CoolIT Epic 180 info

Zarathustra[H];1037547521 said:
Temporary setback.

Maingear sent me the wrong mounting hardware. (looks to be some sort of Intel mount)

I have emailed them and will let you know how things go.

--Matt
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Sales guy responded immediately (on a Sunday!?). Kudos to Maingear for having dedicated staff!

They are going to be sending me (hopefully quickly) some AMD mounting hardware so I can continue.

I'll keep you posted.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037549707 said:
Sales guy responded immediately (on a Sunday!?). Kudos to Maingear for having dedicated staff!

They are going to be sending me (hopefully quickly) some AMD mounting hardware so I can continue.

I'll keep you posted.
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That's crazy. I have never seen an immediate response from any company on the weekend.
 
Mungojerrie said:
That's crazy. I have never seen an immediate response from any company on the weekend.
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Agreed! I was very impressed (at the same time I kinda felt badly for the guy, hopefully he's paid well)

So this is the latest word in an email I received about an hour ago:

maingear said:
Hey, sorry for the confusion. Our initial batch of coolers didn’t come with AMD hardware, seems like you got one from that batch. We’re overnighting you a kit today.
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I'm looking forward to receiving it.

Meanwhile I have done all the baseline temperature measurements with the H50. I dismounted the H50 to install the EPIC 180, but then I had to put everything back together again when I realized I was missing the correct brackets.

I wiped the contact surfaces with 91% Isopropyl Alcohol, put a little AS5 on the H50 and remounted. Surprisingly my temps are now 5-6C higher with the H50 than they were before I removed and remounted it. I tried remounting the unit again, with no improvement.

This may have to do with the paste break-in period that Arctic Silver mention on their webpage. They say temps can drop several degrees after the break-in period is over.

Now I am torn which numbers to use for the comparison. If I use the numbers from the paste that a was already broken in on the H50 before I removed it, the EPIC 180 may look worse than it really is, as its paste will not be fully broken in yet. (unless I wait 200 hours / 8 days for the break-in period to complete before posting numbers)

If I use the numbers from after re-installing the H50, I will have not-broken in, vs not broken in numbers, but one will be with AS5, and one will be with the included paste...

Choices.

Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?
 
Zarathustra[H];1037551995 said:
Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?
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I'd do a comparison between the non broken in arctic silver for now then compare the broken in arctic silver once you have the values for the new cooler :)
 
Mungojerrie said:
That's crazy. I have never seen an immediate response from any company on the weekend.
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granted it wasnt a weekend but today i sent EA an email with my cd keys for BF1942 both expansions and BF vietnam and wanted them to add them to my BF veteran account and within 4 minutes of hitting send my account was updated and had a response back.. i was impressed to say the least.


Customer By Web Form

07/25/2011 11:24 AM


Auto-Response

07/25/2011 11:24 AM




Response Via Email (Chandrakant Jha)

07/25/2011 11:28 AM



Hello,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

You would be glad to know that I have made some necessary changes to your account and have manually added the required veteran to your account. Now You will be able to see veteran status updated on your account.

If you have any further questions or concerns please reply to this email or visit our extensiveknowledge base online at http://support.ea.com.

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to assist you regarding your issue.

Thank you

Chandrakant
EA Online Support
 
Alright, looks like I pulled a stupid and had the required hardware after all. :rolleyes:

I was expecting a separate backing plate for the back of the motherboard, but it turns out that this block mounts exactly like the H60 block, so it - unlike my H50 - uses the heatsink bracket that comes with every AMD motherboard.

I removed mine when I installed my H50, as it had separate backing hardware for AMD systems. I'm going down to the basement to try to find the original bracket :p
 
First off, thanks to Chris M. and Danny S. over at Maingear. These guys appear to live and breathe customer service, and IMHO, someone over there ought to give them a raise.

Been working on the build today now that I know how everything goes together. I drilled out the rivets from the EPIC 180's bracket as it did not look like it would fit the way I wanted it.

While it may have voided my warranty (no idea) it will allow it to fit, and allows me to give you guys a little comparison.

Corsair H50, meet MainGear EPIC 180

5975296899_cb1ced8e9c_b.jpg


5975858938_4a21c6d296_b.jpg


Not only does the EPIC 180 have more than double the area, it also appears thicker!
 
So the cutting is done.

Wow, that took more elbow grease than I expected. They must have used some solid sheet metal over at Silverstone.

So my arm is really sore from all the sawing, and my wife is a little bothered and we finally decides to get dinner, so I don't think this will be done tonight.

