My First Liquid Cooling Attempt

Hyper · 26 Apr 2006 at 17:37

Hello All

Picked up some nice gear from my mate which never got round to using it. I got a Zalman Reserator with some Fluid XP liquid.
Before i began i read many reviews and found one little tip that I thought I would give a go. Anyway i got it all fitted, made the modification I wanted and added the liquid. I made the tubing come in from a top pci slot, into the cpu, out the cpu, onto the gpu, out the gpu and back out the case on a middle pci slot level with the gpu block. It seems to have worked well and my temps have dropped by 10C on both the cpu and gpu while lowering my system noise level a lot. The Reserator itself is totally silent and I will leave it pumping 24/7.

Here are some pictures:

You can see on this image the modification I did, I got the idea off a review to lead a piece of pipe from the inbound valve on the pump to the top of the reserator so that all the cool water going outbound was at the bottom and all the hot water coming inbound was pumped to the top.

This is the liquid I used, I used 2 and a half bottles (2.5 litres) and this filled the reserator about 3/4 full once the tubes were filled.

Comments Welcome.

Thanks, Sam

Hyper · 26 Apr 2006 at 17:38

Hyper · 26 Apr 2006 at 19:30

Temps idle at 29 - 31C on my Opteron 146 @ 2.8ghz on stock volts, load is about 39 - 41C.
The mod is easy to do.

Hyper · 26 Apr 2006 at 19:55

SiriusB said:
WC noob question: Whats the orange plug...thing... on a chain in the clear section of tubing :|

SiriusB

That is used to show that the water is flowing otherwise you wouldnt know as this thing is totally silent. It is not needed but i am leaving it there.

Hyper · 27 Apr 2006 at 22:59

Well i appear to have a problem.
My cpu idle and load temps are fine and my gpu idle temps are fine but when i enter a game my 7800GTX reaches temps over 90C. The water block on the gpu itself is definatly doing its job though as if i feel on the oposite side of the board where the gpu is its cool but if i feel around any memory modules or generally anywhere else around the board its very hot. The water coming off the gpu block is just warm aswell so it seems it isnt the gpu itself hitting 90C. The kit came with 8 heatsinks for each memory module on my graphics card but i needed 9 so i missed one out thinking nothing of it but it seems its the memory modules that are getting very hot. Other people have ran the same setup as me with 2 7800gtx's in SLI with no heat issues. I am just wondering if because i only had 8 memory module heatsinks but needed 9 so 1 memory module doesnt have a heatsink on, could this be causing the heat issues?
Anyway i have ordered some more memory module heatsinks but i really cant see 1 memory module without a heatsink on causing so much heat.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Sam

Hyper · 28 Apr 2006 at 15:36

Anyone?

Hyper · 28 Apr 2006 at 23:09

Fixed Now !
The water block wasnt clamped down properly onto the gpu so with a little bit of modification my temps are now around 60C full load which is a drop of over 30C

Hyper · 28 Apr 2006 at 23:43

drunknmunky said:
What case is that?

Its an AOpen Nouveau, Overclockers used to sell them but dont anymore.

I paid £130 for it :eek:

Hyper · 28 Apr 2006 at 23:43

Exsomnis said:
My profuse apologies for quoting a large image, but holy crap do I need a new pair of jeans now. That's it, as of tomorrow I start doing the Lotto again.

You lost me on that one mate :confused:

Hyper · 29 Apr 2006 at 00:14

Clown said:
He's sorry for reposting an image in a quote (this is usually frowned upon). He must now purchase some new trousers as he has probably had the misfortune of a bowel mishap, induced by the emotional pressure your set-up has had on him. He will begin to gamble his money away on a lottery, in desparation to also obtain a similar cooling method for his machine.

Can you tell I got bored halfway through that?

Nice translation