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My first ever watercooling system is up!

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SBeaver

Member
Joined
Jan 8, 2002
Location
Sweden
I'm really beat now, hard work all day since I got the package and now finally I have a somewhat temporary solution that runs and seem to work quite well.

The things I have now is:

Maze 3 P4 waterblock

Black Ice Xtreme radiator

Eheim 1250 pump


I currently have no fan on the radiator, and I'm running the system in a bucket instead of a closed loop with T-connector as I originally planned.
Reason for this is I didn't have time to get a T-plug and I didn't find one the places I was looking.
Oh yes, tubing is clear 12mm PVC (roughly 1/2")
Temps I can not tell since my sensor in the mobo seems to be way off whatever I do.
I use tap-water since I was lasy, this is temporary only, and the water here is pretty good quality to my knowledge and pH is good.

Things I have learned from this is:

1: The wooden floor in my room does not stand water very well, and the cracks between the tiles are really large and can hold huge amounts of water.

2: Don't spill out 5 litres of water on above wooden floor, it will look bad.

3: My 5-port 100Mbit ethernet switch is fully submersible while powered on.

4: PVC tubing will not go off once you have attached it to a barb, use a knife.

5: Do not start pump when the outlet hose of the pump is laying on the floor.

6: Mobo PCB can stretch a LOT, this was learned while attaching the waterblock and realizing that a HUGE lump had started to appear BEHIND the socket on the mobo.

7: 24h leak-tests is just something you say you will do, you never actually do it though.

8: Eheim pumps rule!

Now I'm gonna sit here and test it a bit, probably no attemps at OCing.
Nortbridge is running mighty hot now when the cpu fan no longer second-hand-cools it.
Moms gonna kill me if this floor doesn't get dry soon, I'll get back to you guys later as things evolve.
 
man, it sounds like you made a mess of everyting. i made many stupid mistakes. mostly turning on the system and screaming because it is not running. then i relise somthing is unpluged. i mean i went on for somthings 20 mins tearing somthing down to find out the darn thing is not pluged it. my first setup i gotten (for lack of a better word) water everyware, i mean it was bad, real bad. well i always wanted to submerge my mobo. the worst it wehn i some uv die leacked. my hands, the floor, and the table was stained. i even had a danner leak (at the fricken bolts) the water found its way to the pump relay. i was just chillin playing some rtcw and POP, SPARK, SPERRTS. lucky, it was, i only melted the relya plastic. o one more, i was testing a psu for a tec setup, and i touched the heatsink to test its warmth, no biggie. then i touch both sinks at the same time. son of a doe that felt weird. my freinds laufed 4 what seemed like days. how did you manage to submerge you cat5 hub? becarfule about having too much pressure mounting your block. if you see a bump, like you did, cover your eyes, pcb shrapnell will eat eyes for brunch. congrats on the success, it feels great to win.
 
I'm a little more cooled down now, allthough my cpu is not.
I've been relaxing for 4 hours and now it is 3:30 am here and I'm just kind of waking up.
I ran some prime95 and then I watched a movie for 3 hours and the cpu never got over 38C but still the northbridge, or something close to it, is around 50C when at full load.
I'll tend to that later.
The water is running very smothly and I must say the worst is over.
Havn't had any more "accidents" either.
Once I wake up tomorrow I'll buy myself a 120mm fan to cool her down, then when I get the time I'll switch the **** over to closed loop and cleaner water.
I have an air inlet very close to the machine so I thought I might cool the radiator there but there wasn't enough hose.
Hot tip: You can have a lot of fun with a mag lite in a reservoir at night.


edit: about the lump, I meant the pcb was pressed to hard so that the pcb on the back was sticking out like I had pressed the whole socket through the board with those springs on the waterblock.
Amasingly I didn't break anything, I managed to drop the board too during reassembly and also I took out the pump from the water while it was running 4 times without any reason at all.
I think I'll do that vdimm mod later in the week, too tired, too lazy
 
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