Water Cooling a Dual Xeon Nehelam system

tiernano

tiernano

tiernano

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Good morning all.

I am looking at building a Dual Xeon, Quad Core machine, using the new Nehelam processors and i am trying to work out some stuff about this...

So, the CPU block for an i7 should work with the Xeon (since they are both Socket 1366) and in theory all i need to do is add a second CPU block to the loop, but i also want to cool a GPU (Probably a GTX 280 or 285, maybe even 2).

So, which way should this work? initially, i have 3 theories:

RAD -> Pump -> CPU 1 -> CPU2 -> GPU -> back to start... but wont the water from the CPU's be a LOT warmer? you may end up heating your GPU!

RAD -> PUMP -> Splitter -> CPU 1 -> CPU2
-> GPU -> (maybe memory) but this then begs the question: How do you properly split the pipes?

RAD -> PUMP -> Splitter -> CPU 1
-> CPU2
-> GPU -> (maybe memory) same as above, but split 3 times...

any help on this would be great.

Thanks.
 
Never seen a watercooled dual CPU setup before, but like you say, it will probably take the same blocks as i7, cant see why they would have changed the position of the mounting holes.

As for what to do with your water loops, I'd suggest getting 2 loops going, be a much better solution than just using a splitter, but would cost another £100 or so for extra pump and rad. But looking at the spec I dont think your struggling for cash :p

Res -> Pump -> CPU 1 -> CPU 2 -> Some big rad, PA120.3 or so -> Res

And another for GPU

Res - > Pump -> GPU -> A smaller rad, double or somthing -> Res

If you decide to split the tubing and do it all on one loop though you need somthing like this fitting :)
 
Thanks Ducky Spud. that looks cool (no pun intended...). 2 loops sounds like a plan. going to play around with the web and see what i can find out... :)
 
Don't split the loop. Either do one or two but do whole loops. Splitting the loops nearly always results in one loop getting very little flow (think electrical circuits with imbalanced resistance).

Also, you'd be surprised at how little the water temperatures vary in the loop. So long as the radiator is big enough to wash out the heat generated by the cpus and gpus the water temperature variation between entering the first cpu and leaving the last gpu will be only a few degrees at most.

Make sure you get a good pump.
Don't bother with water-cooling the DIMMs, just make sure they have decent heat-spreaders and the case has reasonable air-flow (direct an internal 120mm fan over the DIMMs and VRMs around the sockets.
 
What motherboard do you have in mind for this? I looked into it a while ago, and Asus were showing one that looked excellent but I don't think has hit retail yet.

You can do this on a single loop if you're so inclined, but may want two pumps in it. The biggest issue is going to be having enough radiators / big enough radiator to cope with so much heat. Is this going to all be internal, so all in one box? I'd be inclined towards having the radiators and possibly the pump in a second case with a couple of 1/2" tubes running between them.

As a small edit to Mike's post, you can watercool the chipsets/ram etc (and it works well, obviously) but only do so if you can't get any airflow over them. Heatsinks and a fan is almost always better but occasionally it is too difficult to get airflow over them.
If you do decide to watercool the ram, there's a mips block specifically for corsair dominator which is probably the best option.

Loop order doesn't matter, reservoir before pump makes filling it a lot easier. T line instead of reservoir will save space, which may be important if you're putting it all in a single atx case.

Finally, what's the intended use please? I think I'd sell a kidney for a dual i7 system, but I can't think of a reasonable use for one besides server.
 
Maybe he does something with his system that warrants the spend? Open your mind beyond office apps and games :)
 
Stanford's Folding team now have a special project which requires systems with at least 8 physical cores to run and if you have one, the points per day are huge, especially if it can run 24/7 and with fast procs.

can't think of any other reason to have one except as a server and that doesn't need gpu capability.
 
PC's are multi-purpose, he might have some sort of rendering requirement, or need to do a lot of things at once, or do a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of folding, play a few games.. sheesh I could think of things to do with an 8 core machine if I had the money, couldn't you?
 
I was just asking to make sure he knew what he wanted from the PC, as I see people planning builds like this on forums and probably 9 out of 10 times they are planning to use it for gaming..which would be a total waste.
 
JonJ678: intel have a server board (the S5520SC) which has 2 x16 slots. so this is the one i am after.

gurusan: this machine is my main dev box. My current box (which died last week) had 2 Dual core Xeons and 12gb ram. I usually have a couple large VMs running at any one time, and the more processor and ram i can though at it, the better. I also process both 1080p video and 22mp RAW images from a 5D MK II. The machine could be classed as overkill, but in reality, it will more than likly last me 3+ years, just like the old one, with just minor memroy and hdd upgrades (maybe even a new graphics card or Octo Core Xeon when they come out...)

This machine will not be used for gaming. the twin graphics cards (which is a posibility) will be powering 2-3 monitors (currently 2 20" Dells, but soon to be 2 24" dells and maybe a 30" in the middle). the GPUs are also handy for video processing (with the likes of CUDA).

I am hoping to start building this over the next couple of weeks... any question anyone has, please just ask here. I will be posting photos and build log when i start building this too.
 
Ahh it is a workstation. Good man, that's far more interesting than another gaming build. I'll watch this one keenly. Good shout on using the intel board. Watercooling for silence rather than overclocking I take it? That'll significantly reduce the number of radiators you need.

Go for the less restrictive, worse performing cpu blocks. Two ek supremes would severely kill flow rate. I don't see any reason why you need two loops in this case, though if you do cool chipset / ram etc that's probably worth putting in a separate loop from cpus and graphics.

What case are you planning on using? That's not atx spec unfortunately, but case choice will make an enormous difference to ease of water cooling.
 
why go for "less restrictive, worse performing cpu blocks"? i though i should be going to good blocks...

as for case, not sure yet... thinking i want this as a whole system (rad inside somewhere) but since the board is non ATX, i dont know what to look for... think i might have to spend a bit more time searching... any recomendations?
 
I assume he said that because flow rate will suffer with more restrictive blocks.

However, it seems you have some money to play with so I say get whatever blocks you want, you may just want to run 2 pumps in series.
 
None really, I don't know how similar the form factors are. My akasa omega has a lot of space on the motherboard tray and 8 spaces for pci-e slots, I think that's extended atx but I don't think that's what the intel board is. It holds a 240 radiator in the top, one or two 120mm in the front and if need be another 120mm on the motherboard tray.

Good blocks do low temperatures, but generally slow flow down more. You don't need good temperatures as you're not overclocking, so get blocks that will allow higher flow rate without needing multiple loops.

Stock speed i7s are a lot easier to cool than overclocked ones, I suspect a 240 radiator would hold both of them quite happily below 80 degrees under ibt but it's hard to estimate.
 
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