improving the cooling cosmos

Skidder · 7 May 2008 at 11:25

I posted before about watercooling and have decided i will just cool the CPU prob with a swiftech H20 220.I still have air flow prob though. I have a cosmos 1000 (the original cosmos not the S with the side fan) and I have heat issues. Spec is as per signature.

Airflow is poor at best. Trisli setup is really hot and the airflow has to pass the GPUs before getting to the CPU and northbridge. I have already made some improvements, putting in a much better intake fan at the bottom of the case. I have two antec spot cools pointing at the cards which keeps them cool but pulls air away from the flow to the top of the case. I have modded three of the 5.25 drive bay covers with an intake fan too and added a fan to cool the HDDs.

Even with that things are still hot (CPU creeps into the 70s under prime load) north bridge occasionally overheats playing games.

I think i will watercool the CPU and then mod the cae with three 120mm fans in line with the GPUs (horizontally). I will get rid of the spot cools as the GPUs should have plenty of airflow, this should help some air to reach the CPU. I think i will also add another 120mm fan over the cpu / NB.

Before i hack my case to bits does this sound like the best plan? Better to go for 1 or 2 bigger fans? Anyone else modded the cosmos to improve airflow?

Skidder · 7 May 2008 at 11:31

other thing i was considering was putting a small outake fan where the GPU passive cooling channel which i took off as it is useless was meant to expell air. Anyone tried that to get rid of excess heat from the GPUs (not all the heat gets expelled by the GTXs exhausts and they do seem to add significantly to case temps.)

weescott · 7 May 2008 at 12:09

As Skidder says, the 8800GTX's dump a lot of heat into the case. Watercooling 1 or 2 of the cards will take a lot of heat out of the case and have a positive effect on case,chipset and CPU temperatures.

A PA120.1 and D-Tek fusion(s) would do the job of cooling where airflow is poor anyway much more effectivly and quieter than extra fans.

Skidder · 7 May 2008 at 12:34

Thanks. My only concern re watercooling the GPUs (other than complexity but not too worrried about that) is that is locks me into the GPUs for longer having spent more money on them. I bought them cheap (OCUK value ones when they were at best price so far) and would like to keep the option open to sell them out and swap for new generation in future. Is information available yet on what the mounting pattern will be on future nvidia cards / whether existing blocks will fit?

Big.Wayne · 7 May 2008 at 12:54

Skidder said:
locks me into the GPUs for longer

I guess you could either sell on the cards inc water blocks or perhaps just sell them as individual blocks?

re the original cosmos, you would have thought spending that much on a case it would cool a high end system with no trouble?

weescott · 7 May 2008 at 12:56

The Fuzion GPU blocks come with 2 mounting plates with options each. I used the Fuzion on 2 8800GTX's, an 8600 IIRC (differenent mounting from 8800) a 3870 and another older card which make escapes me. Only with full cover blocks or multi GPU cards is where there may be some incompatibility.

Skidder · 7 May 2008 at 12:58

Big.Wayne said:
I guess you could either sell on the cards inc water blocks or perhaps just sell them as individual blocks?

re the original cosmos, you would have thought spending that much on a case it would cool a high end system with no trouble?

Yes, you would and I did! Can't say I'm not disappointed with the case's airflow. Looks great but that doesn't quite cut it. If I mod it, I was thinking of two way mirror window with the fans in which would at least look funky! (or am i just making excuses for potentially having to mod a high end case to make it usable :rolleyes:

)

What did they test this case with stock processors and onboard graphics!

Skidder · 7 May 2008 at 13:01

weescott said:
The Fuzion GPU blocks come with 2 mounting plates with options each. I used the Fuzion on 2 8800GTX's, an 8600 IIRC (differenent mounting from 8800) a 3870 and another older card which make escapes me. Only with full cover blocks or multi GPU cards is where there may be some incompatibility.

Thanks, that sounds encouraging. Would you suggest 1 loop with the 3 cards, or two of the three cards, and a separate one for the processor?

My case is pretty full, would it be totally rubbish to consider an external system for this? Would a resterator xt for example cope with all of this?

weescott · 7 May 2008 at 13:32

The Resorator wouldn't be ideal. You can mount a PA120.1 on the rear of your case, no modding needed. I would cool 2 GFX cards on the PA120.1, or the CPU and 1 GFX card on the PA120.1. Either would make a big difference to case temps.

Skidder · 8 May 2008 at 10:27

I've decided i will mod the case, partly because i want to try my hand at it. Whatever i end up doing re watercooling the airflow could do with being improved anyway. So i've ordered fans and two way mirror acrylic to mod the side panel and a swiftech h20 220 for the CPU.

That's enough to spend for now so i will do the GPUs in a second loop if needed in the future. This should allow for the best OC on the CPU without having to deal with all that heat from the GPUs i guess.