New casemod, first time water cooling.

[Bionic_Tuna]

I am getting a new case to mod (getting bored of my current one) and an X800 XT soon. Since I have some extra money from working a lot more this summer I'd like to use it to learn water cooling. I was thinking I'd like to water cool my Athlon 64 3000 and the x800 and had a bunch of questions.

1) Is there a site that explains the basics of watercooling? Both how to assemble and the fundamentals behind it.

2) I'd like to keep the cost under or close to $250, what should I buy and where should I buy it from.

3) Could I expect any overclocking capability with my Athlon 64 3000, Asus K8V Deluxe, 1 gig Giel pc3200 ram?

4) Would the x800 be worth it/safe to OC. (I've overclocked plenty of processors on aircooling, but I've never messed with my graphics cards, I don't really know why, either.

5) Anything else in general I should know?

Thanks a lot guys. Look forward to reading your advice.

 

[kronchev]

read the sticky
as for the OC-ability, those are first-gen products so not much. I honestly am not sure about the x800 but for the 64's ive seen about 200 mhz as the limit. Itll still be damn fast even if you dont OC

 

[__caligula2]

Since it is obvious you're new to all the watercooling, my suggestion to you is that you read alot about it. Read some tutorials, browse through the forums of the sites I will give you through.

To answer your questions, yes you can oc a x800. And yes it will bring you very noticeable results only if you play heavy games and max out everything.

For buying, first read then buy, you will learn the basics, what's needed ,pros and cons...
When you will be informing yourself you will notice people's opinion about that and that product, then you will know what to buy.

Well enough talking, go here and enjoy!

Overclockers
Procooling
Xtremesystems Forums
Google

If you have any other questions, feel free to pm me

 

[vbbartlett]

Overclockers is probably the site I used the most during my intial learning. There is a lot of good post there (the link is slightly different than the one above) Start at the bottom of the page and read up. There is a lot of theory/thought/comments/suggestion that many others have had or done. If you are serious about becoming an expert take the time and learn by researching!

 

[fallguy]

but for the 64's ive seen about 200 mhz as the limit. Itll still be damn fast even if you dont OC

Ive gotten 400Mhz outta my 3400+, just starting to play with it..

 

[mustang_steve]

read some plumbing info sites as well, stuff covering the basics of head loss, pressure, flowrates, etc. Watercooling is basically a plumbing system when you look at it.

Then read up on the various gear around, see how it all performs...be sure to weed out the BS and bickering...you will hear things be "proven" in an infinite loop...those subjects I often ignore, since if it's being argued ad-infinitum, each time disproving the other...usually neither are right. Then get what fits your style. Since you seem to want to overclock, you may want to look at the whitewater and RBX blocks. They are considered some of the better performing blocks around.

BUT...before you buy triple, heck quadruple check your case to be sure you have room. Allow for plenty of room for tubing bends and such. Also keep in mind how big any peice of hardware will be. An ehiem 1250 CAN fit in a Lian-LI PC-60...but it's going to take up a serious amount of space in there...making things like hooking up mobo cables near impossible,..so keep space in mind.

Once you do, take your time, this is going to be your first run, so do all of this outside the case, pre-measured, and run it outside on paper towels for about a day. I reccomend using some kind of food coloring as well (small smounts of FD&C blue will be good). Reason for this is to locate leaks easier...the water hits the paper towel..and the blue dye will remain even if the water evaporates. If you locate a leak...re-do that spot and then either test it again (I would), or install it and hope for the best. Make sure the pump works fine before you do anyhting else. then fire it up and see how well you did.

After a while you may find some issue with your layout...I found some with my early designs. Usually the tubes looked fine, then later developed kinks. Don't worry if that happens, it's jsut part of teh learning process. Usually the third layout is the charm.

 

[server_error]

It seems that the limit of the A64's is more the board than the CPU. The whole firstgen didn't really have a working AGP/PCI lock, though I believe that the nf3-150 chipset's lock was eventually fixed through bios updates. But now the nf3-250 chipset boards are coming out, and have a working AGP/PCI lock, it seems that people are having much more success with them. Currently with my A64 3000, I've gotten +200 mhz without changing any voltages, or even ram speed, on very nice air (Gonna be WC'ed as soon as the kit gets here.... I can't even hear the freaking phone ), which is very conservative. I think I could probably squeeze a lot more out of it if I tried, and especially with one of the newer boards.