Hi Guys
My work bought a bunch of XPS 720's years ago and as they are now being filtered out of use, I managed to snag one. I'm quite lucky in that there are also a bunch of surplus parts around, so it's after some bodging, it's current spec is:
Intel Core 2 Extreme Q6700
8GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800
4x 120GB Intel SSD RAID 0
2x 500GB WD Black RAID 0
3x Nvidia 8800GTX
1000w Dell PSU
250w axillary PSU (powers the 3rd 8800)
Optical drives removed
I won't go into massive detail about how it's put together (may start a thread on that as it was interesting building it. Plenty of people said you couldn't add a 3rd card). The issue i'm having is with CPU temps.
I noticed that whenever you stepped up the multiplier even by 1 ( to 2.96GHZ), under full load the fan will ramp up fully. Temp logging shows core 1 hitting 88 degrees; which seems too high given the H2C cooler.
I'd read about a filter near the waterblock clogging up and coolant evaporating through the tubing over time; so I pulled the cooler out, disassembled it, removed the filter and put it all back together with fresh coolant and new TIM on the chip. Gave it a really good bleed (got the A/C coupler that connects to the front of the rad). Problem is it's still no better.
After some reading, I decided to try and figure out whether the TEC unit has failed. I don't know how to do that definitively, but today I turned the machine off, got my hand around the inside of the cooler and a couple of fingers on the fins for the TEC unit. I turned the machine on and ran a load tester for a couple of minutes with my hand there. The fan ramped up, the temp hit 88 but I couldn't say that I felt any noticeable heat coming off the fins for the TEC. Am I right in saying that they should get reasonably warm when they (should be) under full load?
Does anybody have any ideas on how I can properly test whether it's dead? Or does anyone have experience with these bits failing?
I know of another one that's going out of circulation shortly. If no one calls dibs on it (which they probably will), I'll try swap out the cooler with that one.
Thanks
Cam
My work bought a bunch of XPS 720's years ago and as they are now being filtered out of use, I managed to snag one. I'm quite lucky in that there are also a bunch of surplus parts around, so it's after some bodging, it's current spec is:
Intel Core 2 Extreme Q6700
8GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800
4x 120GB Intel SSD RAID 0
2x 500GB WD Black RAID 0
3x Nvidia 8800GTX
1000w Dell PSU
250w axillary PSU (powers the 3rd 8800)
Optical drives removed
I won't go into massive detail about how it's put together (may start a thread on that as it was interesting building it. Plenty of people said you couldn't add a 3rd card). The issue i'm having is with CPU temps.
I noticed that whenever you stepped up the multiplier even by 1 ( to 2.96GHZ), under full load the fan will ramp up fully. Temp logging shows core 1 hitting 88 degrees; which seems too high given the H2C cooler.
I'd read about a filter near the waterblock clogging up and coolant evaporating through the tubing over time; so I pulled the cooler out, disassembled it, removed the filter and put it all back together with fresh coolant and new TIM on the chip. Gave it a really good bleed (got the A/C coupler that connects to the front of the rad). Problem is it's still no better.
After some reading, I decided to try and figure out whether the TEC unit has failed. I don't know how to do that definitively, but today I turned the machine off, got my hand around the inside of the cooler and a couple of fingers on the fins for the TEC unit. I turned the machine on and ran a load tester for a couple of minutes with my hand there. The fan ramped up, the temp hit 88 but I couldn't say that I felt any noticeable heat coming off the fins for the TEC. Am I right in saying that they should get reasonably warm when they (should be) under full load?
Does anybody have any ideas on how I can properly test whether it's dead? Or does anyone have experience with these bits failing?
I know of another one that's going out of circulation shortly. If no one calls dibs on it (which they probably will), I'll try swap out the cooler with that one.
Thanks
Cam
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