• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

My first AND LAST forray into water cooling

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Pntgrd

Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2001
I did my research, bought the best, took my time in the assembly, did it by the book. Unfortunately the results were not pleasing. My temps suk'd. Case temps actually went UP from my air cooling. I attribute that to removing a VGA Silencer and going to a VGA bloc. Cpu temps are basically the same as with an SP-94/Panaflo setup. In order to keep these same temps,I have to run the rad 120mm fan at a speed that it makes MORE noise than the 4 80mm case fans I was running before. But the real Kicker (as in , Right in the TEETH) is that somehow, someway, I have screw** up my 9800Pro in any 3D. Looks fine in 2D. But in 3D, the display is all splattered and textures either wrong or missing. I have tried removing the w/b and going back to the Silencer. Reinstalled Omega drivers. Checked the vga cable to the monitor. Changed from Ceramique to AS3. Tried mounting "just" tight enough to hold it on. I have NO idea what happened. I never got coolant on the card. I didn't over-tighten the bloc, I know how fragile pcb's are. I didn't think there was ever enough tourque against the card from the water lines to bend the card or put any pressure on it. I am at a total loss, in more ways than just $$$$. So I have in the end, taken a perfectly working top notch system, spent just under $300.00 to just F**K it up to where it is now just a very expensive word processor. It is my own fault, but I am not a happy camper right now and the HUMM from that pump just really pi**es me OFF
 
i recall reading a frontpage article called "stop rma'ing stuff you break" and i wanted to mention that first.... but are you sure that something you did actually messed up the card?

about your temperature/performance issues, if you tell us how you had it setup and what kind of case you have, maybe someone here will have some useful advice.

i can only imagine how much it must suck to spend all that time effort and money and then have bad results and a broken card, but give us some details and maybe you can get some help.

if that doesnt work, i'm sure someone will want to buy all that watercooling equipment from you

good luck
 
Buying and selling has to be done in the classifieds section - so let's stay away from any offers and the like here. I don't think it's allowed to deal to people not cleared for the classifieds as well.

I'm really sorry to hear about that too. As always, people around here (myself included) would much rather try to help out than write it up as a total loss. Some details would be useful in trying to find any problems you might've had.
 
Pntgrd, I've read a few of your posts, and have some questions. First off, how much are you overclocking? If you weren't overclocking very much before, then the SP-94 could have handled the heatload just fine therefore going to WC wouldn't help any at those speeds. I'm thinking maybe if you OC more you will see lower temps then you would have with the SP-94 cooling your processor at the same speed. Basically I'm saying you might not be loading your WC setup enough to see a difference. It also could be block mounting, thermal paste, ect. There are a lot of variables so don't just give up.
 
Does the shim on your radeon 9800 extend above the gpu surface? Possibly the first time or so you installed your silencer heatsink you had just enough thermal goop on it to have an ok connection. Sometimes people use shin etsu thermal pads if the space between the core and cooler is too much for thermal paste because of the shim. Also check the video card/agp slot to make sure nothing fell into the slot. If some thermal goop fell in it could cause weird effects.
 
Sorry to hear about your 9800 if it is indeed messed up. I get upset if one of my case fans die so Im sure this is killing you. I suppose if I ever kill something as expensive as your card I would be just as ticked off and probably go back to aircooling as well.

I also understand what you mean about the noise. There is such a misconception that if you go to watercooling from air your gonna get these great temps and your pc will be quiet as a mouse. I think this is wrong and its wrong to make people think otherwise. Watercooling can be quiet, but rarely can a quiet WC system give you the same temps as a good air cooling setup. And if you want those great temps with WC, often you will have a noise level as high as your good performing aircooling.
With my old air setup, my temps at idle were about the same as they are now, with the same noise level. But at load there is no comparison. With a good WC system your load temps shouldnt be as high as with air and it should take longer to get them there.
 
Guys there is a misiterpretation with water cooling. There are just so many variables while building a water cooled pc. What i mean is that maybe you get the best (theoritically best) cpu waterblock, the best pump, a good radiator but your final results are not good, and why ? maybe because you chose small hoses.. There are so many variables that mast be all working great to have a good watercooling system. Just think, Variable 1: waterblock, variable: 2 hoses, variable 3: radiator, variable 4: pump....
They all have to be good and stick good together.

listen to a real fact i had. Firstly i want to state that curently i am running a P4 2.4C at 3.4 stably WITHOUT ANY FANS IN THE CASE EVEN ON THE RAD!! do you know what that means? that i hit my pc power button and i hear totally NOTHING! i mean after i managed to do this and i firstly booted i thought the pc wasnt working cause i couldnt hear anything!! then i saw my monitor and realized that i had a totally quiet pc..

