first watercooled build

So i've been accumulating parts for the past few weeks and finally got this son of a ***** together. It was quite the headache. My cable routing is a terrible mess because of my hard disk location (right underneath the tray where the vent is, 3 disk drives) and my stacker feels quite cramped with a BIX 3 inside of it. But it all fits.

Mounting the cpu block was so ****ing frustrating. I nearly got out the dremel and sawed a hole in the back of the tray but I didn't want to take everything out (metal particles = death). The first time I didn't use the metal tubes and didn't want to put too much mounting pressure on the board so I didn't tighten them down enough. Of course, I turn on the box and as soon as it posts I smell something bad. Luckily I pulled the power plug because apparently the waterblock wasn't making good enough contact with the IHS.

So I took the board off the tray and remounted it using the little metal bars this time and everything was fine. I have a silverprop fusion HL for my 7800 but I forgot to order thermal tape to affix the ramsinks so it is just dangling in my case right now. With just the cpu in the loop the temperature is 28c idle 36c load. Even with the fans on their minimum setting the core temperature doesn't exceed 37c load (3dmark 05 + prime95 @ normal priority). System is dead quiet too, even with the side off, which makes it all worth it. I believe my core would idle at about 32 and run under load ~ 48c with my xp 90. I just have regular thermal grease on too because I'm low on as5 and I have a 165 opty in the mail I think I'm going to buy a neoprene pad so I don't have to take the board off of the tray everytime I take the bloody cpu block off.

It's about 23c in my house so i don't think a 14c delta is that bad. I'm surprised the temperatures don't go lower with the fans on all the way.

I've also learned that zip ties are your friend. I'll post some pics later. Want to see if I can get some better clocks out of this rather uninspiring winchester

Hmm, whats interesting is as soon as I close prime the cpu temp drops to 27-28c, which indicates to me that my loop is actually pretty much room temperature but the interface between the block & cpu isn't too great.

I cut a whole in my tray so I could access the block. It works great

Do you have any pictures?

pictures

1


2


3


4


It seems I got an extra 100 MHz out of this winchester. It's been running prime for a couple hours now @ 2.5. Turns out the top blowhole fan died the first time I powered it on hence the smell, apparently my mounting pressure was sufficient the first time around. I noticed no air was coming out of the top blowhole and i was like wtf? I totally fubared the length of tubing from my cpu block to the rad as you can see, I was anticipating it being nearer to the front. I think I'm going to need something to keep the tubes from kinking when I get the gpu block installed too as the bend seems a little too extreme. I see people have these little loopy things around their tubing, where can I get that?

SuperFarStucker said:

I see people have these little loopy things around their tubing, where can I get that?

Click to expand...

They're called cool sleeves, you can get them at a bunch of places online.

The build looks really good and I cannot wait to see your results with GPU block installed.

I do have one comment about the placement of your clamps. Generally to get the best performance from the clamp, you want to place it after the lip, not on or before:


Bryan d

bryan_d said:

The build looks really good and I cannot wait to see your results with GPU block installed.

I do have one comment about the placement of your clamps. Generally to get the best performance from the clamp, you want to place it after the lip, not on or before:


Bryan d

Click to expand...

Great stuff!!!

good diagram bryan_d

Nice diagram. I use two zip ties per connection.

Nice build but like mentioned above, it looks like your clamps are in the wrong spot.

Cool,

thanks for the compliments guys/gals, I just hate reading stories of wet computer parts. When things leak because of error, it gives watercooling a bad name too!

Good luck SuperFarStucker,
Bryan d

They're clamped down pretty tight. I did have some leaks when I first started testing the system as the clamps rode down the flange, which is why I imagine the method i used is not recommended. I just increased the mounting pressure and all is well. T-line level hasn't budged at all. However, I can see why it would be a wiser idea to place the clamp behind the flange. Don't know why I didn't think of that when I was doing it. I have some slight abrasions on the hosing near the t-line so I should probably replace the tubing there too. I've got about 5' to spare, I just haven't had the time to fix it up Got my opty 165 today so I think I'll redo the whole system this weekend (two midterms this week )

I have no pics but got the 165 installed and redid all the tubing. My temps are pretty much **** (42 C) under dual prime load but 28 C idle. I suppose I just got a bad mount or perhaps the dual cores really put out that much heat, I seem to recall people getting temps in the 40s on air though, so that doesn't seem likely. Got my block on the gpu so perhaps that has something to do with it. The processor runs fine @ 290x9 (1.6) but my memory is running on a 5/6 divider. System kept crashing at first because my memory (2 GiB TCCD) can't do 9/10 divider ~ 260 2-4-4-8 with the opty. Handled it no problem with my winchester. I updated the bios so perhaps I just need to tweak the memory settings again. The sinked components next to the processor (voltage regulation? right next to where you measure cpu voltage) is getting ridiculously hot (70 C) Is that something I should stick a fan on?

It would probably be a good idea to cool all hot components in your computer so it would not hurst to get some airflow over those mosfets. The result maybe that your overclock could be higher using the same voltage too. The video card in the loop probably plays a large role in the temp because more than likely it is putting out more heat than the CPU.

Tell us the results,
Bryan d