Classic British Flight Sim

Anybody here got a watercooling system for their CPU and/or GPU? Decided to make the swap after toying with the idea for years...

My loop consists of mainly XSPC components such as a Rasa Acetal CPU block, X20 750 dual-bay pump and expansion tank unit and an RS240 radiator c/w Akasa Apache 120mm fans. A few pictures below.


The front of the pump/reservoir unit.


The top of the case with the mesh cover removed to show the dual 120mm fans sucking air through the radiator.


The internals showing the radiator mounted in the roof of the case, the CPU waterblock and the tubing.


The same from a different angle.

I'm very happy with this setup. My idle CPU temp is 30'c. Full load stress test using Prime95 gives me temperatures of 48'c. That's not bad considering my CPU is currently running at 4Ghz at 1.2v I know this chip will run stable at least as high as 4.5Ghz with 1.3v. Ill be seeing how fast this chip can really go and what sort of temperatures when I get some free time

I'll be definitely looking to add another radiator and a GPU block to the loop as the stock heatsink & fan unit on the ATi 6970 is like an Avon 207 at full thrust

*Edit* Currently stability testing 4.5Ghz @ 1.28v. Idle temp is the same but load temp is now 54'c
Cores 1, 3 and 4 will run at 1.25v but core 2 isn't happy as it throws up errors unless it's fed more volts...
On the old air cooler at this speed the CPU was nudging 78...

Well core 2 failed Prime95 again after a couple of hours so bumped the core voltage up to 1.29v. Seems about the lowest I can go at this speed. Temps stabilised at 54'c but that was with 18'c room temperature. With the AC off the ambient slowly crept up to 24'c on this hot day and my CPU was nearlly nudging 60.
That's still ok though as Prime95 is the worst case scenario and after an hour gaming the CPU never went past 47'c

http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/6057/45ghz129v.jpg

This i7 2600k that I have OC's like the clappers! Thats 1100mhz over the default clock of 3.4ghz! I still don't know what this chip will do but I'm happy for now. Some people have managed to get 5ghz out of some of these chips...

It looks as if you can dispense with Central heating in the winter - just hope your electric meter runs backwards!
Keith

That is one very nice bit of kit..I am jealous

All very neat and tidy, mine in comparison looks like spaghetti junction. I don't have water cooling as I don't (as yet) OC. And reports suggest that there should be free flow of airwithin the case. Mine has none of that. Can you imagine how much wiring there is with 2 DVD's one of which is old fashioned IDE, 6 Hard Drives (again one is IDE), a Radeon 6870 requiring 2 power cables. Seven fans all with snazzy blue LED lights attached.
I keep promising myself to do something to tidy it up, but the PC is never actually off.

I'm not sure I trust water cooling. It's one thing to loose a fan and have the system shut down. It's another to spring a leak and have the pc go bang.
The air pump on my pond got some water ingress. Went bang and blew the electric box in the garden. Water can be dangerous around electrics.

I was waiting for someone else to say that......usually me that pooh poohs great ideas like this

But yes water and electrics... not the best bed fellows but how about Concorde that kept cool by dumping heat into the fuel???

I guess they'd say the user can't break it..well it that is the case, they've not met me

Lol yes that was one of the reasons why I'd always thought about it but never went for it, until now...
I did leak test it for 12 hours with only the pump running just in case. I'm running distilled water with some antifungal additives so hopefully if the worst happens it won't be as conductive...

Hell, the weapons computers on most warships are water cooled, as are the ones in the Eurofighter I believe, I can't say I've ever heard of a water leak being an issue. Thinking about it my central heating doesn't leak despite my attempts at DIY...

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/2016/49855019.jpg

Just added another radiator and a VGA block so I can bin the comedy stock ATi cooler. Graphics card used to idle at 48'c and reached a staggering 84'c after a few hours of playing Crysis 2 with the DX11 patch. Now it's 32 idle and 44 load Oh and now its extreamly quiet too