Frank (odense)
15th January '05, 00:42
First of all I realize that the below images are VERY big and will take some time to load.
Just thought that if anyone would care to read about this and actually spent more than 2
sec's reading this post - then he/she might want some crisp clear pictures so there would
be no doubt of what can be seen and how this was done.
Second: This post was made per request (because I "might" have been braggin' a bit
being overly excited of my newest purchases) so this should not be considered as more
braggin' or any such thing. I only wanted to share my experineces with theese parts just
in case someone will find it interesting or usefull. But anyways - here we go....
My system:
Lian Li PC-V1000 PC Case (modded to fit OCZ PSU)
OCZ PowerStream 520 Watt PSU
Asus X800xt Platinum Ed. AGP
MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum MB
AMD Athlon 64 3500 CPU
1024 MB Kingston HyperX
Zalman Reserator 1 Watercooling
Aquacomputer aquagratiX800 watercooling for x800xt VGA
Zalman North Bridge Cooler ZM-NB47J
Plextor 504A DVD-rewriter
2 pce 180 GB IBM Deskstar HD
1 pce 250 GB Maxtor Onetouch
1 pce 120 GB Maxtor Onetouch
This modification was actually made in order to try make my system more silent and this
work is not yet completed. I found out (after switching all fans off) just how much
noise harddrives produces. Also the two 120mm fans will be replaced by two 80mm Pabst
fans as they are VERY silent and I don't need such big powerfull fans now that the
RESERATOR 1 is removing all heat produced by CPU and VGA card. Even though I have
NOVIBE harddrive frames for both HD's they are still very audiable - not the read/write
sounds (they dissapeared with help of the NOVIBE frames) - but the spinning of the HD's is
what I can hear now. Another thing not finished: I would also like some of thoose new
fancy HD cables - the ones now mounted looks out of place so I didn't even bother to try
making the cabling look nice.
There was also another reason that helped me convincing myself to spend a lot of money
on water cooling - DUST. Maybe I'm not such a cleanlyness buff so dust tend to find it's
way into my PC. And with the PC being switched ON 24-7 I often had to remove dust from
the CPU and VGA heatsinks in order to hold temperatures down. Especially thoose high
performance CPU fans with very small gaps between the heatsink lamellas don't like dust
at all. This should now be a thing of the past as there are no more fan cooled heatsinks in
my PC (Northbridge Fan was also replaced by a passive heatsink from Zalman).
So what did I do and what problems did I encounter:
CPU
No problems - but I found out it would be easiest to mount the two tubes before installing
the cooler onto the CPU. It takes a bit force to mount the tubes and to tighten them - and
this can be done more easily and gentle holding the cooler in your hand.
VGA
I must say I had to smoke a few cigarettes before daring to mess with such an expensive
graphics card, but when it was done I thought.... was that really it? I didnt care to put
thermal paste on the RAM chips as there wasn't any on the original cooler... besides
there's no cooling on thoose RAM chips on the back of the card anyway - I guess it's not
that important. One thing to pay attention to: dont tighten the screws too much - in fact
don't tighten them much at all as the VGA card will bend. Just observe the straightness of
the board while slowly tightening the screws, then you can see when enough is enough.
Northbridge Heatsink
Pretty easy - just be sure there's enough space to fit in your VGA card afterwards ie. test
with your card before mounting the Mainbord in the PC case. I of course didn't check this
and had to break a few "legs" off the heatsink in order to fit the VGA card - otherwise I
would have had to remove the entire Mainboard again to slightly move the heatsink (it's
fastened on the back of your Mainboard).
Tubes
It was also pretty easy but time consuming to mount the tubes. Problem was that I had to
have some pretty sharp bends on the tubes - just on the limit of the tubes getting flat. This
was a bit too scary a thing to keep wondering if they would eventually flatten, so I put
some cable ties on the critical spots (don't tighten too much) and tested how much more I
was now able to bend the tubes without them becomming flat. It helped sufficiently.
