wreckwriter
07-07-06, 04:02 PM
I know the general opinion around here is that the Tidewater is pretty much junk. In my own defense, I got it before I started hanging around here on a regular basis.. On the other hand I'm actually pretty happy with it. It dropped my GPU temps 4 degrees at idle and more than 10 degrees C at load over the Zalman that I had on it, and that's with an overclock where the Zalman was at stock speed. Anyway, on with the story...
This morning I was just going to do something very simple, tape up a cable punchout that was open on the back of my case. First I logged on to check email and such, everything was fine when I shut down.
Rather than drag the whole case out of its home I just grabbed the top and tilted it towards me, leaned over it and put the tape on. Powered it back up.
After a couple minutes I noticed ATItool was showing my GPU temp at 60C. No way! It Doesn't get over 40 at idle.....and its going up..
Opened the case to see if I could see what was wrong; water leak? Nope, nothing obvious, fans are all working, other temps are fine. I shut it down at a GPU temp of about 67, hotter than it gets under full load.
I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I pulled the video card to make sure the waterblock was still seated; it was. My next thought was the I had screwed up when I attached the video ram heatsinks last night (with AS thermal adhesive). I thought maybe I had gotten glue on the circuit board and shorted something but couldn't figure out why it ran fine for hours after I had attached them. I even went so far as to pull off the 1x1" piece of tape I had just put on! OK, where's that Tidewater manual...
I was hoping it would give me a method to check for pump failure, no such luck. Pretty much the only troubleshooting info was regarding air blocking. It said something very similar to "if the pump is speaking with high pitched voice you are having air blocking", Yea, it really did.. I did not notice that my pump was "speaking with high pitched voice" but I decided I might be able to determine if the pump was shot by bleeding it.
The bleeding procedure involves removing the reservoir unit and the video card, holding the card above the unit and powering up just the unit. It said that after about a minute I would see bubbles. Sure enough, after about a minute, about 4 big bubbles come up. Hmmmm.... Put it all back together and lets see.
Everything was good again on reboot. It took me awhile to figure out what had happened but I finally did. Tilting the case forward, and setting it back down, moved the cooling liquid in such a way that the liguid sloshed in the reservoir and air got below the waterblock intake causing a bubble to move up the line to the block.
It was a valuable lesson for me and I post it in the hope that it might help someone else someday.
WW
This morning I was just going to do something very simple, tape up a cable punchout that was open on the back of my case. First I logged on to check email and such, everything was fine when I shut down.
Rather than drag the whole case out of its home I just grabbed the top and tilted it towards me, leaned over it and put the tape on. Powered it back up.
After a couple minutes I noticed ATItool was showing my GPU temp at 60C. No way! It Doesn't get over 40 at idle.....and its going up..
Opened the case to see if I could see what was wrong; water leak? Nope, nothing obvious, fans are all working, other temps are fine. I shut it down at a GPU temp of about 67, hotter than it gets under full load.
I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I pulled the video card to make sure the waterblock was still seated; it was. My next thought was the I had screwed up when I attached the video ram heatsinks last night (with AS thermal adhesive). I thought maybe I had gotten glue on the circuit board and shorted something but couldn't figure out why it ran fine for hours after I had attached them. I even went so far as to pull off the 1x1" piece of tape I had just put on! OK, where's that Tidewater manual...
I was hoping it would give me a method to check for pump failure, no such luck. Pretty much the only troubleshooting info was regarding air blocking. It said something very similar to "if the pump is speaking with high pitched voice you are having air blocking", Yea, it really did.. I did not notice that my pump was "speaking with high pitched voice" but I decided I might be able to determine if the pump was shot by bleeding it.
The bleeding procedure involves removing the reservoir unit and the video card, holding the card above the unit and powering up just the unit. It said that after about a minute I would see bubbles. Sure enough, after about a minute, about 4 big bubbles come up. Hmmmm.... Put it all back together and lets see.
Everything was good again on reboot. It took me awhile to figure out what had happened but I finally did. Tilting the case forward, and setting it back down, moved the cooling liquid in such a way that the liguid sloshed in the reservoir and air got below the waterblock intake causing a bubble to move up the line to the block.
It was a valuable lesson for me and I post it in the hope that it might help someone else someday.
WW