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Basic Water Cooling, Need Some Help

A

asyork

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 3, 2002
Messages
2,059
Due to circumstances I cannot control, I now live in a hot room tha causes my Athlon XP 2000+ to idle around 61C with all my fans at full. It has errors and crashes if I do anything processor intensive for any length of time.

I currently have 4 x 80mm Sunon fans on the case, and an AlCu Zalman heatsink (one of the ones with fanned out fins) with a 120 mm fan cooling it. I can't think of any way to get my CPU cooler other than water cooling.

I don't plan on OCing, and my CPU is all that needs to be cooled. I can't spend much money right now, so I am trying my best to keep my costs at no more than $100.

I've had trouble finding very many options for a socket A water cooling kit. Right now I am looking at this one, but I am open to any suggestions.

Any ideas on building a cheap rig to cool my CPU by at least 10C or so would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I just realized that socket 462 and K7 are the same thing as socket A, which opens up a lot more options. If I can somehow get the money together, do any of you have an opinion on the Zalman Reserator 1 Plus system? I like the idea of near silence, but question the cooling power of a fanless system in a hot room.
 
Perhaps your hot room isn't the worst of your problems. Even a 20F increase in ambient temperature shouldn't result in a processor that is unstable with high-end air cooling. What thermal paste are you using, and have you verified that the installation of the HSF is correct? Have you attempted to monitor any other temperatures, such as the Northbridge sensor?

The Reserator is likely to perform worse than your Zalmam HSF. Effective silent cooling is something that can only really be achieved with very large copper radiators (or even larger aluminum ones), and is by and large somewhat pointless. Using fans on a radiator that are below the noise floor (the overall nominal sound level of your environment) at the distance you typically sit at add very little to the overall noise level of the environment.

If all else fails, you can sometimes find good deals on air conditioners at large membership warehouse stores. Though it likely won't last long, my cousin just scored a pretty effective no-name A/C wall unit for $50 at Costco.
 
I am using generic thermal paste.

In my dorm, I had control over the AC, and I could keep my comp running for a month or more, and even then I only shutdown when I had to travel or rebooted because of updates. Now that I am home in a hot room, my computer is crashing daily.

I don't have any tools to check the temps of anything but CPU and system temps. My system seems to be around 95F or so when idle. My ram and northbridge are 'cool' to the touch, and my passively-cooled Radeon is merely warm. I haven't noticed any artifacts in my games either, so I am guessing my CPU is the only problem.

Maybe I'll just get some high-end thermal paste and see if that fixes the problem. My only issue with that is that the shipping will probably cost more than the product. I don't know of any resellers in the area that carry arctic silver.

Maybe I'll check the base of my heatsink, and, if it is all copper, I might order the Coollaboratory Liquid Pro stuff. It sounds pretty interesting.

My neighborhood covenant doesn't allow window AC that can be seen from the road, so I am doomed to a hot room until I can convince my parents to get insulated garage doors.

It's only a matter of time before I have to buy a whole new system. I've got four caps on my mobo that look like they are about to blow. Maybe I'll replace them if I get bored sometime this summer...
 
I can tell you right now the base of that Zalman is copper and aluminum. The base is the fins compressed very tightly together then milled flat.
 
Get yourself a:
Storm 1/2" barb
Black Ice Extreme II 1/2" barb
10' of 1/2 ID 3/4" OD Tygon tubing
D5 pump or DD if you want
Fillport
Distilled Water
10 plastic tube clips
You can visit places like danger den, sidewinder computers, xoxide, frozen CPU, etc
 
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