Watercooling and Temperatures

[SMUAlien]

I set up my water cooling rig much like Joe's setup. I used the 4x4x4 waterproof electrical box. I got the standard radiator from Aquastealth, and a DangerDen Maze2 block. I used a MaxiJet 1200 pump. The processor I am cooling is a T-Bird 1Ghz, AXIA Y 266bus flavor. My motherboard is an MSI K7t turbo-R. My setup seems to be working fine and dandy but I have a question. Currently I have this processor clocked at 1.4Ghz and when I first turn it on, in Windows 2000 MBM reports the CPU temp as 33C. After about 10 minutes this rises to 42C and stays there. If I run Seti, or play some games, the temperature will rise to 44-45C but then as soon as I quit it goes back down to 42C. I have a Sunon 120mm fan on the top of my case that exhausts the air by pulling it through the radiator. This fan is controlled by a rheostat. No matter what speed I run the fan at, the temperatures are always the same. In addition there doesn't seem to be hot air exhaust, it's just cool air.


I'd like to clock this chip higher, and also lower my temperatures (hehe). What can I do, it seems that this setup isn't performing as well as it should. I have been able to get this to run at 1600mhz by upping the voltage, however it sometimes (most of the time) won't post. Is this a power supply issue? Any suggestions? Why isn't this water cooling as good as it should be? CUrrently I am running distilled water only, no additives, and my block isn't really lapped. THe mounting mechanism for the Maze2 isn't so great and I don't want to remount this block. Oh yeah I am using AS2.

If you read this far in my bloaded bad grammer post, THANKS!

[Naeleros]

It sounds like you don't have good contact between the block and the core. I would take off the block and lap it. Then re-seat it and try to make better contact. You can try the 'finger test' with your existing setup... touch the waterblock with your finger and see if its slightly warm. If it isn't.. then it isn't touching very well.

James

[Owenator]

I agree with Naeleros about the lapping, it's a must do unless you have a perfect block, contact pressure should also be checked if you suspect a weak clip.
Just don't crush it like I did once :(

Another thing to look at is the temperature of the room you are in. In a hot room no mater how fast the fan runs the air is still hot. In a cool room you have a bigger temperature difference to 'dump' heat into. When I moved my box from upstairs in the babies room at 80 F (due to his room heater) to my basement at 70F I saw about a 5C drop in CPU temps! Unless you use a water tower/bong cooler or a pelt you won't get below ambient temps, more like room temp plus ~10 degrees C from even a water cooled system, at least in my experience.

My $0.02

O

[ve6jhc]

I'm running a water cooled 1 GB T bird at 42 idle and 50 after 3D gaming. I checked my temp with Asus Probe and Motherboard Monitor 5.....same. I can feel that my system is running nice a cool as I can touch the water block and it is cool to the touch as are my water cooling lines (My pump and rad are in a separate custom made box). With my old air cooled HSF the heatsink would be very hot to the touch and my temp would read 52 after gaming. I looking into this further and found that the motherboard temp probe is measuring the backside CPU temp....The air under the CPU is heated up and up until you get these higher readings. I can watch my CPU temp rise slowly from 30 to the 42 in the space of about 30 min. I have ordered the Digi Doc 5 and plan to monitor both backside and front side CPU temp.