How i did this? Well, 1 year ago after reading for 2 months these forums and learning all i could about watercooling i decided to make my own hand made watercooled system. I bought a cheap submerged pump, some hoses, a small bike's radiator, and the swiftek watrblocks for cpu and grafics card. After i set up my system i realized that all were good, the temps were slightly lower than my air cooled system ( from 46-47C droped to 40).
At that point i wasnt overclocking my rig. I was almost happy with my setup except from the fact that sometimes my waterbox (the one i had the pump in) leaked water and i had to reaply silicon to stop it. There were 2-3 times that i came back from work to find my pc's box and workbench flooded with water, and the pc still running, so this shows that watercooling is not that dangerous, if you use deionized water that is.
Anyway, after i overcloked i realized that my temps werent rising as much as i would expect. And i explain, from 40C they were at stock cpu speed and volts, after going to 3.4 at 1.7 volts the temps rose to 42 and to 45 at full load. Do you know what my temps were when i overcloked once with my aircooling, 49 idle, 60 full load (with just one fan on the cpu, no case fans)!! The point here is that watercooling shines out and shows its power and capabilities in HIGH temperature conditions. Water is capable to take away heat easier, and it takes heat quicker when there is more heat to take, while air cant cope well with high heat conditions. So unless you overclock you dont need to change from air to watercooling.
Finally about noise. The watercooling setup i mentioned above used 2 fans on full load on the rad to cool it. if i turned them off soon the rad would overheat and the cpu temps would rise greatly , even more than with aircooling. So my system wasnt noiseless, i would say it was almost as noisy as with aircooling, if not more. 2 months ago i had some money to spend and decided to make some changes to my wc setup. Firstly i got rid of my cheap noisy submerged pump and got an eheim 1045. That pump is GREAT!! it can work outmerged, is noisless and very powerfull! Secondly i threw away my small bike rad and bought a car's rad ( its not so huge, almost half as big as my pc case, so i screwed it on the outer side of my case) . After i put my sytem on do you know what i found out? Fisrtly the small bike rad was blocking my waterflow VERY MUCH!! after i put this car radiator, water was running like hell through my system!! Secondly the rad is so big that even without any fans it doesnt heat up enough to raise the cpu temps ( and just think that also a greatly overcloked ti4200 GPU is in the watercooling system and adds extra heat). Results? I have my cpu temps droped to 32 idle 42 full load with totally NO FANS!! My cpu and gpu are overclocked like hell and my noise outputt is zero, i recently bought a seagate baracuda sata drive which is the most silent hd on the market (toms hardware said so) and now the only thing i can hear if i come close to my windowed pc case is the elctricity running through some transistors or something (my psu is a noisless one) .. TOTALY OVERCLOCKED! TOTALLY COOL!! TOTALLY SILENT!!
 
It sounds like you might have some mounting problems on the video card, and possibly the cpu. What are the system specs and the specs on the watercooling system?

Sometimes the temps will simply go up because the sensor is behind the cpu and there is no airflow around it, I know I have dropped my 'cpu' temp by around 10 degrees by placing a fan in my case blowing right in the cpu area.

On your gpu it sounds like your not making good contact with the core, I know on a friends gpu it had the same problem. Its also possible that the block isnt on tight enough and even the hoses could be pushing it off of the core just a little bit.

Let us know what you have,
Jon
 
great advice from helpful people. Hereis my simple solution to you. It has happened to me before, no post, fuzzy 3D.. Try to change the molex power cable that supplies power to the 9800 and make sure its in all the way.
 
give your 9800 pro a bath in alcohol. Like denatured or isopuyral. And scrub it with a tooth brush while its bathing. No joke Try it. Then put it in front of a fan for about 2 hours rotating every .5 hour. It's worked many a times for me.
 
