Memory section

[Archangel8]

Don't know about the ic7-g, but my IS7-G can handle 3500 just fine, and I have ben able to push the mem a little farther than some by tweaking the nbstrap. My pc marks are right around 11300 +/- 200-300 depending on how my puter is feeling that day:). No way you will ever get 3500 to tap dance with a 250 fsb at 1-to-1 with mushkin or geil dragon, but I can get a decent 234 with mushkin and 228 with geil dragon at 1-to-1.

What Venom said about TEC's, cold little buggers if you feed them the right diet of juice and cold wet stuff.:)

[FizzledFiend]

ahh the ole' finger temp probe...what if your fingers are like mine (mechanics hands where the fingers are use to heat and are not as sensitive any longer, callouses) anyways i don't reckon thats a very good way to go about temp probing anyways :) LOL

are you getting much in the way of condensation on your GPU with those pelts? if so how much of an insulation job is needed...what about wieght and warpage of the card?

[Archangel8]

are you getting much in the way of condensation on your GPU with those pelts? if so how much of an insulation job is needed...what about wieght and warpage of the card?

The condensation is a prob (Florida humidity don't you know), but I found a site that sells neoprene by the sheet for cheap. Got enough of the stuff to wrap the chiller resevoir, and enough left over to do probably 20-30 TEC setups for about $20. I also use Konfromal spray and gave the card three coats just in case.:). I also had to take measures to fill the gap that exists between the cold plate and the board. This is not a prob with CPU because the gap is large enough to just use neoprene, and you can torque a little more with the use of a standard PIV bracket back plate. But with the GPU you have to be very careful because you cannot torque the WB down as you would a CPU WB, and the gap is very thin. I used a very thin piece of neoprene to fill the gap, and a little konformal to fill in around heat plate and the edge of the GPU chip. Seems to work fine, but I will be keeping my eye on it. I have been using Konformal to coat my MOBO etc since switching to water cooling, so the MOBO is covered, literally:).

The issue with the weight on the card is definitely there, and initially (the results of the experiment above) I used a 85watt TEC with a 40mm pre-made cold plate (even though the standard cold plate available does not leave room to attach to the gpu and torque down), and it worked fine. But I have since decided to use the 130watt TECs for vid cooling, and the 85watts for the NB (all arguments aside as to whether this is overkill:), as I have decided to push the envelope with this project. Just didn't seem right to not go all out). Since the 130watt TECs are 50mm and put out a lot more heat I thought to move them farther away from the gpu with a 1/2 inch cold plate. Too heavy though, so I then decided to use a 1/2 alum cold plate instead to prevent killing the card. Moreover, the copper is harder to work with and I needed to oversize the cold plate in order to allow me to torque the TEC down onto the WB. Result: a nice light weight cold plate that does not warp the vid card, and that I can apply the 200+ psi torque the TEC needs, plus the heat from the TEC does not back wash to the GPU. Nominal tradeoff with respect to copper v. aluminum issue.

[Ven0m]

1/2" cold plate is pretty thick. Notice that on too thiick cold plate temperatures may increase. If you really need that cold plate, I'd suggest some custom silver cast.

Top - flat for pelt.
Bottom - flat in GPU area, rest - star style, "fins" going from cenctre to sides.

Silver is heavier than copper, but this design may lower total weight. Insulation is harder this way, altho whole design is rather worth trying.

[Archangel8]

I might look into that. Chose the 1/2 because it keeps the TEC away from the gpu. With the 130watt its not absolutely necessary that I get 100% efficiency, but from my research a 1/2 cold plate helps, and actually allows me to do more in insulation/isolation of the TEC. with the cold plate torqued to the gpu the insulation is very tight, and doesn't allow for the cold temps to excape and keeps the heat from the TEC away. I have a sufficient supply of cheap metal stock so I will probably try different variations. Right now I am concentrating on getting the chiller done. It is proving to be the most difficult portion of the project because the vapo is just too big to do what I want to do.