@$#% Water Cooling

[cornelious0_0]

I don't mean to alarm or offend anyone but this is more of a celebration/information thread then anything else. I had been thinking about switching to water cooling for awhile now but I have recently changed my viewpoint on things. I guess I should let you know of my case and everything, just so you know where I'm coming from.

My case is the YY-0221 by Yeong Yang.....there's a review on the caes at Virtual-Hideout so you can see what I'm talking about. The case is exactly as it was when I got it except I have removed the factory grill on the side panel 92mm intake to quiet it down a bit. The 3 fans are nothing outstanding.....about 45cfm and not very quiet IMO.

I've got my 2.6C resting beneath my Zalman CNPS7000-ALCU, with some Arctic Silver 5 between them keeping everything under control. The setup has been running great for the last while but I got curious a couple days ago. I started thinking....."Do I really NEED water cooling???".....and the conclusion I ended up coming to was a big ol' NO.

I don't have a lot of room to overclock this baby 'till later this week when my OCZ PC4000EL gets here so for now it's just sitting at it's stock 2.6GHz.

I don't think I really need to say much else, other then to point you below to take a look at my pics of the idle / max load temps.

The idle temp was taken after 15 minutes of sitting in windows coming off a cold boot and the max load after 15 minutes of keeping both cpu's stuck at 100% through running Folding@Home and rthdribl simultaneously.

Funny thing is that the max load temp is already almost under 30C.....it keeps going back and forth between 29 and 30......I just took the shot at 30 to be fair.

I fully understand that not everyone is in the position to be able to pull off temps like this on air cooling ('specially with something dead silent like the Zalman) and so water isn't completely out of the question for a lot of you. But however, for those of you that don't live in the rain forest, I wouldn't necessarily fall back on h2O just yet.....there's still plenty of fun to be had with plain old air.

I've actually got a few mods in store for the cube, the two most important of which being the two 120mm 80cfm intakes I'm adding to blow on the cpu and video card. That'll help drop the case temp even closer to room temperature and hopefully keep the max load under 30C for sure.....I'm not to sure how much lower I can get with that idle, my room isn't THAT cold.

I hope this could have helped some people out there or at least given you something to shoot for 'cus it's sure inspired me to do better.....this is turning into a sort of game for me.

I'll have more idle/load temps within the week once I've got the PC4000 in and the cpu can sit at 3.4GHz all day long but for now thas all.

EDIT: I'd just like to re-assure everyone that it IS the case being measured and that it isn't the NB or anything that has accidently been assigned to that spot. When I added the two exhaust fans on the OTHER SIDE of the case the temp instantly went down 5 degrees, right off boot and I could feel the warm air being pushed out. Just lettin' you know 'cus I already had some concern about that and I don't want any grey areas or cover-ups here.

 

[ZigZagZeppelin]

Those temps are nice, you certainly "don't need" water cooling.

If u just wanna randomly spend money send a check to:

ZZZ
Troy, NY



Oh, BTW my stuff is on the Fedex truck supposedly for delivery sometime today.

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by ZigZagZeppelin
Those temps are nice, you certainly "don't need" water cooling.

If u just wanna randomly spend money send a check to:

ZZZ
Troy, NY

Heh, not sure if that was on my agenda or not.....lemmie think about it.

EDIT: Nice to hear that the goods are almost here.

 

[cornelious0_0]

I think that this "not having to buy water cooling" will give me the oportunity to start saving for my new video card later this year.....'cus I ain't gonna miss this release.

So yes, this is more of a celebration thread then anything else.....especially now that I realise WHAT I'll be able to put the cash towards.

 

[ZigZagZeppelin]

Nv40 sounds powerful, no doubt.

But keep in mind DDR2 gets HOT as hell, ya might wanna COOL THE CASE WITH WATER.....


Also it sounds like its AGP & PCI Express will be starting up in a few months.

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by ZigZagZeppelin
Nv40 sounds powerful, no doubt.

But keep in mind DDR2 gets HOT as hell, ya might wanna COOL THE CASE WITH WATER.....


Also it sounds like its AGP & PCI Express will be starting up in a few months.

Exactly, I know there's a lot on the horizon and I'm not going to really deny or accept any facts about anything until the goods are here but I'm just glad there's one less thing to worry about FOR NOW.

 

[_Korruption_]

Those temps are almost too good to be true I have an SP-97 with 92mm Panaflo Medium, with Ceramique between the 2500+ (205x11, 1.7v). Case temp is consistantly 20C, idle temp is near 29C, full load temp is 34C. I dunno, but that just looks a little fishy.