The Case
The Lian Li v-1000 case has too little space for oversized Power Supply's such as my OCZ
Powerstream, but with a small drill it's possible to remove a couple of items not needed
anyway. Drill out about 14 rivets to remove the one HD rack and the space divider. That
gives you all the space you need for any PSU. I dont need two HD rack's each able to
house 3 HD's.
Before starting up the system I turned on the waterpump and checked for leaks for a
couple of hours... not a single drop. So now it was time to see if this "no fan" cooling
system would be able to cool both CPU and VGA at the same time. All reviews I read just
tested with HOT CPU tester or similar, but I also wanted the VGA card to be at maximum
load (for CS:S). I ran Aquamark3 1280x1024 test continously for more than 1½ hours -
just to see where the temperatures would max out. Unfortunately the X800XT
temperatures don't show up on the graph below, but Ati's Catalyst Control Center was
reporting 48 deg C after 1½ hours of Aquamark. CPU peaked at 49,5 deg C. Room
temperature was about 21 deg C.
This is not exactly AMAZING or anything, but still I think it's pretty well done for a no-fan
water cooling system. The CPU temperature was the same as I had before installing the
water - with a completely dustfree Zalman cooler that is. But what pleases me to see is the
VGA card's temperatures - before it was often 67-75 deg C and now only 48 deg C.
Now I only look forward to trying to eliminate some of the other noise sources. It's also
nice to know I don't have to dust off inside the case anymore and in case I need to OC
some day it looks like the VGA card can manage some more work. I also read about
someone putting ice cubes in the Reserator.... but thats another ballgame!
Hope someone can make some use of this info.
Best regards Frank (odense)
http://www.new-version.com/imagehosting/hosted/frank_odense_water_cooling_50699.jpg
http://www.new-version.com/imagehosting/hosted/frank_odense_water_cooling_74678.jpg
http://www.new-version.com/imagehosting/hosted/frank_odense_water_cooling_22472.jpg
http://www.new-version.com/imagehosting/hosted/frank_odense_water_cooling_45031.png
Just thought that if anyone would care to read about this and actually spent more than 2
sec's reading this post - then he/she might want some crisp clear pictures so there would
be no doubt of what can be seen and how this was done.
Second: This post was made per request (because I "might" have been braggin' a bit
being overly excited of my newest purchases) so this should not be considered as more
braggin' or any such thing. I only wanted to share my experineces with theese parts just
in case someone will find it interesting or usefull. But anyways - here we go....
My system:
Lian Li PC-V1000 PC Case (modded to fit OCZ PSU)
OCZ PowerStream 520 Watt PSU
Asus X800xt Platinum Ed. AGP
MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum MB
AMD Athlon 64 3500 CPU
1024 MB Kingston HyperX
Zalman Reserator 1 Watercooling
Aquacomputer aquagratiX800 watercooling for x800xt VGA
Zalman North Bridge Cooler ZM-NB47J
Plextor 504A DVD-rewriter
2 pce 180 GB IBM Deskstar HD
1 pce 250 GB Maxtor Onetouch
1 pce 120 GB Maxtor Onetouch
This modification was actually made in order to try make my system more silent and this
work is not yet completed. I found out (after switching all fans off) just how much
noise harddrives produces. Also the two 120mm fans will be replaced by two 80mm Pabst
fans as they are VERY silent and I don't need such big powerfull fans now that the
RESERATOR 1 is removing all heat produced by CPU and VGA card. Even though I have
NOVIBE harddrive frames for both HD's they are still very audiable - not the read/write
sounds (they dissapeared with help of the NOVIBE frames) - but the spinning of the HD's is
what I can hear now. Another thing not finished: I would also like some of thoose new
fancy HD cables - the ones now mounted looks out of place so I didn't even bother to try
making the cabling look nice.
