Watercooling system not performing well

Hey everyone, we just finished putting our watercooling system together, but the results have been pretty disappointing. My old Athlon 800 is topping out over 46C full load 32C idle with 28C ambient which is a little higher than my FOP38 could do. Heres the setup:

DangerDen Maze2-1 (w/o pelt & coldplate for now)
DangerDen CUBE Radiator
Danner 700
Panaflo 120mm pulling through Cube, 2 80mm Sunons in front of case pushing air in over HDD's to Cube
Water Wetter
No Resivoir

We made pretty darn sure no air was trapped in the system, and we don't see any bubbles now. The Maze Block is tightened down with 4 screws to the point the springs are almost completely compressed. There are no kinks in the hose or anything, so the flow should be pretty good (we saw how fast it flowed when we had air bubbles trapped in early on). If anyone has any ideas we would greatly appreciate the help!!

-Rav

With the exception of the fans, that’s the same system I run when the radiator is in the loop. Have you pulled the waterblock to check the contact with the CPU? 4C over ambient and then a 14C rise under load is not really out of line. A second fan on your radiator should get you 2C to 3C. Is the air flowing over your radiator fresh or from the inside of your case?

That sounds way high for the equipment you're using--I'd expect load temps. in the mid-high 30s. Is the Athlon 800 overclocked, and if so to what speed?

The only things I can think of are (1) the water block may not be sitting flush and/or needs to be lapped, or (2) the Danner 7 may be pushing the water *too* fast--try cutting down the flow with an inline valve and see if that helps, or (3) the mainboard is not reporting accurate temperatures.

If you don't have any kind of fan blowing on the the water block you're likely to get artificially high mbm readings because the board is heating up and nothing is moving the heat off of it. In contrast, when you had the FOP on there the HS fan was clearing the hot air from the socket area. You might try pointing a fan at the socket and see how that affects your temps. If it they go down alot I'd consider that a sign that your mbm readings are innacurate. In other words, blowing air at the water block won't lower your actual die temperature too much, so if the reading goes down substantially there's a problem with the reading.

We will be taking it apart again later today and examine the contact area. The air going into the Radiator is coming from inside the case, but its being fed by those 80mm in the front. I'll try to make a crude drawing:

outside <-- [120mm] || [CUBE] <-inside- [HDDs] [2x80mm] || <-- outside

where the || 's are the case. It doesn't really matter at the moment though because the cover is off the case anyway.

(add)

We started to seal the back of the MB and some of the socket area with sealant because we were going to use our pletier, but we thought we'd just get a normal setup working first instead. That sealing might be causing the incorrect temp reading with the socket thermistor like you said. I will try blowing some air on the MB with a fan when I get home and let you know how that works

-Rav

Insulating your board for pelts will cause the socket thermistor to read higher. I have tried restricting the flow of the Mag 7 with a Maze 2 and a Cube, the temps went up.

well according to that little graphic thingy, it says you take the hot air from the case and bring it accrose the radiator. that is not good. take cool air from outsid the case and bring it over the radiator.

OK, so my temp is reading high, but by how much? With ambient of 27C I would get 46C max load with the FOP38 when I was running my 800 at 900(113x8.0) and now I'm getting 46-47 with water at stock 100x8.0. I can't afford any special temp equipment at the moment, so I guess I'll know when its too hot cause it'll crash lol. Don't want to fry anything though.

Also, the case is currently off, so I am getting fresh air through the radiator.

ok.. well, about what temp is the air temp? with water cooling that makes a big effect on the preformance

The ambient air temp in the room is about 27-28C. I can use air conditioning to get it down to 22C after a few hours, but that isn't a solution because I'm moving someplace with no AC next month. If you mean the temp of the air being exhausted, I could try to measure that with an old thermometer, but prob wont be any good as far as accuracy.

I would turn the 120mm fan around so its pushing or you can have it pulling air from the outside into the case

I have almost the same setup as you and Im getting 41c idle 46c load

I just resently upgraded my radio shack 120mm fan for a YS teck 131cfm
and it droped my temps 3-4 degrees
soon Im hoping to have 2 ts teck fans one pushing and one pulling air though my dd cube.
I think Flash is right about the mbm to be reading inaccurate temps sense I put and house fan blowing air at the cpu and it droped to 36c!!
I was always wondering why that happened and now I know=]

According to Danger Den, with only one fan, drawing air through the radiator works best. If you can stand the noise, a couple of 131 CFM YS Techs work best.

I just ordered two (2) YS Tech 131.5 cfm fans for my up-coming radiator. Hopefully it'll work out well.

when i first installed my watercooling system it ran at like 48-50c! i was really upset about spending all this money for the same performance as my heatsink, eventually i played with the block and realized the rio180 dont do a good job... so if you have a slow pump get a faster one...

i agree
idle here is 39C (abient 31) and under full load ive seen it up to 49C, using msotly the aquastealth2 kit, and using the rio180 pump.
anyways, yesturday i emailed becooling, and im going to trade in my rio180 for that danner magdrive250, for only 6$, so thats a pretty good deal for me, then im palnning on building a reservior for that, so its easier to fill the system and keep air out of it, im expecting a 5C drop, and maybe more, also, im going ot radioshack today to get some 80mm fans to blow over the cpu, and some to take out
-warflyr