[jayfella]

I tried asking around about northbridge coolers for my rig, but to no avail. The motherboard i use (DFI LANPARTY DK 790FX-M2RS) has a reputation for the NB to be very warm, and since i wanna overclock the 9950 as far as i can push it, i might as well get some water cooling.

I want to cool my 9950, the NB, and a 4850, although i will prob only get the CPU and NB plates at first due to budget.

What pump would i need? 500 L/Ph (???)
Is a rad/pump combo any good?

I am far from having an endless stream of cash, but i dont mind spending a fair amount on proper well built materials.

Any help would be appreciated. Feel free to talk to me like a child learning how to spell (lol). I know all about overclocking, have 16 years experience with PC's, but i have no idea about water cooling.. Not a bean.

[Jas]

I had a hot NB too, and put a NB block in my loop. I used the MCW30 from Swiftech and found it to be a decent block. At around $30 buck it's not too expensive, and relatively easy to find.

For a pump, the Liang D5 (MCP655 swiftech rebrand) or a liang DDC (MCP355 swiftech rebrand) will be your best bet. My preference would be to go with the D5.

Alternately, you could look at the Apogee drive form Swiftech. It's an apogee WB with a DDC married to it. That could save you a littl ecash, and still give you a decent performing block, with plenty of head room to add a GPU and NB block into the loop.

Get yourself a 120.3 sized radiator if you are going to be runing three blocks.

[jr1]

for pump i would use a swiftech mcp655
it will easily do both cpu and nb
for cpublock i'm using an enzotec saphire myselve but i do know it's not the best out there
i hear good things about the dtek fusion and the swiftech apogee ones but i would wait for others with experience with them to tell what's the better one

[jayfella]

would a corsair 520HX work for this setup?

9950, 2x2GB RAM, 4850, 2x250GB SATAII's + DVDRW - but i will be buying another 4850 after christmas

i guess that will make it 4 things to cool. Please dont say i need 2 loops.

[Jas]

You won't need two loops, but you'll be getting close to running out of power with a dual GPU solution depending on how much other stuff you've got in your rig. If I were you, I'd go with at least a 700 watt PSU. That should give you plenty of juice, and some headroom for future expansion.

[CGR]

Just put a small fan on the NB, its almost always more than enough to cool it.

[jayfella]

i wanted to go for a 700. When i setup my old rig it had a pair of 7800GTX's running on an OC'd althon x2 4600+ and it was HOT. I ended up pairing 2 PSU's together, putting one in the 5 1/4" bays at the top, taking off the second PSU case so it will fit, etc... A right pain in the arse.

Anyway, i wanted to go for a 700W to eliminate any crap like that again, but everyone on here said go for a solid 520HX rather than a cheesy 700W. Does the pump take up that much juice?

Originally Posted by CGR

Just put a small fan on the NB, its almost always more than enough to cool it.

I wanted to do that, but whenever i found one, the reviews all tested on P4's or dual cores, so i didnt want to waste my money...

[MakubeX]

Yeah the MCP655 would be perfect for your loop. The MCP355 + top would be excellent too, and it has a lower heat dump, but it would be more expensive and with a good enough radiator the heat dump difference won't matter.

You won't need two loops but try not to make the loop too restrictive when cooling all four components, and make sure you get a good radiator.

The MCP655 uses 24w at MAX.

The DDC 3.2 (MCP355) uses 18W at MAX.

[Jas]

The D5 is 24 Watts. Not a whole lot.

But...

you throw a secodn GPU in there and you get a pretty big increase. I'm not sure what the draw is on a 4850, so I can't give you real numbers (probably find them somewhere burried in a thread int he GPU sections). You have to take into account your CPU, mainboard, fans, both GPUs, HDDs, optical drives, pump, external USB devices, etc etc etc. You start over clocking, and your wattage starts to REALLY climb. If you didn't plan on OCing anything, then the 520 might cut it. But why bother WCing?

I wouldn't get a cheesy PSU, it's well worth spending the extra money.

You can get a GOOD 700-750 watt psu for between $120 and $150. And it woudl be well worht the money IMO.

Oh, and that Corsair PSU is a great PSU, but you are paying for it being modular.

[CGR]

Originally Posted by jayfella

I wanted to do that, but whenever i found one, the reviews all tested on P4's or dual cores, so i didnt want to waste my money...

Not sure I understand, all you really need is a small fan attached to the NB HS that is currently on the board. 40 or 50mm fan.

For example, my NB would easily get over 53c with normal ambient temps. I took a fan from an old AMD HS and used velcro to place on the NB HS. Lowered my temps to around 45-47 and cant hear it due to a fan controller that I had laying around.

[Jas]

A fan MIGHT work, most of the time it does. For me, it wqsn't sufficient. My over clocks were turning the NB into an oven, and even with a HSF fan i had stability issues.

I couldn't hit higher than 3ghz before i WCd the NB, now i hit 3.6.

That's a massive OC on my chip though, and the OP might not be in the same boat. But just to play devils advocate, sometimes watercooling the NB does pay off.

[jayfella]

@GCR - sorry for not explaining myself. This board's NB get HOT - i didnt mention (my mistake) i was looking at replacements. I wouldnt have thought a small fan would have helped much. In the sense that if im going to do it, i might as well do it right, rather than "have a go and see what happens" - I'm one of those people that always plays with OC'ing - trying to get every megahertz out of it, and the last thing i want is for the NB to take a dump, especially when its hot on stock speeds/volts. I wanted to make a job of it - if you see what i mean.

@JAS - i wanna overlcok that 9950 till it bleeds!

[Jas]

Originally Posted by jayfella

@JAS - i wanna overlcok that 9950 till it bleeds!

Well, then you'll be pushing some volts. And keeping that NB cool will definately help. Different chipsets, and different MOBOs take high voltages better than others. I know for my particular board and chipset, I was definately at a limit at where 3g was as high as I could go stability wise. This was on a chip with default clocks at 2.13. I tried putting a HSF on there, and it didn't do a lick of good, the voltage increases I had to put into my CPU where just too high for a HSF on my NB to handle. 3.2 Ghz saw lockups anywhere from 15 to 60 seconds into windows. higher than 3.2 and the system would just lock shortly after boot.

Water cooling the NB got me to 3.6 stable.

Now, you've got a COMPLETELY different CPU and chipset, so my experiences don't mean you'll be abel to get a 70% OC on your cpu, but they do show that water on a NB isn't always overkill.