Titan Amanda - Some Questions

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Sovereign

2[H]4U
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Mar 21, 2005
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Someone here mentioned the Titan Amanda. I like what I am hearing about it but I would like to confirm a few things.

I know that there is only one Titan distributor in the US, that is fine. High prices (~$70) are also fine. However, the poster claimed (and showed with his temps) that the Amanda had lowered his temperatures vis-a-vis his original aftermarket cooler by 10C. The Amanda has TEC (Peltier) correct? Would I get a big temp drop by going from a Sycthe Ninja w/64CFM fan to the Amanda? Further, the poster claimed that the Amanda generated less heat and the air coming off the Amanda was slightly below room temp. I would LOVE this because my computer being on and Folding heats up my college dorm quite a bit and me and my roommate don't like it. No, opening the window is not allowed as it causes the heater to think "It's cold in here" and add MORE heat.

Finally, I have my Opteron 170 at 2.6GHz with 1.50 BIOS-set vCore (1.35+.15, weird MSI settings anyone?). I cannot get past 2.6GHz on this voltage, 3DMark06 (which I use only for stability) locks up in Deep Freeze. No it is not my 7900s, I got that fixed a while ago. Do you think that I could lower my temps, up my voltage, and cool off my dorm room with this Titan Amanda? Thanks.
 
I call BS on the "colder than room temp exhaust" thing. The heatsink side of the thermoelectric cooler is supposed to be hot. The transfer of electrons between the ceramic plates causes the cpu side to be cold, while the side mounted to the heatsink to be very HOT.

Now, whether or not your cpu temperatures are lowered, that peltier is still going to be putting out LOTS of heat, thats how they work. If your cpu temp goes down 10c, then thats probably because your exhaust is now 10c hotter. Xbit's review covered this, in a closed case with the amanda, sensors reported almost 10c higher than other setups with normal cooling.
 
I'm not sure about the Amanda itself, however, I noticed some odd stuff about your OC.

First off, have you played with the memory at all? I know that I was having the hardest time overclocking my 148 and i was having to put it to 1.6V to get it to 3Ghz and what not, but then i started getting help from eclipse with memory timings and memory voltages and tweaking the memory and i started to get near 3Ghz oc's with almost .1V less than before (see sig for proof).

You may want to do the same. Look for other causes of problems before blaming your processor. However, looking at your system I don't see why you cant get your RAM any higher than 270 if it is DDR500, it shoudl be able to get to at least 280 or 290 (if your lucky 300). You should try either loosening the timings of your ram up a little bit or maybe add .1v to the RAM and see if that fixes things. Also, try updating your BIOS if you havent already done so as they sometimes have fixes for these problems in the updates. If none of that helps then I gotta just come out and say that your motherboard probably isn't the best one or your processor steppings just suck, which im sorry, would just suck because there is nothing you can do about the latter. I know nothing about your motherboard though and its overclockability but if you want to test how far your motherboard can go, lower your multiplier as far as you can and put your RAM divider at about ddr400 level. Then raise the FSB until you can't boot any more. Thats your mobo max.
 
The air exashsting from the Amanda is just ABOVE room temps due to the fact that the air blowing through the hot pipes is cooled below room temp as it passes through the cool set of pipes. The air coming out will never be cooler than room temps, so using it to cool a room is a no.

I think it could help shave a few degrees off and allow you more voltage, which could imporove your oc, but that is of couse going to depend on your chip. I was hoping to gain some oc head-room, but my chip has reached its limits.
 
Yeah, the chip IT'S self will get below ambient (at 100% load, in a semi-warm room) but the exhausted air will always be hotter. Not only are you dissipating the heat from the chip, you're dissipating about 20-50w from the TEC too!

So, yeah, it might help you OC, but it sure as hell wont cool *down* your room! It'll do the exact OPPOSITE and make it warmer!

Anyways what RAM divider are you running with that setup? Sure... you have DDR500, but my DDR500 could only make it to DDR450 with the listed voltage and timings (course, it was good up to DDR 590 with the loosened timings, 2 cas to 2.5cas...)
 
Bloodgod42 said:
The air exashsting from the Amanda is just ABOVE room temps due to the fact that the air blowing through the hot pipes is cooled below room temp as it passes through the cool set of pipes. The air coming out will never be cooler than room temps, so using it to cool a room is a no.
Click to expand...

'cool' pipes? if a 'heat' pipe isn't 'hot', its doing absolutely nothing. The only reason there are heatpipes attached to the bottom plate anyway is because the TEC on the amanda isn't nearly powerful enough; that bottom plate is still getting really hot.

Arcygenical said:
Yeah, the chip IT'S self will get below ambient (at 100% load, in a semi-warm room) but the exhausted air will always be hotter. Not only are you dissipating the heat from the chip, you're dissipating about 20-50w from the TEC too!
Click to expand...

It won't get anywhere near below-ambient with a 20w tec on air cooling...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/titan-amanda-tec_10.html
 
I'm almost positive that it's a 50w TEC.

I don't own it, I was just quoting a review on it.

Bloodgod does own it, so he'd be the person to talk to. Even though that's true, there's no such thing as a cold pipe :D.
 
I wasn't going to use the Amanda to cool the room :) Only was hoping that the exhaust from the back would be cooler...

