dom993
03-21-2005, 08:39 PM
OK, I was fed-up with the noise of my quiet air-cooled system (Zalman 7000cu, NV5Silencer, 2 x 120 58cfm SilenX) so I decided to go water cooling. And after much reading and thinking, decided to take the easy/dumb way for my first water experience, so I bought an Exos-2 + CPU-300-V10 + GPU180-L06 + VID-NV2-L06 ...
I had no trouble to set it all up, tubing was enough (though barely, and the 3/8 tube came in 2 pieces, for whatever reason), the Exos-2 kit contains all small accessories one needs - including metal tape for taping the sensors to the waterblocks and a small wire to strap pins 4 & 6 of the ATX power connector during the bleeding process. Getting rid of air in the loop was not that difficult, once I decided to put my case upside-down a couple of times.
Then I fired the PC up, went straight to the BIOS / HW monitoring, and watched the CPU temp - 40C on boot-up, not impressed at all (bear with me on this). After power-up, Exos-2 goes to Auto mode, where the fans are almost silent ... and there is almost no air flow through the radiator, as I found out whatching the temps slowly raising, up to 48C - CPU waterblock reporting 33C. OK, that's with no air (but on Auto, which then is useless for me), so I set it to 10 ("take off"), then 5 ("cruise"), and see the temps go back to ~40C / 23C (waterblock).
I then tried settings 4, 3, 2 - double bad news - 2 and 3 are almost like 1, almost no air flow, but one (or both) fan has an audible rattle on these settings (also on 5, but less audible) - I have contacted Koolance for this problem this morning, no response back yet.
The other bad news at that point was to see the "system" temp higher than 40C ... it was 23C w/ air-cooling ?! Time for me to mount back the 120mm exhaust, with some limited effect. So I decided to use some of the small alu. memsinks that come w/ the GPU180 waterblock, I put 3 on the 6 mosfet on the left of the A64 (1 memsink for 2 mosfets). And I called back to service the exhaust tunnel that I had built previously for the Zalman. Now, "system" temp is 30C idle, and up to 38C on load (Vcore 1.68v, 2600MHz), but usually 34C (Vcore 1.51v, 2450MHz).
Hardly impressed with (Koolance) watercooling at that point - anyway, on to some serious testing (note - all of this is w/ brand new AS5, so should likely improve a bit within days)
Started w/ Prime. Mildly positive news here, MBM reported CPU temp goes from 40C (idle) to 47C (2450 @ 1.51v), where air-cooled was 51C AS5 fully cured (pretty much same ambiant temp). Hopefully, that will improve once AS5 cures...
WRT overclocking, no improvement :( still stable up to 2550, 2600 now runs Prime blend 2k-4k for 16minutes instead of 3min on air (tried up to 1.68v core, didn't have time to loosen mem timings beyond 2.5-3-3-9 @ 217Mhz - but these are rock solid at same mem speed / lower CPU speed)
On to 6800 testing. A lot more improvement wrt/ temps ... 37-38C idle (@400/1060), 42C while gaming - compare to 52C idle / 66C+ on air (NV5Silencer) at same settings.
WRT overclocking, good news on the 6800 front - stable mem timing have gone up from 1060 to 1120, and GPU runs at least up to 420 - did one 3D05 run @ 435, but score was lower than 420. (on defaults voltage settings, I don't know how to push voltages on the 6800GT).
A couple of closing remarks... :
- obviously, the 6800 is dumping lots of heat in the loop ... that is handled reasonably well even on the 4 setting.
- I found later ( http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=56882 ) that initial (post boot) CPU temp (as reported by MBM / K8N Neo2 Plat. ) is totally unreliable ... at best now, I trust the delta temps between load and idle)
As of my overall satisfaction/frustration w/ this Koolance setup ... hard to say for now - I was totally unimpressed at the start, but now that I have improved the "system" temp, and found that setting 4 ("quiet cruise", same noise level as Zalman 7000 @ 2000 RPM) can sustain reasonable Prime & gaming temps, I am a bit more satisfied ... having a pair of replacement fans from Koolance to get rid of this rattle would obviously raise my satisfaction level WRT noise.
