Finally is finished (I hope)

Posted:
July 7th 2006
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Key Features:
AMD CPU AMD CrossFire Water-cooled
System Specs:
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800; mobo ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe; CPU, chipset, GPU cooling: All custom water cooling blocks plus 2 x 120mm radiator, resorvoir, and 480 l/h pump; Memory: Ramses 2GB (4 X 512MB) PC3200; Video: ATI Radeon X850 CrossFire Edition Master Card crossfired to HIS ATI Radeon X850XT; HDD: 80GB Seagate Barracuda ATA and 320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA II (perpindicular recording); CD/DVD drive: NU combo drive: CD/CD-R/CD-RW/DVD/DVD-R (52X24X52X16X); Monitor: Hyundai N91S 19" LCD flatpanel w/8ms response time; Case: KINGWIN SK-523BKW-BC; PSU: 600W; Speakers: 2.1 Dell surround speakers (nice!); Wireless keyboard and wireless optical mouse.
Performed Mods:
Put in this nice watercooling system. I thought long and hard about it, and I decided to go with a liquid water replacement called Fluid XP+ High Performance. It is a non-conductive solution to a water-based cooling system which is awesome because if it were to leak, no frying parts!It was $20 for the bottle, but it's well worth the investment because I can rest easy at night when I leave it on knowing that leak is no problem. Also, I added some LED lights to the CPU waterblock just to spice it up a little and a couple blue cold cathode tubes. The other mod is the CrossFire. I can't wait until I have enough money to buy the crossfire cards that will end up using an internal bridging method instead of the external cord.
Also, see the gallery "So close to finished" To see what it looked like before my finished gallery here.
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15 Comments on Finally is finished (I hope)

#2
Alec§taar
Man, ALL hydro cooled... NICE!

I am impressed!

:)

Mainly, because you've gone to the 1 area I haven't in hydro-cooled setup over there, & it looks like nearly ALL of it is so (video, & cpu).

(ONLY part missing is hydro cooling the RAM, but that matters least imo, @ least)

EDIT PART - Upon closer inspection of your photos? I also noted the ramsinks on the vidcard memory...

I don't use that variety of vidcard, so I have no way of knowing other than shots from the ATI site, etc., but those aren't "stock/oem" are they? If not, very good/very nice too!

(Good choice on the perpendicular recording technology Seagate drive too...)

Heck, on READS? They are TRULY untouchable...

In fact, a SINGLE ONE blew my Raid 0 "Raptor X" array away even in a test here (which blew ME away personally, didn't think my setup would lose on ANY of its 3 tests. Oh, I "won" the other 2 (access/seek & CPU use), but readspeed on these units? Unreal...)

* See here, in case you're curious on that note (bottom few posts show results in graphs/charts from HDDTach):

forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=13729

APK

P.S.=> It was well worth taking the time you did imo... & I didn't know about their being a non-conducting fluid out there for hydro-cooled solutions either, so today's NO "wasted day", as I learned a new thing... apk
Posted on Reply
#3
raymanxp
killer job!
always wanted to do water cooling...too scared about leaks.
Posted on Reply
#4
drade
raymanxpkiller job!
always wanted to do water cooling...too scared about leaks.
Dont be... There is fluid xp+ It is a non-conductive solution to a water-based cooling system which is awesome because if it were to leak, no frying parts... (says the man who has it).... Just like he said it wont.... Dont worry about that stuff really, if you know what your doing, and dont over tighten it you shuold be set.
Posted on Reply
#5
demonbrawn
Yeah, Alecstaar, those are definitely aftermarket ramsinks! They're freakin huge and heavy, but they're pure copper and suck the heat out like crazy. You can find them here www.frozencpu.com/ram-19.html?mv_pc=105
However, due to the fact that they're so heavy the ones on the underside of the card keep falling off after a while so I've ordered some Arctic Silver Premium Silver Thermal Adhesive Epoxy w/ Application Wand. I also have just recently sort of red neck rigged a fan to stick to the side of the video card to blow over the huge ramsinks to help with heat dissipation. It runs cool as ever now.

Edit: Yeah that Fluid XP+ High Performance really did come in handy! I did all I thought I could do when I first set up my watercooling loop, but then a day into, I realized that the Fluid XP+ HP was leaking onto my video card from the chipset block! However, I even had my PC running, and not a thing happened. This stuff really works and I think it saved me from having an absolute heart attack.
Posted on Reply
#6
technicks
Dude, love the watercooling. Think i am going to give it a try also.
8
Posted on Reply
#7
cHillen
Nice, but the wires could be cleaner. 7/10
Posted on Reply
#8
infrared
Awsome job on the WC! Where did you get those waterblocks for the gpu's?

I've just finished my x850 CF... it's pretty awsome :D how far do those cards clock and what 3dmark scores are ya gettin? My prob is my single core P4. I've gotta clock it pretty high (4.8-4.9ghz) otherwise it's a serious bottleneck. The catalyst drivers use a lot of processing power while running crossfire. Saying that, i find openGL games don't use as much cpu... did you find that? Doom3 runs very very smoothly.

As for watercooling, i'm going for a WC loop only for the cpu and NB. All swiftech. The Apogee Waterblock, and a swiftech chipset cooler, MCP655 pump and a 120x240 rad.
Posted on Reply
#9
Azn Tr14dZ
Why not for GPUs too Infrared? I know the AS5s are quiet, but 2 more GPU blocks won't hurt...
Posted on Reply
#10
infrared
yeah, might do. Not really any point until i get a faster proccie and ram though. there's not a lot of point clocking my cards above 620/630 until then.

I've got the vgpu mods already done, so i can crank the voltage up to 1.7v vgpu. I might need to do the vdroop mod on the cards though. Not a problem anyway.

My aim is to keep the cpu as cool as possible though, i plan to max out the mobo @ 1.7v for 24/7 gaming. I need the cpu to stay under 40c lol
Posted on Reply
#11
Azn Tr14dZ
Cool...I wish my X800XL would be worth modding...I know my DFI is though!
Posted on Reply
#13
Azn Tr14dZ
Thanks...I hope I can mod it to SLI with no prob...

You have a nice board as well...is it 955X or 975X?
Posted on Reply
#14
infrared
955x. It's pretty cool :)

I've just been doing some thinking and i might have to do some serious modification to the power supply circuits to the cpu on my motherboard. Which may include solidering better capacitors and fets onto the board. Here's why:

Most good overclocking boards are designed to handle up to 100-110amps for the cpu. I'm not sure on the exact specification on my board, i'll see if i can find anything out from asus.

volts x amps = watts, so watts / volts = amps

@ 1.7v vcore (4.9ghz) the cpu pulls around 190-200w

200w / 1.7v = 118a

I plan to voltmod the board to allow me to use up to 1.85v vcore, at which the cpu will draw almost 240watts

240w / 1.85v = 130a



Now i need a phase cooling unit :D
Posted on Reply
#15
Azn Tr14dZ
Lol...I wish I was as good with that stuff as you...the only reason I though about modding the Ultra-D to SLI-D is because I could do it with a #2 pencil...
Posted on Reply
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