Soldato
hey guys, lately ive had my first go at watercooling and decided to attempt to get a socket A mobile to 3ghz or close to it at least lol.
got some decent components and a pretty good loop set up:
dfi NF2 ultra infinity
2600-m (IQYHA 0352MPMW
)
2x256mb twinmos BH-5
9800XT
AquaXtreme 50z
Maze4 CPU
AquaXtreme MP-1 GPU
Black Ice Extreme III
Swiftech microRes
3 panaflo M1a's on the rad, 80mm noiseblocker laggy banded to the ram and a 120mm blowin over the chipset
used an old desktop ATX case and modded it to fit a triple rad and the pump etc. all fits and works quite nicely, the rad just slots in nicely and rests ontop of the empty pci slots.
at stock speeds the cpu temp was at 23 degrees idle and gpu came down from 70 idle to 48 idle!!! was very pleased with this, anythin that can cool a 9800XT that much from the stock cooler is definatly worth while lol
had a few minor problems while setting up the loop, first of which, some fool where i bought the maze4 from decided it was a good idea to put celotape on the bottom of the block. when i came to take it off the sticky off it was stuck on the block. no ammount of washing would get it off so ended up using some methylated spirit on it, then washing it thoroughly before using it, you can still see like an outline of where the tape was, but its not sticky at all anymore and nice and smooth like it should be.
second problem was that after topping up the system, gettin it workin i find that one of the barbs were loose and leaking like a siv, well actually it was the maze4 again! the rest of the bits were fine, just one of the barbs on this wasnt tight enough.
got that cleaned up, and then got it leak testing again and no leaks, success!
while clockin i managed to get it to 250x10 on about 1.75v. it was memtest stable and seemed pretty stable in windows though it didnt stress test long before i decided to restart and alter somethin in the bios. managed to get a superPi screenie, 38secs beats my A64 rig lol (3400+ clawhammer) and would get me into 89th place on Weescots MAJOR superPI table
anyway, after this i couldnt get it to boot at any high speeds, even 250x10 was proovin difficult for it to boot with. think the bios on these things is a bit flakey at the best of times
on the occasions i could get it to boot, it would restart when loadin windows so i figured a bit more vcore should help 
so went ahead and volt modded, bein lazy i left everythin in the chassis and did it from there, turned it on and got a constant buzzing from the speaker, ripped out the mod and nadda. just turns on and thats about it now lol
im hopin i havnt killed the cpu and its just the board but wont know till i can get another one. kinda reminds me of last time i volt modded a mobo, that lasted quite some time before it died, well it actualyl died 4 times but i managed to get it goin again till it died completly
so yeah, watercooling rocks! for my next upgrade (hopefully following the hordes and going conroe) im thinkin watercooling most definatly! I used to be a firm believer of water + computer = bad and always figured that get some good air cooling and ya sorted, but now i went ahead and tried it watercooling would win hands down just for sheer coolness alone before you even went on to how well it can cool a system.
thanks to everyone who helped me out with watercoolin questions, the loop order etc and those of you who sold me the components, cheers
got some decent components and a pretty good loop set up:
dfi NF2 ultra infinity
2600-m (IQYHA 0352MPMW
)2x256mb twinmos BH-5
9800XT
AquaXtreme 50z
Maze4 CPU
AquaXtreme MP-1 GPU
Black Ice Extreme III
Swiftech microRes
3 panaflo M1a's on the rad, 80mm noiseblocker laggy banded to the ram and a 120mm blowin over the chipset
used an old desktop ATX case and modded it to fit a triple rad and the pump etc. all fits and works quite nicely, the rad just slots in nicely and rests ontop of the empty pci slots.
at stock speeds the cpu temp was at 23 degrees idle and gpu came down from 70 idle to 48 idle!!! was very pleased with this, anythin that can cool a 9800XT that much from the stock cooler is definatly worth while lol
had a few minor problems while setting up the loop, first of which, some fool where i bought the maze4 from decided it was a good idea to put celotape on the bottom of the block. when i came to take it off the sticky off it was stuck on the block. no ammount of washing would get it off so ended up using some methylated spirit on it, then washing it thoroughly before using it, you can still see like an outline of where the tape was, but its not sticky at all anymore and nice and smooth like it should be.
second problem was that after topping up the system, gettin it workin i find that one of the barbs were loose and leaking like a siv, well actually it was the maze4 again! the rest of the bits were fine, just one of the barbs on this wasnt tight enough.
got that cleaned up, and then got it leak testing again and no leaks, success!
while clockin i managed to get it to 250x10 on about 1.75v. it was memtest stable and seemed pretty stable in windows though it didnt stress test long before i decided to restart and alter somethin in the bios. managed to get a superPi screenie, 38secs beats my A64 rig lol (3400+ clawhammer) and would get me into 89th place on Weescots MAJOR superPI table
anyway, after this i couldnt get it to boot at any high speeds, even 250x10 was proovin difficult for it to boot with. think the bios on these things is a bit flakey at the best of times
on the occasions i could get it to boot, it would restart when loadin windows so i figured a bit more vcore should help so went ahead and volt modded, bein lazy i left everythin in the chassis and did it from there, turned it on and got a constant buzzing from the speaker, ripped out the mod and nadda. just turns on and thats about it now lolim hopin i havnt killed the cpu and its just the board but wont know till i can get another one. kinda reminds me of last time i volt modded a mobo, that lasted quite some time before it died, well it actualyl died 4 times but i managed to get it goin again till it died completly
so yeah, watercooling rocks! for my next upgrade (hopefully following the hordes and going conroe) im thinkin watercooling most definatly! I used to be a firm believer of water + computer = bad and always figured that get some good air cooling and ya sorted, but now i went ahead and tried it watercooling would win hands down just for sheer coolness alone before you even went on to how well it can cool a system.
thanks to everyone who helped me out with watercoolin questions, the loop order etc and those of you who sold me the components, cheers
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