Nate's Dive into Water-can he swim?

I'm taking my first dive into water cooling, and I'm doing so with a small (but quiet) case and a limited budget...yikes. My goal is to make the most efficient water cooling setup for under $150, and still make it possible to overclock the living daylights out of my soon-to-be Pentium D 805. I don't really care about aesthetics as much as quiet, as almost nobody but me looks at my computer, and I have a Sonata II . It should all be here (at my house) by this monday, and I will post some pics as the week goes on. For now, 'drool' over the specs, and hope to god this all works as well as I hope.

I am in need of a Radbox to fit my radiator in the loop, once I find one for cheap and get back from my trip, I'll put it all together.


HOLY WATER BATMAN!!! 3.624GHz, 32c idle, 35c load, 27 seconds 1MB SuperPi!!!!! {STILL TESTING}


SPECS: (Thanks to all who sold me their crap, and made it my gold )
Intel Pentium D 805-HAVE ($105)
ECS C19-A SLI-ON ORDER ($50)
Patriot Signature Series 1GB-ON ORDER ($50)
eVGA 6600GT w/ Arctic Cooling HS/Fan-HAVE ($85)
Maxtor 200GB 7,200RPM IDE-HAVE ($30)
DVD-ROM-HAVE ($?)
CD-Burner-HAVE ($?)
Antec Sonata II-HAVE ($100)
Cooling:(thanks to all who made this all possible on a budget of $150)
Swiftech Apogee-HAVE ($36)-Is it worth buying a socket 775 retention for a MCW-6002 I have, or should I just stick with the Apogee?
DangerDen D4-HAVE (double heatercore+res+6002-$110)
Double Heatercore w/ 2 Panaflo FBA12G12W-HAVE
Single Heatercore w/ 1 Antec SmartFan-HAVE ($13)
Custom PVC res-HAVE
GPU block for 6600GT and future 7600GT-NEED

Everything looks pretty good for low budget (well, except for the motherboard).

Stable at 2.95GHz, FanSpeed reporting 30c idle and 34c load (superpi). Up to 3.2 we go....

Oooohhh.... you are a smart shopper.... I like you...... (no, not in that way!)
Stop looking at my cookie jar!!!!!

A double heatercore is plenty, you won't need a second single core, IMO it would hurt flow more than it would help temps.

natewildes said:

What's wrong with the motherboard?... Is there something I don't know?

Click to expand...

yup, its an ECS

Hey, for the $50 bucks I paid from NewEgg, I'm not complaining, so long as it'll let me reach 4GHz.....I'll probably be upgrading to Conroe with the rest of the world anyway, so this is only a 'summer' board so to speak.

natewildes said:

Hey, for the $50 bucks I paid from NewEgg, I'm not complaining, so long as it'll let me reach 4GHz.....I'll probably be upgrading to Conroe with the rest of the world anyway, so this is only a 'summer' board so to speak.

Click to expand...

Did you do your HW on that board? How does it OC?

Anandtech had a good review of it, and their overclocking tests were pretty good. I've heard of people having relatively good success, we'll see how I turn out.

A double heatercore is plenty, you won't need a second single core, IMO it would hurt flow more than it would help temps.

Click to expand...

Yeah, a double heatercore is definitely all that you need. I really like the looks of your setup, actually. It's nice to see someone else paying close attention to price/performance rather than just blowing money.

If people have had decent success with the ECS board and you're just going to be using it for the summer or whatever then it should be a fine choice. I mean, for $50 you really can't fall too hard, so it'll be interesting to see how it does.

Got most of the stuff today, the rest of the water cooling stuff will be here tomorrow, and the mobo and ram I ordered from the Egg should be here on monday. yay!

His chip is a 533MHz FSB chip guys so the board should be just fine for overclocking seeing as it should have the option for 800MHz (and possibly higher).I'm not familiar with how much voltage a Pentium D needs to be a good overclocker but I'd imagine that if it has some overclocking options, CPU voltage is one of them.

Edit: Oh yeah and be sure to post pics. Also a good block for the video card would be either the Maze4 or MCW60.

Edit: added the costs and a question about the MCW-6002, is it worth the $10 for the retention? Or should I just stick with the Apogee?....

I GOT THE WATER STUFF!! YaY!! Though I can't fit the tubing over the pump connectors, is there a fitting I need, or do I need to heat the tubing first? I'll post some pics soon, so long as someone helps me get the tubing on the pump....

Just push..... what size tubing are you using?

it's all 1/2", the tubing is about the same size as the fitting, maybe a weeeee bit smaller, I tried heating the tubing under the faucet, but it didn't help. This seems too hard, maybe the tubing wall is too thick?

how could u heat the tubing under the faucet?

boil some water and stick the tubing in there for a minute

Alright, I've determined that the double heatercore will not fit in the Sonata II, will the single heatercore be enough, or should I mod the sonata or use a bigger, less quiet case?

OK, I got all the tubing on everything and I set it up for a leak test. I've decided to save my Sonata II's glossy finish and use an EcoL4 for my computer, worst case senario I waste the $25 I spent a year ago trying to fit everything in there. I plan on putting the double heatercore on top, the pump on the bottom and the res somewhere inbetween. I'm going away for the week, so I'm having my neighbor 'house' the leak test while I'm away, he knows what to do if it starts splirting water everywhere . I'll have the motherboard and RAM when I get back on friday, so I'll setup the whole thing next weekend. I'll probably end up using the stock cooling for a while until I get the water thing all situated, this is a lot more complicated then I thought!

Third update, and the final decision: I'm getting a RadBox so I can use the Sonata II after all, it seems like the best and easiest way to go. I'll try and get one by next week, and pics will be posted in the previous two posts, as well as this one, so they are available on the first page.