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MedRed's Watercooled i7: Ice Ice Baby

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MedRed

Registered
Joined
Apr 6, 2010
MedRed's Watercooled i7: Ice Ice Baby!

I apologize for adding my build so late in the process. It's nearly done. I have one last round of tweaking and some additions before I fire it up this weekend. Here is the progression. This is my first water cooled pc and my first foray into overclocking.




Case: Danger Den Acrylic Case
CPU: Intel I7 930
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate
Motherboard:ASUS P6X58D Premium
Memory: 6GB (3x 2GB) Patriot PC2000MHz PV236G2000LLKB
Video Card: ATI Radeon 5870
Hard Drive: Intel 160 Gigabyte X25M SSD & Western Digital Black Caviar 1 Terabyte
PSU: Kingwin Lazer 1000W (modular)
Case Fans: 3 x Aerocool Silver Lightning 120mm Silent White LED Fan
Memory Cooler: Kingston KHX-FAN HyperX Memory Cooling Fan
SATA Cables: 2 x SATA III UV Blue
Thermal Grease: Masscool Shin-Etsu Thermal Interface Material G751
Cable Management: UV Blue Sleeving/Heatshrink, White Sleeving/Heatshrink, and UV Blue spiral wrap

CPU Waterblock: Swiftech Apogee XT
GPU Waterblock: EK 5870 Acrylic/Nickel + Nickel Backplate
Reservoir: Primochill Typhoon III Rev A.
Radiators: 2 x Black Ice SR-1 240
Radiator Fans: 4 x 120mm Xigmatek "Crystal Series" 120x25mm White LED & 4 x Triebwerk TK-122 120mm
Shrouds: 2 x Tecnofront AirBox 240
Pump: Swiftech MCP655
Flow Meter: Koolance INS-FM17 Coolant Flow Meter & Adapter Board
Temperature Sensor: Bitspower Liquid Cooling Temp Probe Display
Tubing: Feser White/Blue UV 3/8"
Fittings: Mix of Bitspower and Feser fittings.
Anti Kink: Thermaltake iStripe
Biocide: PT Nuke & Silver Kill Coil


UV: 1 x 4" Logysis UV Cathodes + 3 x 8" Logysis UV Cathodes
Power Switch: 22mm White Illuminated Bulgin Style "Momentary" Vandal Switch
HDD LED: 3mm White LED
Fan/Light Power Management: Bitspower Blue X-Station


4.15.2010
Sanded my radiators and build underway
4t36dy.jpg
nv9iqx.jpg

4.25.2010
A little more progression:
5cev11.jpg

4.28.2010
Painted my Rads
13z1gkw.jpg

5.01.2010
Build almost done
34641zm.jpg
eq9k6t.jpg
2lawv3a.jpg

I'm currently in the process of cleaning up the cable mess somewhat and getting a few more parts in. Let me know what you think.
 
Last edited:
:thup:It looks really good. It also looks like a lot of work. When your cables look as good as yours do cable management is not as important as it normall is. I am interested in how well your board overclocks.
 
Thanks! I've never overclocked before, so we'll have to see how it all works out.
 
Finished!!!... for now at least... I'll take some night pics tonight and maybe a video. I'll be transferring files tomorrow... On to the overclock!!!! I am SUPER pleased with how everything turned out.

bji9n6.jpg
2mydk41.jpg
29egf4i.jpg
 
Here's a night view video walk-around. Sorry for the graininess and the washed out colors. The camera was struggling with color/lighting. Almost everything came out blue... even the UV cold cathodes which are purple. The IRL colors are a lot more crisp.

 
I always like to see the Torture Racks!

Question for you though... why the extra long tube run and 45º fitting from the CPU block to the GPU? I presume there was a functional reason for the choice, otherwise I cannot see why a nice short and direct tube run wouldn't suffice.
 
Thanks skinnee.

This was my first watercooling build. I really wanted to have some slack in the tubing in case i needed to adjust things. I also realized it'd be the highest point in my loop and would be where the trapped air would end up. The 45 degree fittings rotate. As the air gets trapped in it, I've been disconnecting the video card from the case and rotating it 180 degrees and turning the pc back on. That moves the air along and traps it in my reservoir, where I can remove it. It's been really nice having the slack.
 
I am finally stable in Prime, IBT, Linx, and OCCT... but Holy Crap am I running HOT! Getting my 930 to 4.2 Ghz RAM and RAM to 2000 MHz was a huge pain.

I'm idling around 40 and hit 81 degrees Celsius while testing.

I ran about 10 degrees cooler with a slightly unstable setup that had me around 1.35 CPU Voltage and 1.29 QPI/DRAM Core Voltage (made it through 18 passes of linx and was fine for gaming), but my RAM was running at half speed.

