What follows is a summary of my recent venture into water-cooling. First a little background on why I decided to jump into water-cooling in the first place:
Oh, I should warn you that I tend to be on the long-winded side
. While I dont have as many pics as I would like, they should tell the story pretty well by themselves (in case you guys get bored with all the text ).
So all was good and happy in the world of air cooling until I joined the ranks of Dual Core Opteron owners and the small furnace that these dual cores can become at elevated voltages and clocks. At first I thought I would be satisfied with air-cooling, I invested in a Scythe Ninja and felt confident that I could achieve a respectable overclock and still keep my load temps under control.
I received a 0551UPMW Opty 165 from Monarch and was able to get a decent 2.7 GHZ w/ 1.425v and a 48 deg C dual prime load temp:
On a cool morning I could also do 2.8 w/ 1.525v and a 53 deg C load temp. After initial testing I did some burning-in and saw a marginal decrease in the amount of voltage it took to hold stable @ 2.7 but I only was able to shave off ~.0125 v on average. (Side note, all three of the dual core opty's that I have tested have shown some, but very limited benefits from burn-in for a week... but this is topic for a different forum). My testing seemed to indicate that I topped out @ about 2.85 with 1.525v with load temps pushing 56 C.
After messing around with burn-in I actually took a week and played some games with my new and shinny computer (see 1st rig in sig for more specs). I was very happy with my setup and had gotten my tweaking fix satisfied...
But being the addiction that tweaking computer hardware is, I soon resumed my quest for pushing my components to the bleeding edge. Of course there had to be a bit of drama involved, and so the later weeks included the following series of events:
After playing with the 170 and finding it to be even more of a furnace than my 0551 165 I started seriously considering the jump to water cooling. Then when I receive my 0608 165 and topped out @ 2.8 due to temps, and since no amount of reseating and reapplying AS5 was helping lower the temps, I knew something had to be done. The 0608 stepping seemed to be consistently hitting 2.95-3.1ghz on water. (and water cooling is fun right?)
Play money becoming available again and driven by the need to tweak something new (say for example, a water cooling setup) I started the gears in motion to switch from air cooling. But there was a small problem. I was hesitant to initially jump right in because from all the research I had done indicated watercooling would require more maintanance than your typical air setup, and had the potential of growing new and interesting life-forms in the loop. In addition, for the last several years I have been trying to focus on making my computer as low-maintainance as possible. While I have no problem with various biology experiments, for some odd reason I dont like the idea of conducting them in my computer and switching to a higher maintainance setup didnt sound exactly like what I might want to do.
So, back to more researching/digging, I knew that various additives and such would help avoid growing stuff in my loop, but what could I do to lower the potential need for increased maintainance?
Then, after more research at the Procooling forums, I stumbled across this thread where using opaque tubing could potentially extend the period between needing to flush coolants, and the chance of developing various life-forms growing in the loop.
Good enough for me, I finally took the plunge, no pun intended, and ordered up my water cooling components.
Oh, I should warn you that I tend to be on the long-winded side
. While I dont have as many pics as I would like, they should tell the story pretty well by themselves (in case you guys get bored with all the text ).So all was good and happy in the world of air cooling until I joined the ranks of Dual Core Opteron owners and the small furnace that these dual cores can become at elevated voltages and clocks. At first I thought I would be satisfied with air-cooling, I invested in a Scythe Ninja and felt confident that I could achieve a respectable overclock and still keep my load temps under control.
I received a 0551UPMW Opty 165 from Monarch and was able to get a decent 2.7 GHZ w/ 1.425v and a 48 deg C dual prime load temp:
Click for full size
On a cool morning I could also do 2.8 w/ 1.525v and a 53 deg C load temp. After initial testing I did some burning-in and saw a marginal decrease in the amount of voltage it took to hold stable @ 2.7 but I only was able to shave off ~.0125 v on average. (Side note, all three of the dual core opty's that I have tested have shown some, but very limited benefits from burn-in for a week... but this is topic for a different forum
). My testing seemed to indicate that I topped out @ about 2.85 with 1.525v with load temps pushing 56 C. After messing around with burn-in I actually took a week and played some games with my new and shinny computer (see 1st rig in sig for more specs). I was very happy with my setup and had gotten my tweaking fix satisfied...
But being the addiction that tweaking computer hardware is, I soon resumed my quest for pushing my components to the bleeding edge. Of course there had to be a bit of drama involved, and so the later weeks included the following series of events:
- more burn-in
- removal of the the IHS from the 0551UPMW 165 in an attempt to lower temps
- chipping of a SMD cap on the 0551 and by all indications partially crippling it, OC maxed out @ 2.3 and couldnt use any voltage options besides auto in bios
- completely freaking out and in a panic ordering a new Opty 170
- researching @ XS and deciding to completely REMOVE the chipped cap right after ordering the replacement 170
- result: completely reviving the 165, all was good again
- receiving/testing the 170 (turned out to be a 0550VPMW) and finding it to clock about the same as the 165, but to run WAY hotter, maxed out @ 2.8 w/ 1.5v and a scortching 57 C load temp.
- not being willing to attempt another IHS removal I sold the 170 on the forums here
- finding some additional play money, I bought a new 165 from monarch, taking advantage of the coupon deals again
- receiving said 165 got lucky with a 0608MPMW, one of the better clocking steppings available now
- getting ballsy again and removed IHS from 0608, went off without a hitch, just had to be more careful
- initial testing showed that I could get to 2.8 w/ 1.4 v but was limited by temps at 2.9 and above
After playing with the 170 and finding it to be even more of a furnace than my 0551 165 I started seriously considering the jump to water cooling. Then when I receive my 0608 165 and topped out @ 2.8 due to temps, and since no amount of reseating and reapplying AS5 was helping lower the temps, I knew something had to be done. The 0608 stepping seemed to be consistently hitting 2.95-3.1ghz on water. (and water cooling is fun right?)
Play money becoming available again and driven by the need to tweak something new (say for example, a water cooling setup) I started the gears in motion to switch from air cooling. But there was a small problem. I was hesitant to initially jump right in because from all the research I had done indicated watercooling would require more maintanance than your typical air setup, and had the potential of growing new and interesting life-forms in the loop. In addition, for the last several years I have been trying to focus on making my computer as low-maintainance as possible. While I have no problem with various biology experiments, for some odd reason I dont like the idea of conducting them in my computer and switching to a higher maintainance setup didnt sound exactly like what I might want to do.
So, back to more researching/digging, I knew that various additives and such would help avoid growing stuff in my loop, but what could I do to lower the potential need for increased maintainance?
Then, after more research at the Procooling forums, I stumbled across this thread where using opaque tubing could potentially extend the period between needing to flush coolants, and the chance of developing various life-forms growing in the loop.
Good enough for me, I finally took the plunge, no pun intended, and ordered up my water cooling components.
in front of a extremely parched alcoholic by bringing up watercooling the vid cards...