A test fit with the two fans a radiator tentatively looks good height wise, but ma be a challenge in the back where the radiator sticks out. I may have to custom mount the fan in the base with putty or bend the back case cover a little. Well see when I put it all together.

The motherboard tray is a little more flexible than I would have liked, but I think when mounted it should be stiff enough.

Anyway, I plan on resuming tomorrow after work, if all goes well we should have results late tomorrow.
 
I have the unit installed.

I am currently going through some trouble shooting, possibly with a bad mount that I can solve by removing, wiping and reapplying paste. It got late before I had everything in last night, so I didn't have time for extensive testing.

I will update you guys later.
 
Mungojerrie said:
Can't wait for updates!
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In the mean time, here's a pic of what it looks like installed:

5978233316_ee4a00e74a_b.jpg


It's with the rest of them in this Flickr set.

Looks like I still have some metallic sawdust to vacuum up (that stuff is tough to pick up, maybe I need a magnet)

The toughest part was routing the 4 8pin PCIe power cables around the back of the motherboard and through to the video cards. This case used to have tons of wire routing and tucking options, but when I sawed the big hole in it, and filled it up with the radiator and fan, a lot of those options disappeared.
 
PnkPwrRngr said:
@Zara. Would you mind posting a few pics of the cooler with one of the AP181s mounted on it, or just sitting on top. I feel like it would give me a better idea of how big it is, and if it will fit in the FT02
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Sorry, I completely forgot about this.

Here is one I happen to have already (please pardon the cat hair, it gets everywhere)

5981704087_35d54ff547_b.jpg
[/url]

Hopefully this, together with the pic mounted in my case helps.
 
Alright,

The reason I didn't post results last night was because I was having problems. The unit did not perform as I had expected.

I think I solved my problems. Turns out Silverstones FM181 fans are a really strange design. They come with a rheostat included, but I didn't want to use it, so I installed without and was planning on controlling the fan speed using the motherboard.

Turns out if you don't connect the rheostat, it runs at the slowest possible speed. At that setting the fan barely even had enough power to start. (in fact without the pulling fan it would start at all, just try and fail)

So last night when I had low temps, it was because I was essentially running a pull only system, which isn't very effective.

Turns out in order to get the fan to run at max speed, you need to short the two pins in the rheostat connector, which I have now done. This seems like an unnecessarily convoluted design for a fan, but now it works.

Trying to get everything reassembled into the case and get the room down to the same temps I had during the H50 testing now, and then I'll post comparative numbers.

For now, here's a sneak peek: :cool:

5982615379_292caa29be_o.jpg


Yep, that's a stable Prime95 load temperature of 33C after running for 10 minutes. This is with a Phenom II X6 1090T running at stock. :p

These numbers are NOT comparable to the [H]'s Cooler reviews for the following reasons:
  • The 1090T uses more power than the i7-920 the [H] uses for testing. This will create more heat, and as such, higher temperatures
  • Ambient temperatures will not be the same
  • I (silly me) did not use the same Prime 95 mode as the [H] reviews. I went for the max stress test, and as such used In Place Large FFT's rather than blend mode.
 
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Awesome !!!
How's the rest of your system temps? I mean, did anything else go up in temperature by having the rad on the intake, rather than having a rad on the exhaust...

BTW, what is your ambient temp?
 
And here are the results. They don't look as impressive as they feel in person in this chart though :p

5983595468_f42e33814f_b.jpg


Test Details:
Stock: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T at stock clocks (3.2Ghz) and stock voltage
OC: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T at 4.0Ghz. BIOS set to 1.4275V (HW Monitor reads 1.53V)
Ambient: AC set to 20C / 68F (can not explain 19C idle temps possibly temp sensor slightly off)
Prime95: In-Place Large FFT's (Max Heat and stress) 6 threads Run for 30 minutes. Max temp seen recorded
Intel Burn Test: Maximum Stress Level (using ~14GB ram) Run for 15 Minutes. Max temp seen recorded.

KEEP IN MIND:
The H50 had been in my system for over a month. Its thermal paste had already been broken in. The EPIC180 was freshly installed. While stock pre-applied paste was used, AS5's directions state temperatures can go down by several degrees after the 200hr break in period.

I'll post an update to this test in a couple of weeks to see if the temps have improved at all.

It was a little bit of a bumpy install due to having to mod my case to fit it, but I am happy with this unit. I believe them when they say it outperforms the Coolit ECOII 240 (essentially the same as the Corsair H100).
 
