Ok I have done 25 mounts and remounts in the last 12 hours straight, trying to figure out a consistent way of mounting the waterblock onto a quad core. Since the quad core has a non centralized heat spreader system we need to figure out which quadrants of the heat spreader cool which core. I have been studying the distribution of thermal paste on the cpu and water block after mounting and figured out a map of the cores. Since the new quad core cpu water blocks have a convex shape base the pressure is good in the middle but horrible to the sides. Our job is to balance the pressure of the cpu water block on the quad core cpu IMHS, just like balancing a titter totter.
You can balance the cooling load to all four corners of the quad core by using the four tension screws on each corner of the cpu block. Using a tool like core temp beta in windows you can see which core is the coolest and which one is the hottest. Your goal is to get an even temp across all four cores. Here is a map of the squares on a Quad core CPU:
Notice that pin one is on the upperleft hand side to orient yourself(I put three pics to show you the different angles you can see how to figure out the squares just pay attention to pin one). You will have to look at your motherboard and see where pin one is and then mark the approiate tension screw for that particular square you want to apply more pressure to. So square one will influence core 1 so turn the tension screw you labled as square one to either increase the load(lowers the temp on core 1) on that square or decrease the load(increases temp on core 1) to that square.
The picture of above shows the 4 squares of where the cpu heat spreaders must lie. These squares do not signify that there is a core under that square and the quadrants dont have definite lines as shown above. What the squares do show is when more pressure is applied in square 3 the temps of C3 go down and when square 0 is applied with more pressure C0 goes down in temps.
Lets do an Example:
In this screen shot you can see all four cores are not even in temps: C0 and C2 are higher in temps which indicates squares 0 and square 2 are looser in screw tension. The screen shot also shows C3 and C1 are cooler so this means they have more screw tension and can be loosened if necessary to give pressure back to C0 and C2 tension screws.
To remedy this screen shot scenerio what you do is losen the screw closest to square 3 and square 1 and tighten the tension screws for square 0 and square 2. Shut down your computer and turn the screws a 1/4turn. Reboot and check your temps again. Keep making small adjustments till your temps even out as shown below.
If you were to take cpu water block off the cpu you would see this kind of thermal paste distribution for the screen shot above. See how the square 0 and square 2 have collected unused thermal paste and thats why you want to tighten the screws down on those areas.
After doing the technique above you will see this type of heat distribution, notice the overall temp of the chip went down in nvmonitor and the cores are all nearly even.
Idle temps:
Loaded temps:
The pic above shows all the cores are the same except for C3 in idle state. This is because the base of the cooling block and the shape of the cpu heat sreaders favors pressure for that core. I could loosen the screw in square 3 to raise the temps to match the others but what for? the other three cores are as low in temp and as even in pressure as I can get due to the fact the tension screws dont have much more lee room for tightening. The overall shape of your cpu block and cpu heat spreader will determine your limits. Also by initially releasing some of the pressure from square three it allowed me to tighten down the tension in square 0 or lower right quadrant for more even pressure so that is why the overall temps went down even though I loosened the screw to square three.
A note about the screen shots, the first screen shot was taken at 26C ambient room temperature then after the proper waterblock mounting procedures were done the screen shot was taken at 25C ambient temperature but still you can see a drastic decrease in properly mounting the water block on the cpu.
To test my theory I have unmounted and remounted successfully with same results 4 times in a row and when looking at the thermal compound it was evenly distributed with more compound squirted off the sides of the chip showing good pressure. Without the procedure and just tightening all the bolts as far as they can go I could only reproduce these results randomly one out of 8 tries.
I could not get consistent results using the springs, All testing and procedures were more successful with hard mounting. Make sure to install a back plate to your mother board or else results will not be the same due to bowing of the motherboard.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...79#post1972379
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Fr3ak
Bookmarks