Ambient temperature is 76.3 degrees Fahrenheit (24.6 degrees Celsius)
Reservoir temps reached 84.1 degrees Fahrenheit (28.9 degrees Celsius)
Reservoir temps Idle 80.3 degrees Fahrenheit (26.8 degrees Celsius)



Here are my settings:
Code:
Ai Overclock Tuner.....................[Manual]
CPU Ratio Setting......................[21.0]
Intel (R) SpeedStep (TM) Tech...........[Disabled]
Xtreme Phase Full Power Mode...........[Enabled]
BCLK Frequency.........................[200]
PCIE Frequency.........................[100]
DRAM Frequency.........................[DDR3 - 2005 MHz]
UCLK Frequency.........................[AUTO]
QPI Link Data Rate.....................[AUTO]

CPU Voltage Control....................[MANUAL]
[COLOR="Red"]CPU Voltage............................[1.40000][/COLOR]
CPU PLL Voltage........................[1.80]
[COLOR="Red"]QPI/DRAM Core Voltage..................[1.61250][/COLOR]
IOH Voltage............................[1.14]
IOH PCIE Voltage.......................[1.50]
ICH Voltage............................[1.20]
ICH PCIE Voltage.......................[1.50]
DRAM Bus Voltage.......................[1.64]
DRAM DATA REF Voltage on CHA...........[Auto]
DRAM CTRL REF Voltage on CHA...........[Auto]
DRAM DATA REF Voltage on CHB...........[Auto]
DRAM CTRL REF Voltage on CHB...........[Auto]
DRAM DATA REF Voltage on CHC...........[Auto]
DRAM CTRL REF Voltage on CHC...........[Auto]

Load-Line Calibration..................[AUTO]
CPU Differential Amplitude.............[800mV]
CPU Clock Skew.........................[Delay 300ps]
CPU Spread Spectrum....................[Disabled]
IOH Clock Skew.........................[AUTO]
PCIE Spread Spectrum...................[Disabled]

C1E Support............................[Disabled]
Hardware Prefetcher....................[Enabled]
Adjacent Cache Line Prefetch...........[Enabled]
Intel(r) Virtualization Tech...........[Disabled]
CPU TM Function........................[Disabled]
Execute Disable Bit....................[Enabled]
Intel(r) HT Technology.................[Enabled]
Active Processor Cores.................[All]
A20M...................................[Disabled]
Intel(r) SpeedStep(tm) Tech............[Disabled]
Intel(r) C-STATE Tech..................[Disabled]

1st Information: 8-8-8-24-7-98-15-9-28-0
DRAM CAS# Latency......................[8 DRAM Clock]
DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay................[8 DRAM Clock]
DRAM RAS# PRE Time.....................[8 DRAM Clock]
DRAM RAS# ACT Time.....................[24 DRAM Clock]
DRAM RAS# to RAS# Delay................[Auto]
DRAM REF Cycle Time....................[Auto]
DRAM WRITE Recovery Time...............[Auto]
DRAM READ to PRE Time..................[Auto]
DRAM FOUR ACT WIN Time.................[Auto]
DRAM Back-To-Back CAS# Delay...........[Auto]

2nd Information: 2N-59-60-62
DRAM Timing Mode.......................[2N]
DRAM Round Trip Latency on CHA.........[Auto]
DRAM Round Trip Latency on CHB.........[Auto]
DRAM Round Trip Latency on CHC.........[Auto]

3rd Information: 7-7-19-9-9-9-7-6-4-7-7-4
DRAM WRITE To READ Delay (DD)..........[Auto]
DRAM WRITE To READ Delay (DR)..........[Auto]
DRAM WRITE To READ Delay (SR)..........[Auto]
DRAM READ To WRITE Delay (DD)..........[Auto]
DRAM READ To WRITE Delay (DR)..........[Auto]
DRAM READ To WRITE Delay (SR)..........[Auto]
DRAM READ To READ Delay (DD)...........[Auto]
DRAM READ To READ Delay (DR)...........[Auto]
DRAM READ To READ Delay (SR)...........[Auto]
DRAM WRITE to WRITE Delay (DD).........[Auto]
DRAM WRITE to WRITE Delay (DR).........[Auto]
DRAM WRITE to WRITE Delay (SR).........[Auto]

The Benchies...
xkzmdg.jpg
 
You're running around 12ºC hotter than my system using the same vcore and QPI voltages at 4.2GHz and 2000MHz. I just tested those settings for an hour with Prime95. I didn't try LinX but that typically raises my load temps by around 5% more than Prime95. However I only have a 4870 in my loop and run my testing with that at idle. I also have an additional 240 slimline rad which gives me roughly a 2ºC load temperature drop. All rad fans are Scythe GT 1450s.

I only need around 1.31v on the CPU for 4.2GHz and found that I can 'lose' around 3-4ºC by running my RAM at 1600 instead of 2000 and dropping the QPI to just under 1.48v. With those settings my system is around 15ºC cooler.

I assume you've tried remounting the CPU block and you're running the 655 at the 3+ setting.
 
Thanks for that. I've not hit those temps before this evening. I was running ~10ºC at idle and at load at 4.2ghz and 1603 mhz for the RAM. I'm going to be out of town for the week. I'm going to spend next weekend seeing if I can bring these temps down. You're running the exact same CPU voltage and qpi/dram core voltage for 4.2/2000?
 
No, I changed them to your settings to compare the results, normally 1.30625 vcore and 1.475v QPI for 4.2GHz and 1603MHz with a 1.6v QPI for 2005MHz.
 
No, I changed them to your settings to compare the results, normally 1.30625 vcore and 1.475v QPI for 4.2GHz and 1603MHz with a 1.6v QPI for 2005MHz.
I'm going to try those settings... Keep in mind I did run linx, prime, and IBT back to back before recording those temperatures.


I like it
Thanks Thor
 
I really like the radiator treatment! I am completely stealing that idea if I ever get off my lazy butt. (but i will credit you:))
 
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