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by _Korruption_
Those temps are almost too good to be true I have an SP-97 with 92mm Panaflo Medium, with Ceramique between the 2500+ (205x11, 1.7v). Case temp is consistantly 20C, idle temp is near 29C, full load temp is 34C. I dunno, but that just looks a little fishy.

I really don't know what to tell you guys. You have my word that I haven't somehow botched my MBM scores or anything like that, which is about all I CAN give/tell you.

I'm not going to force anyone to believe anything they don't want to 'cus I realise where you're coming from, saying that it's "to good to be true" but that's my story.

 

[_Korruption_]

Hey, I can see you're telling the truth, I believe you... it's just the fact that your MBM readings are a bit unusual. I don't get how the CPU temp can be so much lower than the case temp, even with the machine coming from a cold boot. My case temp usually goes down to 16C, with CPU at around 23C when I shut it off overnight and boot up in the morning.

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by _Korruption_
Hey, I can see you're telling the truth, I believe you... it's just the fact that your MBM readings are a bit unusual. I don't get how the CPU temp can be so much lower than the case temp, even with the machine coming from a cold boot. My case temp usually goes down to 16C, with CPU at around 23C when I shut it off overnight and boot up in the morning.

the funny thing is that this is just running the comp for two days straight, shutting down for 5 minutes and THEN booting from cold boot, not overnight.....I bet my temps'd be even crazier if I did that.

Thx for not slamming me and everything.

 

[_Korruption_]

LoL, that's even wierder. You sure you got the MBM5 configuration correct?

 

[PiratePowWow]

Looks real fishy to me. My idle case temp is 37 deg C and I have Eight 80mm case fans, four intake and four exhaust. Plus I have that 92mm zalman fan blowing on my mobo and a 60mm on my NB.

 

[2Fresh]

Unless you have a probe, your temps you are posting mean crap

 

[_Korruption_]

Originally posted by PiratePowWow
Looks real fishy to me. My idle case temp is 37 deg C and I have Eight 80mm case fans, four intake and four exhaust. Plus I have that 92mm zalman fan blowing on my mobo and a 60mm on my NB.

You could have lots of case fans, but it all depends on the ambient temperature inside the room where you keep your rig. I have a colder basement (rec. room), so my case temperatures are lower.

 

[cornelious0_0]

LoL, that's even wierder. You sure you got the MBM5 configuration correct?

Yes, double a triple checked.

Looks real fishy to me. My idle case temp is 37 deg C and I have Eight 80mm case fans, four intake and four exhaust. Plus I have that 92mm zalman fan blowing on my mobo and a 60mm on my NB.

Again, I'm not forcing anyone to believe anything here, so don't feel like or act like I'm pushing anything on you.

Unless you have a probe, your temps you are posting mean crap

This is also something that has already come up. People, if you've got something questionable, contravertial, or negative like THIS to say, please PM me. There's no sense in posting in people's threads (mine or anyone else's) just to put them down, you're not gaining anything out of it.

In respons to the rather rude post now.....why would you say something like that? I've tried different motherboards by different folks (Asus and Abit being the most recent) and the temps have all come up the same. I know that Abit mobos have had a history of reporting high temps.....well guess what, one of my friends has got a MAX3. His 2.6C is overclocked to 3.42GHz @ 1.625v. He uses both the mobo sensor AND his manually placed one and guess what..........his temps coincide with mine and back me up.....it's not a matter of my mobo reporting wrong. If someone is to take a sensor, who's to say they're even placing it correctly and that it isn't going to be even farther off then the mobo reported temp??? THAT'S why I don't like probes.

Again, anyone is free to think or believe anything they want around here but I urge you to not make my thread look like shit and to please PM me if you've got any concerns. I knew that there woudl probly be ppl that didn't believe me but I didn't post this up to get dumped on.

Be considerate and think of how you'd feel if someone did it to you.

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by _Korruption_
You could have lots of case fans, but it all depends on the ambient temperature inside the room where you keep your rig. I have a colder basement (rec. room), so my case temperatures are lower.

Exactly, you can't cool anything colder then room temp with air cooling. It just so happens that my room is in the basement and at this time of year it's like 18C down here. It's for that reason that I don't HAVE to have a million screaming fans to have lower temps then some people.

 

[2Fresh]

Not ripping on you. Have no reason to, I have no idea who you are. I am just saying..what is the point in posting temps if youhave no real proof of what they are.