And as for this memory: I inadvertantly overclocked to DDR648 which I think damaged it beacuse it errs at anything more than a couple MHz over stock (DDR500) even though the timings are 3-4-4-8 or 3-4-4-10. What I mean by "accident" is that I was trying to get to 2.7 so I thought oh well this stuff should do that, if not I'll just back it down. Stupid MSI puts on a 5:4 divider when it detects DDR500 by default. I didn't know that.
 
thrawn86 said:
'cool' pipes? if a 'heat' pipe isn't 'hot', its doing absolutely nothing. The only reason there are heatpipes attached to the bottom plate anyway is because the TEC on the amanda isn't nearly powerful enough; that bottom plate is still getting really hot.
Click to expand...

Actually you have it backwards. The heat pipes are what remove the heat under normal cercumstances. However, when the heat load becomes to great for just the heatsink, pipes and fans to take care of, the TEC kicks in to add a bit more cooling.

http://pro-clockers.com/reviews.php?id=168&page=1
 
thrawn86 said:
'cool' pipes? if a 'heat' pipe isn't 'hot', its doing absolutely nothing. The only reason there are heatpipes attached to the bottom plate anyway is because the TEC on the amanda isn't nearly powerful enough; that bottom plate is still getting really hot.
Click to expand...

kill4killin, you nailed it.

In my situation, and I don't know why it would be any different for anyone else, when the tec is ON, the bottom set of pipes are actually cool to the touch. The effect this has is the air blows thru a first set of "cooler than ambient" fins, which in turns, cools the air blowing thru them to just below ambient right before it blows across the top set of pipes which are dissipating the heat from the tec. The results are that the air blowing 'out' the Amanda is just barely above ambient and considerably cooler than a air cooler.

btw...the design of the bottom pipes are in the rare case the tec should ever fail, you still have a decent air cooler so your cpu won't fry. They also play a part when the tec is turned off (cpu temp of >25c or so), the bottom pipes do get warmer than the top set, and this is a perfect setup for this cooler.

I hope this helps clarify a few thing.
 
Bloodgod42 said:
kill4killin, you nailed it.

In my situation, and I don't know why it would be any different for anyone else, when the tec is ON, the bottom set of pipes are actually cool to the touch. The effect this has is the air blows thru a first set of "cooler than ambient" fins, which in turns, cools the air blowing thru them to just below ambient right before it blows across the top set of pipes which are dissipating the heat from the tec. The results are that the air blowing 'out' the Amanda is just barely above ambient and considerably cooler than a air cooler.
I hope this helps clarify a few thing.
Click to expand...

Okay, I understand now. The actual heat pipe (the liquid evaporating inside the tube etc) is doing nothing, but the copper pipe still becomes cold. I didn't realize the amanda shut off the tec under idle conditions.
 
Bloodgod42 said:
The air exashsting from the Amanda is just ABOVE room temps due to the fact that the air blowing through the hot pipes is cooled below room temp as it passes through the cool set of pipes. The air coming out will never be cooler than room temps, so using it to cool a room is a no.

I think it could help shave a few degrees off and allow you more voltage, which could imporove your oc, but that is of couse going to depend on your chip. I was hoping to gain some oc head-room, but my chip has reached its limits.
Click to expand...
Hey blood, your load temp is at 44 with 1.5vcore and 2.84ghz?

Weird, I was getting interested in this cooler also, but my temps currently with an Arctic cooler freezer, FX-55, @ 3.05ghz and 1.52vcore loads at 48 overnight primed. Hmmmmmm I would LOVE to put some more voltage into my FX-55, but does anyone think this thing is worth buying?
 
so what wattage is the pelt on it? 50w? I have a pelt that I snagged from a thermo-electric mini-fridge that develops frost on it in under a minute and literally made an old 250w AT power supply (12A on the 12v line) scream under load and made it so it could barely power a fan to cool the heatsink. For the price of the Amanda, I'd expect the pelt on it to do the same...

IF it does...there's no way in hell the heat coming off that heatsink is "just above" room temp...cold pipes or not
 
nst6563 said:
so what wattage is the pelt on it? 50w? I have a pelt that I snagged from a thermo-electric mini-fridge that develops frost on it in under a minute and literally made an old 250w AT power supply (12A on the 12v line) scream under load and made it so it could barely power a fan to cool the heatsink. For the price of the Amanda, I'd expect the pelt on it to do the same...

IF it does...there's no way in hell the heat coming off that heatsink is "just above" room temp...cold pipes or not
Click to expand...

It is a rated at 60w I believe, but only reaches 50w due to the PCI controller card. I asked Titan what would happen if I put in a 80w tec (since it has the same dimentions of 40x40), and all I got was: "We have tested and perfect this setup to achieve very good cooling "without" threat of condensation."

EDIT: aZn_plyR: The nice thing about this cooler is that once the tec kicks in, I have to really crank the volts to 1.65+ to achieve anything higher than 44c, but at this point its not my cooling holding me back.

And my two-cents (or $70us as it maybe) is that the Amanda is worth it. :) I cant wait to get a FX chip to really test out what she has. ;)
 
WOW, haha yeah I found your huge thread about this cooler :) Nice.
 
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