Skulltrail + Cathar LRWB Storm G5?

Alright, I have a beautiful LRWB Storm G5 from Cathar back in the day sitting in my closet with all the other old hardware that I've owned.

I currently have two D-Tek Fuzion v1 blocks on my 2x Xeon E5420 Skulltrail setup, and they're doing alright, but was wondering what your thoughts are on picking up a second Storm G5 off the classifieds or something, and using those on the Xeons.

I've used the Storm G5 on everything from a s478 P4, P4 660ES, P4 640, PD 955XE ES, PD 920, and on a C2D E6850 and it gave great temps with every one of them.

I figure that the block did pretty damn well on my Pentium D Preslers which have two separate dies like the Xeon Harpertowns, which are basically socket 771 Core 2 Quads, so it might do pretty good on the Skulltrail setup.


Again, this is just and idea, and I want you know what OCF's thoughts on this are before I bother with new CPU blocks.


Thanks
-JR

i don't know how the 2 blocks compare, but i'm thinking it will just be a cosmetic upgrade over any performance, but thats just a guess.

here's the base of mine after I lapped it to 2500 grit:

the description on the ebay item is almost right
its 99.9975 pure silver
its to bad someone is selling it because its a real piece of history and workmanship

Might have to pick that up if it stays under $100. I really don't mind if temps are a few degrees C higher than my Fuzion v1's... it's just the pleasure of being able to use Cathar's artwork in my build that would make me happy. I just want to know if it would handle modern day processors OK, considering it is a few years old at this point.

I have a Cascade that I can't use because of some caps that are in the way on my board. I have a Swiftech MCW6002 I need to take to the belt sander to clearance it for use with my board instead of the Gemini cooling block I'm using at the moment. I wouldn't dare do that to my Cascade though haha.

I would imagine that the G5 would run really well on 34nm i3s and i5s (especially de-lidded) with their small die size since they're more in line with the single core P4s and Athlon 64s/Athlon XPs that were in vogue for the G5's hayday.

the thing about silver is that its heat dissipation horizontally is good too so slightly large dies wont be that much of a burden but it was optimized for cpus of a few years ago. i have no doubt that it will hold its own for its age. kinda like that last rocky movie

Sneaky said:

Might have to pick that up if it stays under $100. I really don't mind if temps are a few degrees C higher than my Fuzion v1's... it's just the pleasure of being able to use Cathar's artwork in my build that would make me happy. I just want to know if it would handle modern day processors OK, considering it is a few years old at this point.

Click to expand...

WEll I doubt it will work as well as the modern stuff. that is a HORRIBLE impingement area. Looks great for the bottom of an LN2 pot not so much for a water based design though.

Still if you want it for nostalgia do it! I doubt it would TOTALLY make your rig not work...

You can pick up one of those 50k powder diamond pastes and go with a really high flow setup to try and combat the ineffectiveness of that design

(if you cant.. you may be able to get a machine shop buddy to add lateral cuts through those jets spots... help increase surface area )

what do you mean by horrible impingement area? the cups where designed with bumps sticking up at bottom intentionally. remember eachcup has a jet nozel feding it independantly making cuts counterproductive for the design

Sneaky, all I can say is try it in your system, along with another block for comparison. Then you will see if you lose any performance compared to a more modern design like the Fuzions you already have. Personally, I think it will perform pretty well.

Cutting the block would definitely hurt performance. It would turn it into a silver Danger Den TDX basically.

It should perform well. The issue was that the design itself gets impractical with larger dies. The Prescott was pretty much the largest chip in town when the G5 was king. That was a 112mm^2 piece. The 1MB L2 cache A64s were a smidgen smaller at 109mm^2. When the dual cores came out in 2005, the X2 was 219mm^2 and a dual core Prescott would be exactly twice the area of a single core but spread out wider because of the MCM deal. That was a little over two years after the Cascade design was developed.

IIRC, with the Dual Cores (and even the A64 to a point) the Integrated Heat Spreader got a bit thicker on those chips. That didn't exactly help any water block of the day and especially not the G5 since it's parent design was optimized for bare died 130nm Athlon XPs, A64s, and S478 P4s. I believe thats when we started seeing thinner bases with the vanilla Apogee and Fusion and eventually bowed bases to match the new IHS' tendencies to be concave.

The current 32nm Clarkdale i3s and i5s are a tiny 81mm^2 die. Thats pretty close to a Thoroughbred or Barton Core. Lynnfields are a little bit larger than the X2s and Pentium Ds of yesteryear so while it should at least be in the same relative ballpark as the Apogee and more modern blocks, I don't think it'll perform as well as it could/should for the same reasons the design lost it's edge back then.

I'm definitely holding onto my Cascade for the next time I upgrade my system. I think with the right chip combo there's no reason why it can't perform within a few degrees of todays current tech.

Edit: Here's a little history lesson for newer overclockers that are wondering what the heck we're talking about:

Pre-cascade:
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=167840

Original Cascade thread:
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?s=&threadid=169230

Cascade XXX/XS (Precursor to G4, never released)
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=263403&highlight=Storm

Storm G4/G5:
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?s=&threadid=299417

Storm G7 (Final Design iteration, never widely released):
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=407419&highlight=Storm&page=2

Other fun experiments Cathar made:

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=166739&highlight=White+Water

actually the g7 was never released to public.
edit will put more later

thorilan said:

what do you mean by horrible impingement area? the cups where designed with bumps sticking up at bottom intentionally. remember eachcup has a jet nozel feding it independantly making cuts counterproductive for the design

Click to expand...

I mean that compared to a modern block there simply is not that much surface area.

ahh ok i thought you where talking about the design of that particular impingment being inferior to other designs.
you are right it was designed around older technology.
the idea would still work in todays blocks on a larger scale BUT manufacture process is very prohibitive when for nearly the same performance you can use variations of his WW design w/ micro channels.