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by 2Fresh
Not ripping on you. Have no reason to, I have no idea who you are. I am just saying..what is the point in posting temps if youhave no real proof of what they are.

Then why would ANYONE post ANY temps from their rigs??? Who's to say that anyone really has their sensors placed properly and we're all just dead wrong.

Listen to what you're saying. I've got other sources and setups to back up what I've got here and that's really as much as I can get.

Again, please PM me in the future if what you have to say is demeaning in any way, it's just plain rude.....and I'm not trying to be.

 

[cornelious0_0]

Well, ignoring what everyone's been saying, I went ahead and rebooted to get some rough, OC'ed temps for now. Instead of starting from a cold boot I just restarted so I'm sure if i let it sit for awhile like i did the first time the idle might drop another 1C.....who's to say.

I have also come upon a very ugly fact that has explained a lot of things recently. I was at a LAN party just a couple weeks ago and during some benchmarking I tried a couple sticks of my buddies PC2700 ram to give me a boost.......just to see where I could gain. I was constantly running into issues where the comp woud lock up part way through a run of AM3 for no reason beyond a certain FSB point. I am very glad that I've started using MBM lately 'cus it has showed me something.

The culprit lies in my shitty PSU that came with my Raidmax Scorpio case that i have since sold off. at stock 2.6GHz the cpu boots up at 1.6v just like it's sposed to. However, once put under any amount of load, the PSU starts to undervolt the CPU 'cus it just can't take it. This issue isn't THAT bad at 2.6GHz, only dropping it from 1.6v to 1.54v (still not very good though) however at 3.25GHz and 1.65v the PSU buckles even more and boots it down to 1.58........not even close to being somewhat acceptable.

So it looks like I'm gonna have to pick up that Truepower sooner then I though or I'm not going to get very far with my new ram. If it's undervolting that much at 250FSB.....just think how bad it probly was when I was trying it at 262 or 265..........no wonder it wasn't stable.

Oh yeah, temps @ 3.25GHz 1.65v:

 

[Spidey329]

That's a pretty normal air temp, to be honest.

When my room is 23*C, my mobo is around 25*C and CPU is around 29*C on idle. Load it goes to 26*C and 32*C.

Water is mainly good for keeping temps lower on load. So you have a 10 degree difference with load over the ambient room temp. If you water-cooled, you may get that to be a 4-7 degree difference or lower (depending the system).



That's with my 2.8C @ 3.35 and generic thermal paste.

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by Spidey329
That's a pretty normal air temp, to be honest.

When my room is 23*C, my mobo is around 25*C and CPU is around 29*C on idle. Load it goes to 26*C and 32*C.

Water is mainly good for keeping temps lower on load. So you have a 10 degree difference with load over the ambient room temp. If you water-cooled, you may get that to be a 4-7 degree difference or lower (depending the system).



That's with my 2.8C @ 3.35 and generic thermal paste.

Yeah, that's the only reason I was still looking at water cooling, although not nearly as seriously. I realise that it's there mainly to keep that idle-load difference as small as possible but I think I'm content with air for now.

Thx for not biting my head off.

 

[vortec4800]

Wow, I sure wish my air-temps were that cool... I have 45C idle and 60C load average, bought my watercooler and its waiting to get thrown in. Hopefully with the watercooler I can get my temps down to around 35C idle, and no higher than 45C - 50C load. Ambient temp in the room is about 75 - 80F so maybe I'm just dreaming...

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by vortec4800
Wow, I sure wish my air-temps were that cool... I have 45C idle and 60C load average, bought my watercooler and its waiting to get thrown in. Hopefully with the watercooler I can get my temps down to around 35C idle, and no higher than 45C - 50C load. Ambient temp in the room is about 75 - 80F so maybe I'm just dreaming...

Good luck to you on that one and props to actually putting water in your comp. If I had the extra cash I'd probly get water cooling just 'cus it's cool. Even if I don't gain anything from it I'd still think it was worth the money 'cus your comp looks pimpin'.

