Finally willing to give water a try, I ordered watercool parts from Danger Den. They all came after 1 week. Very impressed with their fast service and reasonable shipping charge for oversea order.
I decide to go with all external design. Radiator works better outside the case, and it can be powered by AC outlet directly along with 12cm fan. The only case mod needed is cutting a hole on the case top for 2 tube in and out. It is easier to do with my Lian-Li PC60 which already has a top exhaust fan grill cut. They were leak test for 24 hours while I worked out how to mount them.
PIC 1: Watercool parts before assembling
Mounting all of them on case top isn't as difficult as it turned out. I just drilled a lot of holes to the wooden board to cut a small rectangle to fit the pump and the 1/2" ID tube. The heater core and pump were fixed easily with double side adhesive tape. Did the tubing and finally added distilled water/water wetter solution through reservior. Redline water wetter really stinks! The big heatcore is a whore to fill with coolant until I tilted my PC60 all the way front 90 degree then the trapped air would drive out.
PIC 2: This is how they look like on my PC60 now
PIC 3: Tubes inside case
When filling reservoir I accidentally spilled a lot coolant and they ran everywhere. I didn't know it did get inside my case until I powered on. The POST screen was FUBAR, showing nothing but weird colorful blocks. I immediately pull the plug and I was chilled. I bodysearched my computer inside out and found that the back of my 9700 was wet! Damn that's exciting enough for my first handon experience with watercooling. I took hair dryer out and blew all water away for 5 minutes. Preparing the worst to happen I powered on again. This time no more corrupted screen, luckily!
I did a few testings and not very satisfied with the cpu temperature. The waterblock made good contact and was not even warm on touch. Later I found out it's not related to watercooling parts. To start with, my Epox 8RDA+ never really read temperature directly from the die. Most likely it read the hot air trapped inside socket. The only hot spot inside computer case was onboard voltage regulators. They can get really really hot especially for watercool amateur. Without a big CPU fan moving air around they are just like eggs on fry pan. No biggie, just put a 8cm fan over them and it worked a wonder. The "CPU" temperature, as reported by BIOS now, dropped well over 10C!
After settling down most things (well still one issue not yet solved), my 1800+ now can do 2.5GHz stable at 1.85V, or 2.4GHz at only 1.7V (as oppose to 1.75V needed when aircool). The max POST speed is 2.7GHz at 1.9V, and the max windows speed is 2.6GHz. I ran a few benchmarks and I'll post them in cpu/processors forum.
The peak temperature at 2.5GHz/1.85V after looping Prime95 for 2 hours is around 36C, 3C over ambient (airconditioner, case opened)
Here's the list of the watercool parts:
Danger Den MAZE4 CPU waterblock for XP1800+
Danger Den MAZE4 GPU waterblock for 9700
Danger Den Heatcore with fan shroud
NMB 12cm fan (220V)
Eheim 1048 inline pump
Clear Resevior
Redline waterwetter
Clearflex and Eheim 1/2" ID tubes
[edit for system config, thanks Vegetto ]
My system config:
1800+ oc to 2.5GHz 1.85V
Epox 8RDA+
Kingston ValueRAM 512MB DDR400 (Winbond CH5) x 2
ATI 9700NP @ 420/371 (unmodded)
WD400JB x 2 RAID0
IBM180GXP 60GB
SPI400W
I decide to go with all external design. Radiator works better outside the case, and it can be powered by AC outlet directly along with 12cm fan. The only case mod needed is cutting a hole on the case top for 2 tube in and out. It is easier to do with my Lian-Li PC60 which already has a top exhaust fan grill cut. They were leak test for 24 hours while I worked out how to mount them.
PIC 1: Watercool parts before assembling
Mounting all of them on case top isn't as difficult as it turned out. I just drilled a lot of holes to the wooden board to cut a small rectangle to fit the pump and the 1/2" ID tube. The heater core and pump were fixed easily with double side adhesive tape. Did the tubing and finally added distilled water/water wetter solution through reservior. Redline water wetter really stinks! The big heatcore is a whore to fill with coolant until I tilted my PC60 all the way front 90 degree then the trapped air would drive out.
PIC 2: This is how they look like on my PC60 now
PIC 3: Tubes inside case
When filling reservoir I accidentally spilled a lot coolant and they ran everywhere. I didn't know it did get inside my case until I powered on. The POST screen was FUBAR, showing nothing but weird colorful blocks. I immediately pull the plug and I was chilled. I bodysearched my computer inside out and found that the back of my 9700 was wet! Damn that's exciting enough for my first handon experience with watercooling. I took hair dryer out and blew all water away for 5 minutes. Preparing the worst to happen I powered on again. This time no more corrupted screen, luckily!
I did a few testings and not very satisfied with the cpu temperature. The waterblock made good contact and was not even warm on touch. Later I found out it's not related to watercooling parts. To start with, my Epox 8RDA+ never really read temperature directly from the die. Most likely it read the hot air trapped inside socket. The only hot spot inside computer case was onboard voltage regulators. They can get really really hot especially for watercool amateur. Without a big CPU fan moving air around they are just like eggs on fry pan. No biggie, just put a 8cm fan over them and it worked a wonder. The "CPU" temperature, as reported by BIOS now, dropped well over 10C!
After settling down most things (well still one issue not yet solved), my 1800+ now can do 2.5GHz stable at 1.85V, or 2.4GHz at only 1.7V (as oppose to 1.75V needed when aircool). The max POST speed is 2.7GHz at 1.9V, and the max windows speed is 2.6GHz. I ran a few benchmarks and I'll post them in cpu/processors forum.
The peak temperature at 2.5GHz/1.85V after looping Prime95 for 2 hours is around 36C, 3C over ambient (airconditioner, case opened)
Here's the list of the watercool parts:
Danger Den MAZE4 CPU waterblock for XP1800+
Danger Den MAZE4 GPU waterblock for 9700
Danger Den Heatcore with fan shroud
NMB 12cm fan (220V)
Eheim 1048 inline pump
Clear Resevior
Redline waterwetter
Clearflex and Eheim 1/2" ID tubes
[edit for system config, thanks Vegetto ]
My system config:
1800+ oc to 2.5GHz 1.85V
Epox 8RDA+
Kingston ValueRAM 512MB DDR400 (Winbond CH5) x 2
ATI 9700NP @ 420/371 (unmodded)
WD400JB x 2 RAID0
IBM180GXP 60GB
SPI400W