tsuehpsyde
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2004
- Messages
- 6,604
So, I decided to take the lid off of my Opteron after much debate (and teeth chattering). Boredom gets the best of us. I've went to water since I got her (this is robberbaron's Opteron, so this is thee very first, official OpterOWN). Due to her history, I woulda felt like an ass had I killed it....but I needed more performance and dammit, I was finding it someway. After reading tons and tons and tons about it (and Ozzimark making fun of me), I decided to put my nuts on the table and go for it. First thing was first, as I had never checked the block, I wanted to see how my first waterblock spread was, to see if my temps were as good as they could be on the IHS.
Quite a solid spread, if I do say so myself. I did dick around with it alot, so I was rather surprised. Obviously, I was getting no tempature gains there, so it was off to cut somethin'!
In order to remove your IHS, you have to slide something between the PCB of your processor and the IHS, which you do NOT have alot of room to go between. Over at XS, they recommended a double-sided razor, the type used in like the 50's or something. They were like $5 for a pack of 15 at rite-aid, so I picked those up and a pack of regular razors for myself. Pretty sad when ur PC has more razors for itself than you do. Since there are 2 sides to it, I had to cover up the one side so I could push on it without, you know, reaching into the BONE. Here's a pic of my tool after some extensive use in the field...she suffered a bend while pushing somehow, don't ask.
So I'm hackin away at this thing while it rests ever so gently on the anti-static foam it came with (and seriously, that thing is a beast...I was pressin like hell on the bottom, and not a pin ever moved, A+ AMD!), and I couldn't get that bastard to pop off! I was gettin' pretty bent outta shape about it, but I just kept at it. Probably put a good half hour into her. Here's my blade violating the poor Opteron:
All 4 sides. After debating with CCU about what to do (his suggestion: "Grow some balls and cut deeper!"), I went ahead and started cutting maybe a millimeter or less more in each side....scared as hell I was gonna go thru and break off like, everything underneath. After checking all 4 sides, I found a side that was a little stiffer than the others. After a little work...success!
I was a little nervous, considering i saw a strand of copper on the top. But it turned out to be a piece from the IHS itself and it blew right off (thank Christ, I almost cried when I saw it). Now, since I'm using a water block with a nice, big, conductive copper block, we wanna keep from accidently shorting out the transistors on top, so that's where our electrical tape comes into play. Enter processor insulation:
There she is, with a nice thin coat of AS5. I mounted her up and temps were like 49C in the BIOS, but after some retention tweaking, she went down to 38C....went into windows and she was loading up to like 50C. Mind you, Prime instantly failed with temps that high. Bad mount, obviously. So I rip her off to see what's going on.
Clearly a bad mount. Either it was uneven or too much AS5 or something. After some debate, I went ahead and tried out the Ceramique I had just bought with it's dubious "line across the core" method. Needless to say, I am loading in Windows between 31-32C, and I'm loving every minute of it! It's fighting for tempature dominace with my PWMIC, which is well worth the hour or two's worth of work put into it (now mind you, I'm afraid to touch it since bare cores are fragile and re-mounting that thing seems like the polar oppisite of "fun").
Now, on to 3GHz+ with hella low temps.
Full Folding Ahead!
Quite a solid spread, if I do say so myself. I did dick around with it alot, so I was rather surprised. Obviously, I was getting no tempature gains there, so it was off to cut somethin'!
In order to remove your IHS, you have to slide something between the PCB of your processor and the IHS, which you do NOT have alot of room to go between. Over at XS, they recommended a double-sided razor, the type used in like the 50's or something. They were like $5 for a pack of 15 at rite-aid, so I picked those up and a pack of regular razors for myself. Pretty sad when ur PC has more razors for itself than you do. Since there are 2 sides to it, I had to cover up the one side so I could push on it without, you know, reaching into the BONE. Here's a pic of my tool after some extensive use in the field...she suffered a bend while pushing somehow, don't ask.
So I'm hackin away at this thing while it rests ever so gently on the anti-static foam it came with (and seriously, that thing is a beast...I was pressin like hell on the bottom, and not a pin ever moved, A+ AMD!), and I couldn't get that bastard to pop off! I was gettin' pretty bent outta shape about it, but I just kept at it. Probably put a good half hour into her. Here's my blade violating the poor Opteron:
All 4 sides. After debating with CCU about what to do (his suggestion: "Grow some balls and cut deeper!"), I went ahead and started cutting maybe a millimeter or less more in each side....scared as hell I was gonna go thru and break off like, everything underneath. After checking all 4 sides, I found a side that was a little stiffer than the others. After a little work...success!
I was a little nervous, considering i saw a strand of copper on the top. But it turned out to be a piece from the IHS itself and it blew right off (thank Christ, I almost cried when I saw it). Now, since I'm using a water block with a nice, big, conductive copper block, we wanna keep from accidently shorting out the transistors on top, so that's where our electrical tape comes into play. Enter processor insulation:
There she is, with a nice thin coat of AS5. I mounted her up and temps were like 49C in the BIOS, but after some retention tweaking, she went down to 38C....went into windows and she was loading up to like 50C. Mind you, Prime instantly failed with temps that high. Bad mount, obviously. So I rip her off to see what's going on.
Clearly a bad mount. Either it was uneven or too much AS5 or something. After some debate, I went ahead and tried out the Ceramique I had just bought with it's dubious "line across the core" method. Needless to say, I am loading in Windows between 31-32C, and I'm loving every minute of it! It's fighting for tempature dominace with my PWMIC, which is well worth the hour or two's worth of work put into it (now mind you, I'm afraid to touch it since bare cores are fragile and re-mounting that thing seems like the polar oppisite of "fun").
Now, on to 3GHz+ with hella low temps.
Full Folding Ahead!