 

[AnubisPrime]

Unless you're testing systems in a controlled environment with the same methods, its really all relative. I'm positive you're being absolutely truthful in what you're posting, but it has alot to do with what you're using to monitor the temp, ambeint temperature, etc. If you're not using a probe and are in some place really cold, as most of us are this time of year, those temps are totally believeable. But to say that you wouldn't gain any benifit from water is also untrue. Get a probe and test your temps under full load. I mean nothing by it, but I guarantee that they will be much different than your mobo temp reports. If you then decided to get a good WC setup, I'm sure that you'd see good results, especially when pushing your system to the limit. That being said, air cooling nowadays is great and really almost matches WC, except at the extreme upper end of the spectrum. Just my take, and nice temps

Prime

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by AnubisPrime
Unless you're testing systems in a controlled environment with the same methods, its really all relative. I'm positive you're being absolutely truthful in what you're posting, but it has alot to do with what you're using to monitor the temp, ambeint temperature, etc. If you're not using a probe and are in some place really cold, as most of us are this time of year, those temps are totally believeable. But to say that you wouldn't gain any benifit from water is also untrue. Get a probe and test your temps under full load. I mean nothing by it, but I guarantee that they will be much different than your mobo temp reports. If you then decided to get a good WC setup, I'm sure that you'd see good results, especially when pushing your system to the limit. That being said, air cooling nowadays is great and really almost matches WC, except at the extreme upper end of the spectrum. Just my take, and nice temps

Prime

Well I do want to thank you for going out of your way to say that you meant nothing by what you said.....no offense taken. I realise that it's all relative, which is one of our biggest problems as overclockers. I guess I was probly being a little harsh when I said I'd gain nothing, point taken. I realise that temps will be different but I just hate when people accuse me of lying or saying that "your mobo is WAY off".....that's just being rude and ignorant. I've got 'till April or May to decide what I'm going to do 'cus that's when the next LAN is taking place that I'm going to and I wanna make sure I'm ready by then.

Air cooling has progressed a great deal and I'm proof of that but yes, there are still benefits to water cooling that air cannot provide or remedy.

You can be sure that If I have the money I will go with water but I'm still very happy with my results I've got for now, especially considering the lack of extra work that went into it.

I really wish more people around here would be as considerate and polite as you have been in bringing this up so that I can actually TALK about something with someone.

Thx

 

[mwarps]

So your room is either about 0C or your thermal probe is miscalibrated to the point of painful obivousness.

There is no way in same hell your CPU is at ambient, I'm sorry. It's physically impossible, and as Mr Scott let us all know, y' canna change the laws of physics, even with a Zalman.

30C under load for a 2.6 I find to be extremely hard to believe unless you have a 92mm tornado on an SLK900, which a Zalman sure as HELL can't even compare to.

This is not Fanboyism. This is not jealousy, because I'm water cooled, I know what it can do, I'll never got back to air for anything serious. This is simply a "please go get a real thermal measurement device and see what the real temps are" post.

 

[cornelious0_0]

My God, will you people ever give it a rest? I'm ready to go get the thread locked by a mod right now 'cus this has gotten out of control and some people are obviously to closed minded. Either go buy the case and Zalman yourself to try it out or leave me alone already.

I've done this before with different mobos and different cpu's with different coolers but in this case and the results have been the same.....temps take a drastic drop when I put them in this box.....dont ask me why, it just happens.

That can sound as lame as you want it to but I've got MY facts and you've got YOUR assumptions, use what you want.

 

[boardsportsrule]

the temps are just a reference, really it's probably more like +-15C so it could be as high as 34C so its not a bigdeal....nice job tho

 

[cornelious0_0]

Originally posted by boardsportsrule
the temps are just a reference, really it's probably more like +-15C so it could be as high as 34C so its not a bigdeal....nice job tho

The temps themselves are what the big deal is, it's how I'm being treated and shot down here. Sheesh.

 

[mwarps]

Originally posted by cornelious0_0
My God, will you people ever give it a rest? I'm ready to go get the thread locked by a mod right now 'cus this has gotten out of control and some people are obviously to closed minded. Either go buy the case and Zalman yourself to try it out or leave me alone already.

I've done this before with different mobos and different cpu's with different coolers but in this case and the results have been the same.....temps take a drastic drop when I put them in this box.....dont ask me why, it just happens.

That can sound as lame as you want it to but I've got MY facts and you've got YOUR assumptions, use what you want.

Your facts are meaningless without a statement of the ambient temperature.

Your CNPS7000 ALCU only provides .22 C/W at silent and .29 C/W at normal mode.

Your P4 puts out about 65W at stock load.

Let's do the math.

At normal mode under load the temperature difference will be 14.3C. At Silent mode, it'll be 18.85C

Overlcocked, your chip puts out about 85W under load.

Silent mode difference is 24.65C and normal mode is 18.7C

So we have a problem here...

Looking at your RPM, it looks like it's running in normal mode, which would allow for these types of temps if your ambient were 15C. That's a little chilly. Most reasonable people like to live in an ambient of about 20C.

