- Joined
- Jun 7, 2006
- Location
- Gainesville, FL
Well, I finished my first loop today and the results are a combination of good news and bad news. I have an Athlon 64 3200+ and BFG 6800OC cooled by a low profile Apogee and Swiftech MCW60. The rad is a BI GT Stealth 120 XFlow sandwiched in between shrouds and two Yate Loon 47cfm fans doing push/pull. The pump is an MCP350 with the Alphacool top and 1/2" barbs pumping a mixture of distilled water, Water Wetter, and Betadine through 7/16" MasterKleer tubing. The order is pump -> cpu -> gpu -> rad -> t-line w/ fill port res.
First, the good news. I was able to increase the overclock from 2508 Mhz. to 2607 Mhz. It's not as much as I'd hoped, but about what I expected considering the 120 mm rad. I know a bigger rad is really needed for the two water blocks, but I wanted to keep everything internal to the case and the Inwin A500 case is a pretty small mid-tower.
Now for the bad news. There's not enough airflow in the case for the Swifty ram sinks to do the job with only the two fans on the rad. The video card shuts down after about ten minutes. The ram sinks get very hot to the touch. I had to add a fan blowing directly across the video card. Unfortunately, there isn't room inside the case for the fan, so at the moment it's sitting outside the case on a 2" roll of masking tape and two DAT tapes. It's ghetto, but it works! I haven't decided what I'm going to yet, but I'm leaning towards replacing the case with something I can mount another fan in, or getting a water block that covers the video ram, maybe both.
Overall, I'm happy with my first attempt at water cooling. I'm planning to water cool my MythTV box and maybe my house server. I want to give a big thanks to everyone here. This forum has been an invaluable resource!
First, the good news. I was able to increase the overclock from 2508 Mhz. to 2607 Mhz. It's not as much as I'd hoped, but about what I expected considering the 120 mm rad. I know a bigger rad is really needed for the two water blocks, but I wanted to keep everything internal to the case and the Inwin A500 case is a pretty small mid-tower.
Now for the bad news. There's not enough airflow in the case for the Swifty ram sinks to do the job with only the two fans on the rad. The video card shuts down after about ten minutes. The ram sinks get very hot to the touch. I had to add a fan blowing directly across the video card. Unfortunately, there isn't room inside the case for the fan, so at the moment it's sitting outside the case on a 2" roll of masking tape and two DAT tapes. It's ghetto, but it works! I haven't decided what I'm going to yet, but I'm leaning towards replacing the case with something I can mount another fan in, or getting a water block that covers the video ram, maybe both.
Overall, I'm happy with my first attempt at water cooling. I'm planning to water cool my MythTV box and maybe my house server. I want to give a big thanks to everyone here. This forum has been an invaluable resource!
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