First time watercooling setup: Opinions?

[Aaron_ATX]

A friend of mine ordered a bunch of w/c parts after doing some research on the web, showed up at my house, had me assemble it all and isn't all that pleased with the results so far. Since I am the resident computer dork its my job to try and troubleshoot it...this is my first w/c setup i've messed with so I am looking for a few opinions as to the setup he has purchased.

Pump: AquaXtreme 50Z-DC12
Block: Danger Den TDX w/ #4 nozzle
Radiator: Black Ice XtremeIII
Fans: 3 120mm deltas (on a fanbus thank god) ~ fans bolted directly to the radiator with no shroud, pull configuration.
Res: Danger Den Single 5 1/4" Bay Reservoir
All using 1/2 tubing, thick pain in the ass stuff to deal with

Config: Pump --> CPU-->Radiator-->Reservoir-->Pump

Board is an epox 9ndaj3, venice +3200. I assembled everthing (mounting the waterblock seems to be a less than precise ordeal - used AS5....seated and reseated it about 7 times trying to get the feel for how its supposed to go on...cranked down snug but not to the point where the thumbscrews were hard to turn) and fired it up....

According to the bios it sits at 34-35c, and in windows it agrees. With the stock vcore and stock speeds it loads to about 41c in prime95. Turned the vcore up to 1.6 and it idles at 44-45c.....under load it will break 50c. Room temperature is probably 27c.


The rig is going to be overclocked as far as it will go, but, these temps don't really seem right. My XP-90 does just about the same job with a hell of a lot less hassle and noise. Does this seem right so far?

Other thing to note: we have the pump and the fans running off a separate POS 300w powersupply.

There is no air in the system. The waterblock has been disassembled since the initial startup to check for clogs. There are no kinks in the system.

I also notice that the fans don't really seem to make much difference (1-2c) between being set on hovercraft mode(full blast) or all the way down.

We have torn it all down and removed the res. and set it up with no case in order to try and troubleshoot it.

Anyone have any suggestions or things to allow? I'm noticing the side of the waterblock closest to the cpu doesnt really warm at all...any suggestions would be great.

 

[Bio-Hazard]

First off, it sounds like a pretty nice kit, I'm not a huge fan of the pump, but it should be fine. The temps are a little high (alot) for a triple radiator, check to see if there is a better bios out there that reports temps a bit better, some are closer than others. I get a 10c spread in idle and load temps when I switch between 2 of the newest bios for my abit AV8 MoBo. There is not a bios in the world that's 100% correct, all you can hope for is one that's close. With you saying that the block isn't even warm to the touch, I'd say the bios is incorrect.
You could also try putting the radiator before the CPU, that may or maynot help, but some people swear by that type of setup, I have mine that way, but it's more of a habit than anything else.

 

[Steeeeve]

did you use a thermal paste of some kind? Maybe artic Silver 5?

 

[Aaron_ATX]

The bios was one of my initial thoughts.....lol you should have seen the look on his face when I tried to pass that off as an excuse to him


And yep, as per the initial post I used AS5 on the waterblock.

We have several other "nozzles" that came with the waterblock also.....still unclear as to which may provide better performance. Most of the posts i've read indicate that the #4 is the way to go....but i'm not real sure as to why.