Yeah, it's five C and those five C make all the difference in this forum.

BTW, I'm an engineer by trade and a lawyer in training. Cutting arguments up is what I do for a living. Sorry if you took it personally.

 

[c00z]

I would have to agree with the previous post. The thermal resistance of your cooler is what is the limiting factor. What everyone must keep in mind is that the BEST you can do with air cooling and it will never happen is ambient. Since you are cooling the processor with ambient air and the heatsink has a certain amout of thermal resistance inherent in the material itself and then the thermal barrier from the artic silver will add to this, basically the artic silver tries to limit what in heat transfer is called "surface roughness" and in a thermal circuit this adds to the total "thermal resistance"


Also, one must add that the temperature monitors of motherboards also vary quite an extent. Think how could it be that some peoples temps can change from 0-8C from just a bios update. Realistically you would be getting at best a 4C rise above ambient for your processor.

I have the same cooler and artic silver 5 and with my 2500+ at stock I was getting 37C idle and overclocked with 90W output i am getting low 40C's this is quite realistic.

However, to also add, many people go to water cooling when they want A) a noise reduction and B)have thermal characteristics that are above what aircooling is capable of. Just think could my cooler wick over 120W of heat from a superoverclocked processor? I have to say that is a NO

SO, to conclude watercooling definitely has its uses but they are limited to reduction of noise and/or the overclocking of processor that put out a wattage that air cooling just isnt capable of.

Sorry if this seemed as bashing, it was just more to inform those who are to read this, and I am by the way a third year materials engineer in canada so i know a fair bit about materials properties and heat transfer

 

[rogue_jedi]

it could be possible. the case temp reported by the sensor is placed near hot components on some motherboards, thus reading higher than the air temp near the cpu. i know where cornelious is coming from, though. i have my athlon xp 2100 (paly) at 1900mhz and 1.85vcore, and according to the on-die sensor, as reported by my asus through MBM5 configured according to the motherboard page on the MBM5 website, it runs 1C under ambient (case temp) at idle, and 3-5C over ambient (case temp) at full load, and this stays constant even when the reported case temp varies (i like to open my window at night, w00t for 10C ambient temps)

that said, i'm moving to watercooling very soon, as the noise from my 2 tornados is driving me slowly closer and closer to sanity. (already been to insanity, i'm on my way back now)

good job cornelious, i respect you for posting your temps on here.

i also know where you're coming from with the whole 'bad psu' thing. i hate my powmax psu. they even made it hard to vmod (eventually... gotta get around to it)

 

[snowwie]

I don't quite understand the purpose of this thread

water cooling is able to transfer heat from your processor in a much more efficient way than air....period.

For those that like to push their hardware to maximize performance, watercooling is one of the best ways to do so. Not to mention the reduced noise.

I hate to bring this up (like others), as it will probably annoy you, but the other fact is that it is simply impossible for your idle temps to be below ambient, and your load temps to be merely 2 deg above ambient with your setup. Your temps mean nothing. Your CPU could possibly be cooled more poorly than my 2.4b @ 40C (MBM, bleh).

Ok, you decided watercooling isn't your thing. All it means is that you won't be reaching the full potential of your system. That's fine, very few people do.

I am unsure of why you are so offended when people are just perplexed by your point when your thread title is "@$#% Water Cooling"

whatever, I apologize for bumping this thread up the list

 

[cornelious0_0]

Well all I can say after reading those last few posts is that I went upstairs and checked the thermostat and it's sitting at 63F, or 17C. That's for upstairs and I know for a fact that it IS about 2-3 degree's cooler in our basement where my room is.

So after reading mwarps (informative) post and making note of the following:

"Looking at your RPM, it looks like it's running in normal mode, which would allow for these types of temps if your ambient were 15C. That's a little chilly. Most reasonable people like to live in an ambient of about 20C."

I am able to say that my room temperature DOES fit his description (by the mathematics of it) of what would actually make this possible.

In reference to the case temp, I believe what rogue_jedi said could very well be true about the case temp.....but that wasn't even really what I was looking at this whole time so whatever.

Now that I've calmed down a bit and looked at the facts I'm able to see that even after all of this, it's still looking like my temps very may well be true after all.

Thank you to the last few of you that went out of your way to explain things to me without going over the deep end when I clearly had.

I also take back what I said about water cooling and I do understand what it's good for, it's just that in my situation it isn't AS practicle as it is for some other people.....especially if these temps of mine are actually going to be working out to be valid.