E^vol said:
Awesome !!!
How's the rest of your system temps? I mean, did anything else go up in temperature by having the rad on the intake, rather than having a rad on the exhaust...
Click to expand...

You know, there's a DUH moment... I should have thought of measuring a pre-case temp on this, but I didn't.

Judging from the fan controller I have in my case - however - the temps look roughly equivalent to what they were before. That being said, I had the H50 set up pulling air in through the drive bays and a case fan exhausting up.

There is a lot of airflow in these Silverstone Raven cases, so it takes a lot to significantly impact case temps.
 
Gun_Strife said:
So any way to order this(link)
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Zarathustra[H];1037563254 said:
Hmm.. Looks like the link I had from them has expired.

I'll find out and post it here.
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So I just spoke to the sales guys. It looks like I ordered mine right after they decided to sell it as a standalone unit, but before they decided on the details.

They have currently taken it off their webpage while they do some work to prepare to publicize it for standalone retail availability.

Mine came in a plan corrugated box, without a manual, so they are probably doing stuff like designing marketing materials, install manuals, and a nicer retail box prior to putting it back up on their site.

They are going to let me know when this happens, so I'll update this thread at that point :)
 
Zarathustra[H];1037563988 said:
So I just spoke to the sales guys. It looks like I ordered mine right after they decided to sell it as a standalone unit, but before they decided on the details.

They have currently taken it off their webpage while they do some work to prepare to publicize it for standalone retail availability.

Mine came in a plan corrugated box, without a manual, so they are probably doing stuff like designing marketing materials, install manuals, and a nicer retail box prior to putting it back up on their site.

They are going to let me know when this happens, so I'll update this thread at that point :)
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They seem like a really cool company, their sales team just seems to be on top of it.
 
Mungojerrie said:
They seem like a really cool company, their sales team just seems to be on top of it.
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I get that same impression.

I don't buy pre-built computers myself, but if I had to recommend a pr-built computer to someone MainGear would be the one I'd recommend based on this experience.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037563988 said:
So I just spoke to the sales guys. It looks like I ordered mine right after they decided to sell it as a standalone unit, but before they decided on the details.

They have currently taken it off their webpage while they do some work to prepare to publicize it for standalone retail availability.

Mine came in a plan corrugated box, without a manual, so they are probably doing stuff like designing marketing materials, install manuals, and a nicer retail box prior to putting it back up on their site.

They are going to let me know when this happens, so I'll update this thread at that point :)
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Sounds good. It is actaully surprising and refreshing to hear about a company like this that actually cares about customers.
This should be able to adapt to 200mm you think?
 
Gun_Strife said:
Sounds good. It is actaully surprising and refreshing to hear about a company like this that actually cares about customers.
This should be able to adapt to 200mm you think?
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I don't see why not. You'd have to figure out how to attach it to the fan, but that really shouldn't be too difficult.

If you can't come up with a bracket designed for the purpose you could probably just hang it up using twisty ties somehow, depending on what the case looks like.
 
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Zarathustra[H];1037564844 said:
I don't see why not. You'd have to figure out how to attach it to the fan, but that really shouldn't be too difficult.

If you can't come up with a bracket designed for the purpose you could probably just hang it up using twisty ties somehow, depending on what the case looks like.
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It's the HAF X
I suppose I could try and do an adapter plate like they have for 80mm to 120mm, would just have to fab one up I guess
 
Gun_Strife said:
It's the HAF X
I suppose I could try and do an adapter plate like they have for 80mm to 120mm, would just have to fab one up I guess
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Same boat as you, I have a 932. I might try to just zip tie the radiator to the top fan spot. That is, if I can choose between this and the H100.
 
Riddleofsteel said:
Same boat as you, I have a 932. I might try to just zip tie the radiator to the top fan spot. That is, if I can choose between this and the H100.
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Yeah I am thinking this maybe over H100 because of size. With this I would not lose a 200mm fan I would just be adding this unit with another fan. Will just have to wait and see as the H100 is just getting stock and not sure exactly when this will be orderable.
 
Couple questions, sorry if you answered already and I missed, also thanks for all the updates, awesome that you are keeping us in the loop.
1) Temps using the AP181 in pull by itself?
2) Temps using AP181 in push by itself? what happens to case airflow in this configuration?
3) If temps with question 1 or 2 are decent, would I have to mod my case to fit the cooler?
4) Do you live near Vegas or Southern Ca. so I can have you mod my case some day? :)
 
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