I don't know if I can answer all but I will give it a shot. System was a P4 [email protected] (167fsb) on an Abit BE7 Raid board, pci/agp locked @ 37/74. Cooling by Thermalright SP94 with a 92mm Panaflo 30dba fan. BBA 9800Pro with VGA Silencer and BGA Ramsinks o/c'd to 415/740. Soundblaster Live Platinum. PSU is an Antec Tru480. All in an Antec 1000 Series case with 4 Vantec ThermalFlo 80mm fans, 2 front & 2 back plus the 2 fans in the psu plus an Enermax adjustable 120 in the side blowing on the agp slot. Temps were case = 30-32c at idle, 37-38c at load. Cpu = 39c at idle, 46c at load. System worked flawlessly except for Postal2 but I finally figured that out and it was a coding problem, not hardware. Watercooling parts purchased were Dtek WW for cpu, Dtek VGA bloc, Dtek Pro rad with shroud and 120mm aluminun Evercool fan, Eheim 1250 pump, all 1/2". Coolant is Dtek SuperCool and distilled water. Front of case was opened up fro the rad, as much as possible. Tubing was routed pump-cpu-vga-T-rad-pump. AS Ceramique was used on vga and AS5 on cpu. The only fans removed were the 2 80's in the front which were replaced by the 120 on the rad. Temps were at idle with the above 38c case and 39.5 cpu with the fan at full power (noisy) When I first tried a 3D game and found my display problem, case temps shot up so high that it set of the alarm (60c). I then removed the vga bloc from the loop. It was seated properly I think since there was a perfect outline of the core on it made by the overfill of the Ceramique with a very thin film left by the core. I then tried the Silencer with the same result. Then, like I said replaced the Ceramique with AS3. The seating looked like what the vga bloc had been, just like it should. The Silencer has not been screweddown tight, just snug. I have already tried different power cords to it. That came to mind since while I was redoing the case, I also sleeved the psu. I on initial w/c start up have backed the vid card back down to stock speeds. I tried upping again but no help. The only thing I have not thought about is did something get in the agp slot somehow. I will check that when I get home. The card works fine in 2D, it even plays DVD's perfectly. You can actually see that in the game menu when it is kicking in from 2D to 3D bars and artifacts start to appear. As some of you have said, this is a very frustrating experience. I did not try to short-cut this, used the very best parts, setup in the case as per what pics I have seen posted here, but not with the results I expected. I will try to post a pic when I get home before I check the agp slot.

And Smirabi, I would not even dream of RMA'n the card.

Big_Baller, is that to remove any coolant residue? After reading your post, I went back over in my head step-by-step, whta I had done. On initial fill and leak check, one of the barbs on the vga bloc did seep a little. I had the card on it's edge on a paper towel and it got one spot under it. Tightening the barb stopped it. It was running away from the card BUT I could have gotten some on my fingers and then handling the card may have gotten some coolant residue on it.
 
I'm going to have to repeat Frogman's question: have you checked the shim on your card?
 
have you checked the shim on your card?
When I have taken either the bloc or the Silencer it looks like the die is seating against them like it should. I guess I could try removing it, what have i got to lose at this point, right?
 
i dont get how your case is getting so high. You said your case temp hit 60c and set off an alarm?!?! That means it was over 100F inside your case? That doesnt make any sense. Test the water temperature. Is the pro-core warm to the touch? do the tubes leaving the WW feel warm? Is the waterblock itself warm?
 
60C would be 140F. That is hard to believe unless the room temp is insanely high. Do you have any exhaust fans in your case? I have rarely seen CPU temps go that high, so case temps getting that high is crazy. Think of it this way though. You water cooling setup can keep your processor at a very reasonable temp while your case is on fire. Lol. Could it be that your ambient temp is substantially higher then when you took the temps with the air cooling?
 
congrats Alienhack!
i think i will try that

Pntgrd,


currently i have a submerged pump and a small rad
and i am getting satisfactury temps
i wanted WC for the noise, to get ride of most of my fans,
and i did
i just use one for circulation and one for the rad(80 mm)
and one on the rad(and stock Vga fan, wanna get block)

I was not looking for better temps than air cooled just trying to get ride of the fans at the same temps
and possibly better(or same) at load
i am also using 3/8 hose

and it is about 4* better at idle and 10* better at load
again this is not a "better" setup like yours
so i wonder
mabey your not seating the blocks correctly or not using
thermal past right
check that
but i was a mechanic for some time and i can say
that in a car if water flows too fast in the system, it doesnt have time to "collect" heat, thus making the engine run hotter
such as removing the thermostat (and people get a false reading of temp making them think it runs cooler)
so (and i am probably wrong) mabey the water flow is too fast?
anyone have any openions on that theary?


my idle tems are around 104-107 F
and load is just
110-115 F

I like!

also Mata2974, I forgot to plug in my molex to my card when i took it out to compair to another
and i got the same prob. as Pntgrd
 
Back