...and a closing question:
I thought on the very first day to replace the CPU waterblock with a MCW6000-64, but likely it would need a stronger pump too ... could I just insert a MCP350 in the existing loop (ie., in addition to the 2 pumps that come in the Exos-2) ? Or will the exisiting pumps just limit the flow to whatever it is now ?
I had no trouble to set it all up, tubing was enough (though barely, and the 3/8 tube came in 2 pieces, for whatever reason), the Exos-2 kit contains all small accessories one needs - including metal tape for taping the sensors to the waterblocks and a small wire to strap pins 4 & 6 of the ATX power connector during the bleeding process. Getting rid of air in the loop was not that difficult, once I decided to put my case upside-down a couple of times.
Then I fired the PC up, went straight to the BIOS / HW monitoring, and watched the CPU temp - 40C on boot-up, not impressed at all (bear with me on this). After power-up, Exos-2 goes to Auto mode, where the fans are almost silent ... and there is almost no air flow through the radiator, as I found out whatching the temps slowly raising, up to 48C - CPU waterblock reporting 33C. OK, that's with no air (but on Auto, which then is useless for me), so I set it to 10 ("take off"), then 5 ("cruise"), and see the temps go back to ~40C / 23C (waterblock).
I then tried settings 4, 3, 2 - double bad news - 2 and 3 are almost like 1, almost no air flow, but one (or both) fan has an audible rattle on these settings (also on 5, but less audible) - I have contacted Koolance for this problem this morning, no response back yet.
The other bad news at that point was to see the "system" temp higher than 40C ... it was 23C w/ air-cooling ?! Time for me to mount back the 120mm exhaust, with some limited effect. So I decided to use some of the small alu. memsinks that come w/ the GPU180 waterblock, I put 3 on the 6 mosfet on the left of the A64 (1 memsink for 2 mosfets). And I called back to service the exhaust tunnel that I had built previously for the Zalman. Now, "system" temp is 30C idle, and up to 38C on load (Vcore 1.68v, 2600MHz), but usually 34C (Vcore 1.51v, 2450MHz).
Hardly impressed with (Koolance) watercooling at that point - anyway, on to some serious testing (note - all of this is w/ brand new AS5, so should likely improve a bit within days)
Started w/ Prime. Mildly positive news here, MBM reported CPU temp goes from 40C (idle) to 47C (2450 @ 1.51v), where air-cooled was 51C AS5 fully cured (pretty much same ambiant temp). Hopefully, that will improve once AS5 cures...
WRT overclocking, no improvement :( still stable up to 2550, 2600 now runs Prime blend 2k-4k for 16minutes instead of 3min on air (tried up to 1.68v core, didn't have time to loosen mem timings beyond 2.5-3-3-9 @ 217Mhz - but these are rock solid at same mem speed / lower CPU speed)
On to 6800 testing. A lot more improvement wrt/ temps ... 37-38C idle (@400/1060), 42C while gaming - compare to 52C idle / 66C+ on air (NV5Silencer) at same settings.
WRT overclocking, good news on the 6800 front - stable mem timing have gone up from 1060 to 1120, and GPU runs at least up to 420 - did one 3D05 run @ 435, but score was lower than 420. (on defaults voltage settings, I don't know how to push voltages on the 6800GT).
A couple of closing remarks... :
- obviously, the 6800 is dumping lots of heat in the loop ... that is handled reasonably well even on the 4 setting.
- I found later ( http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=56882 ) that initial (post boot) CPU temp (as reported by MBM / K8N Neo2 Plat. ) is totally unreliable ... at best now, I trust the delta temps between load and idle)
As of my overall satisfaction/frustration w/ this Koolance setup ... hard to say for now - I was totally unimpressed at the start, but now that I have improved the "system" temp, and found that setting 4 ("quiet cruise", same noise level as Zalman 7000 @ 2000 RPM) can sustain reasonable Prime & gaming temps, I am a bit more satisfied ... having a pair of replacement fans from Koolance to get rid of this rattle would obviously raise my satisfaction level WRT noise.
...and a closing question:
I thought on the very first day to replace the CPU waterblock with a MCW6000-64, but likely it would need a stronger pump too ... could I just insert a MCP350 in the existing loop (ie., in addition to the 2 pumps that come in the Exos-2) ? Or will the exisiting pumps just limit the flow to whatever it is now ?