Official Water Cooling Thread of the Stock Maximus SE ROG NB Club:

[Talonman]

Wow! Thanks for your input. I appreachiate the post.

My expierience with previous boards, is that on high OC you need to active cool your motherboard NB and mosfets
The X38 can't be an exception.

Well, we have the NB covered as far as active cooling goes running water through the block, so your saying our mosfets around the CPU will probably be our weak spot correct? I guess whatever we have flowing through our heat pipe, going to our mosfets heat sink isn't getting us credit for being 'active'.... Fusion System or not? I do have some extra fans pointing at my PWM's(?).

Remember: The Maximus SE boxes official stance:
Fusion Block System:
H2O Ready: The next step in thermal solution. The Fusion block system combines the ROG's renowned heatpipe design with the ability to conduct to a water cooling system for a 47% increase in thermal performance compared to other heatpipe designs.

I do think this is a new thing just on our SE correct? If so, we have no data on how well it actually cools our mosfets yet do we?

So, with all this in mind, the NB and mosfets should be the coolest to be stable. If 47°C limit meets Prime errors, I will say a 5-10°C lower temperature is needed for the long run (after all, it is just a chip like a CPU, so what applies to CPUs will apply to any chipset))

Gasp! If we go down the full 10°C and use 37°C for our line not to cross under max load, were going to have allot of people on the chart in trouble. I am getting more and more curious to see some of the sexy high end NB block temps, under max load.
Backing down 5°C would put us at 42°C and still most would be on the warning track. Ouch!
I still would like to know if Intel has an official stand on our NB max temp...

ROG Member ----- NB volts -- NB Loaded --------------- CPU ------------------
Renegade5399 ---- 1.65v ------ 34°C ------------ Intel Core2Duo E6850 G0 @ 4GHz
bill d ------------- 1.30v ------ 34°C ----------------------------- Q6600 Stock
ragge86 ---------- 1.65v ------ 36°C ---------------------------- Q6600 @ 3.8GHz
BulldogPO -------- 1.65v ------ 40°C -24/7 QMC crunching clocks - Q6600 @ 3.8GHz
weescott --------- 1.74v ------ 43°C --------(Q9550 444x8.5) 1.49v 62c under load
j0nnyr0773n ------ 1.54v ------ 44°C ------------------------- Q6600 GO @ 3.6GHz
Clump ------------ 1.62v ------ 46°C (After 1HR or Prime 95) ----- Q6600 @ 3.6GHz
raju -------------- 1.65v ------ 49°C (Prime95 Torture Temp) ----- Q6600 @ 3.6GHz
Note: After Raju remounted, max temp went down to 39°C
Note: NB temps over 47°C are prone to failures during longer Prime torture test runs.

I would want to know for sure there were some lower NB temps than our current range, before I jump.

Personally, when I receive a motherboard, I remove its stock cooling and at least reapply thermal compound before first run. After all, we all do this for our CPUs and debate what is the best compound (AS5, MX-1, MX-2...). SO we should do it for our chips. Any gain in temperature will lead to better OC performance like with a CPU.)

Yeha, except my D-tek didn't require me to melt it off of the CPU to start with. Make no mistake, this would be a big task for me getting all the ROG's cooling off of the motherboard and not hurting anything. Then buying all the correct fittings, blocks, and backplates, and re-mounting....
I wish I could pretend it was a 'why not' situaction for me, but I find it rather a major decission to tear everything off my mobo. It's not even close to a freebie in my mind. Everything is connected too, so were talking heat sinks and block.

Just taking all the stock stuff off, and putting it all back on is involved, and I really don't know how much better I could do than ASUS did?
Mabey their thurmal glue does a decent job?

I think raju may have got a bad NB install the board he received? After he did his remount, his max temp under load fell back in line with the other 'standard production model' Maximus SE's.
I know his temps dropped 10°C, but then again his NB came loose all by itself too, and his initial loaded temp was 49°C. That was our highest temp reported so far. I am betting the next Maximus they send him won't have a loose NB, nor would he probably realize a 10°C drop in temp if he remounted it himself?

Just an advice for future owners of this board: before mounting it, just tune your heatsinks, especially if you plan to get>50% OC from a quadcore.)

Tuning means dismounting everything off of the mobo correct, then reapplying AS5 or such?
Again, not an easy decission for me...

Also, like with CPUs, there are poor and bad overclockers in the motherboard department, as we OC the X38, some of them will be better than others (not all quads reach 4GHz stable OC, so not all X38 would be able to stabilize it)

True enouigh! I hope I got a runner.

It will be fun to see the boys that lay the long green out first, and buy all the best blocks, if their systems will be able to run much faster in the end, than the boy's who just stuck to running the stock ROG Fusion cooling.

I would love to see the air cooled Maximus boys start a temp chart, us stock ROG'ers on water have this one, and a high end water block temp chart. That would be some fun numbers to look at for me!

Let the games begin!