mcbeen.com

And that’s with no refrigeration! Well… I am using 0 degree outside air to cool my radiator… Is that cheating?

I moved my radiator to my window so it could draw in outside air, but I didn’t recheck the temps after I did it. It’s running below 24C now

It’s here… It’s working… It’s cool. The block came in today, and it was a pretty good fit. There was only a slight modification needed.

As you can see I had to grind out a place for the capacitor on the bottom. I also ground out a channel on the top of the block to fit around a coil. Something I took for granted though… the wire on the coil was NOT insulated, creating an interference issue when it touched the water block copper plate. When i powered up the modem the first time it errored out. I inserted a piece of plastic between them, fire it back up and all was good. I used thermal epoxy to attach the water block btw. There’s no good way to clamp it down effectively, and I have had good success in the past using it on north bridge/south bridge chips.

I punched a couple holes in the top of the dsl case like I planned, but unfortunately the block is just slightly too tall.

It looks ok… But I may end up just cutting a hole for the entire water block to poke through. Not too worried about it right now.

The modem now runs icy cold… just the way it should be. No more modem over heating for me!!!

Its been a busy afternoon. The parts came in today in boxes about 4x bigger than i expected. Little chance of this stuff getting broken in shipment.

I started by taking a complete inventory of all the kits and mapping out how everything would go together. I was happy to see the coolermaster kit came with USB pinouts and multiple temp sensors. I was troubled to see no driver discs or software instructions.

Hookups went well, although it would have been nice to have a funnel. I modified one of the bottles to let me fill without spilling water everywhere. The fittings that the kit came with are not as solid as i would have liked. they have a cheap feel to them, almost like they are chrome plated plastic. I may end up replacing them.

So far system temps are great, with CPU running around 38ºC with a 1 ghz over clock.

The water block for the ATI 4870 on the other hand was a failure. The card has some off-spec components that make it incompatible with the water block. It looks as though I will have to cool each part of the card individually…

Comming up… the water cooled DSL modem 🙂

After I connected up all my hoses and primed my lines I turned on the system, and was greeted by heavy fan noise I was not expecting. The Cooler Master controller was running the radiator fans at full speed, creating excessive noise. Since there are no controls on the box, I went ahead and looked on Cooler Master’s site for some kind of controller software. There was nothing. My work around for now has been hooking the fans up to my motherboard 4-pin connectors using extensions. They are temp controlled, so they only spin up as the system over heats. Its working well. From looking around, it appears the Cooler Master fan set points are only usable from an ESA motherboard. I’m still looking into it. Since it is USB, I imagine I should be able to find some way to tweak it myself.

I have the radiator setup in my window since its below freezing outside. I reversed the fans so they pull in the nice old outside air.

Alright.

I’m going with a Danger Den DFI Expert MAZE4 Chipset Water Block. The cost is good, I like the material, and it has a good water pathway. I’ll mount it to the chip with Arctic Alumina Adhesive (thermal epoxy) since there are no mount holes available.

For now I think I’m going to use cheap barb fittings to tap into my supply and return lines. A full set of compression fittings would run about 60 dollars.

I’ve been dealing with cooling issues for years in my home office. Air cooling works fine as long as the local room temp is cool, and relatively dust free. Thats fine in the winter… when the fireplace isn’t going. Obviously… thats a very narrow window here. My fans clog with dirt which makes everything even worse. I find myself doing full tear downs of my heat sinks once a month to keep things going.

To make things worse, I just about burned up another DSL modem. The damn things run too hot anyways, and my environment here makes it even worse.

Last week i decided to modify my cooling design and go with water cooling. It much simpler to vacuum out a single radiator than digging around in my case with an oversized static wand. Not to mention its much quieter than before.

What about my DSL modem? I stuck a couple ram heat sinks on the processor, but its still running way too hot for my comfort. I was thinking about going with a bigger heat sink… maybe with a fan on it but that create new problems. The case is already small, and a larger heat sink would mean cutting a hole in the top of the case. Ventilation isn’t the problem, as I currently have the case removed, and its still over heating.

Thats when the lightbulb came on. Why not water cool that as well? A small chipset water block looks like it would work well. The fittings would end up coming right out the top of the case, making hooks-up very simple and straight forward. I’m thinking a 1/4 feed would work perfectly. I’m working on a parts list, and will update as the project progresses.

As far as I can tell… the only decent working ad-blocker for 64 bit Safari under OS X Snow Leopard

Safari AdBlocker.

So far this project has been a complete success. I have a very stable machine now. Here was my final parts list:

ASUS P7P55D EVO
Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz (Overclocked to 3.9 Ghz Stable, ~50C)
Thermaltake Ultra Extreme Rev C
120mm noctua cooling fan
SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 4870
LG DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS50
ASUS USB-BT21 USB 2.0 Mini Bluetooth Dongle
Intel X25-M 80gb SSD drive

I don’t use onboard audio for my machines. I instead use an USB audio adaptor for my headsets. I may work on getting the onboard system working in the future, but for now I don’t have a use for it.

The machine is wicked fast, just as I hoped, and the video card appears to be working very well. All my games are playing great. Video transcodes are wonderfully fast.

I was able to confirm this morning with netkas that 4770’s are still not working with the latest driver sets. For now it appears I’m stuck in slow with my old 8600. We’ll see how long I can take it.

Got the machine working well now. I had to give up for now on my 4770, although I plan to work on it more after i learn a bit more about what is going on. I swapped out my wife’s nvidia 8600 for my 4770. Its a bit slower, but it works great!! I’m sure she won’t mind XD.

A couple more things I have noticed:

1) make sure you are running in the mode you expect (64 bit vs 32 bit) Many of the drivers only work in one or the other. You can verify this under system profiler–>software
2) pfix doesn’t work right. Make sure you repair permissions with disk utility.