There was also another reason that helped me convincing myself to spend a lot of money
on water cooling - DUST. Maybe I'm not such a cleanlyness buff so dust tend to find it's
way into my PC. And with the PC being switched ON 24-7 I often had to remove dust from
the CPU and VGA heatsinks in order to hold temperatures down. Especially thoose high
performance CPU fans with very small gaps between the heatsink lamellas don't like dust
at all. This should now be a thing of the past as there are no more fan cooled heatsinks in
my PC (Northbridge Fan was also replaced by a passive heatsink from Zalman).
So what did I do and what problems did I encounter:
CPU
No problems - but I found out it would be easiest to mount the two tubes before installing
the cooler onto the CPU. It takes a bit force to mount the tubes and to tighten them - and
this can be done more easily and gentle holding the cooler in your hand.
VGA
I must say I had to smoke a few cigarettes before daring to mess with such an expensive
graphics card, but when it was done I thought.... was that really it? I didnt care to put
thermal paste on the RAM chips as there wasn't any on the original cooler... besides
there's no cooling on thoose RAM chips on the back of the card anyway - I guess it's not
that important. One thing to pay attention to: dont tighten the screws too much - in fact
don't tighten them much at all as the VGA card will bend. Just observe the straightness of
the board while slowly tightening the screws, then you can see when enough is enough.
Northbridge Heatsink
Pretty easy - just be sure there's enough space to fit in your VGA card afterwards ie. test
with your card before mounting the Mainbord in the PC case. I of course didn't check this
and had to break a few "legs" off the heatsink in order to fit the VGA card - otherwise I
would have had to remove the entire Mainboard again to slightly move the heatsink (it's
fastened on the back of your Mainboard).
Tubes
It was also pretty easy but time consuming to mount the tubes. Problem was that I had to
have some pretty sharp bends on the tubes - just on the limit of the tubes getting flat. This
was a bit too scary a thing to keep wondering if they would eventually flatten, so I put
some cable ties on the critical spots (don't tighten too much) and tested how much more I
was now able to bend the tubes without them becomming flat. It helped sufficiently.
The Case
The Lian Li v-1000 case has too little space for oversized Power Supply's such as my OCZ
Powerstream, but with a small drill it's possible to remove a couple of items not needed
anyway. Drill out about 14 rivets to remove the one HD rack and the space divider. That
gives you all the space you need for any PSU. I dont need two HD rack's each able to
house 3 HD's.
Before starting up the system I turned on the waterpump and checked for leaks for a
couple of hours... not a single drop. So now it was time to see if this "no fan" cooling
system would be able to cool both CPU and VGA at the same time. All reviews I read just
tested with HOT CPU tester or similar, but I also wanted the VGA card to be at maximum
load (for CS:S). I ran Aquamark3 1280x1024 test continously for more than 1½ hours -
just to see where the temperatures would max out. Unfortunately the X800XT
temperatures don't show up on the graph below, but Ati's Catalyst Control Center was
reporting 48 deg C after 1½ hours of Aquamark. CPU peaked at 49,5 deg C. Room
temperature was about 21 deg C.
This is not exactly AMAZING or anything, but still I think it's pretty well done for a no-fan
water cooling system. The CPU temperature was the same as I had before installing the
water - with a completely dustfree Zalman cooler that is. But what pleases me to see is the
VGA card's temperatures - before it was often 67-75 deg C and now only 48 deg C.
Now I only look forward to trying to eliminate some of the other noise sources. It's also
nice to know I don't have to dust off inside the case anymore and in case I need to OC
some day it looks like the VGA card can manage some more work. I also read about
someone putting ice cubes in the Reserator.... but thats another ballgame!
Hope someone can make some use of this info.
Best regards Frank (odense)
http://www.new-version.com/imagehosting/hosted/frank_odense_water_cooling_50699.jpg
http://www.new-version.com/imagehosting/hosted/frank_odense_water_cooling_74678.jpg
http://www.new-version.com/imagehosting/hosted/frank_odense_water_cooling_22472.jpg
http://www.new-version.com/imagehosting/hosted/frank_odense_water_cooling_45031.png