water cooling Skulltrail - 10 noob questions

alp

alp

alp

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22 Mar 2009
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Hi all,

I'm a cooling noob, and would love to hear your opinion on how to best cool a box I'm assembling. Here's what I've got so far:

Mobo: Intel D5400XS
CPU: QX9775 x 2
Chasis: Lian Li PC-V1010 (Super-Midi Tower)
Power: Tagan PipeRock TG1300-BZ 1300w Modular BZ

And planned but not yet purchased:
4 x 4GB 800MHz FB RAM (undecided as to make at the mo)
1 x Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) (for boot-up)
4 x 1TB SATA HDD (undecided as to make at the mo) (in raid-z for data)
1 x LG GBW-H20 Optical drive/burner

So, I want to liquid cool both CPUs and SB/NB chipsets. I haven't purchased the FB RAM yet, but I want to cool that too. I'm not a gamer, so cooling the GPU is not an immediate concern, but something for the future.

So here are my noob questions, sorry I have so many!

1. What RAM do you recommend? I want 4x4GB, and the main concern is that I can cool it well using something like the Koolance RAM-35 coolers, so if the FBDIMMs come with a heat spreader I'll need it to be removable.

2. Considering your answer to Q1, what do you think is the best RAM cooler to use?

3. The only SB cooler I can find which will also cover both the nForce chips is the one from DangerDen. Any others you can recommend?

4. Koolance offer CPU and NB water blocks for the D5400XS, but I've no idea what would be considered "good". Has anyone got recommendations? I've read that a good block with larger internal surface area (e.g. dimple-stamped) can make a difference of 8 degrees compared to an average block.

5. I'm planning on 3/8in (9.5mm) tubing. Sound ok?

6. Apart from what I've mentioned, can/should I think about cooling anything else (voltage regulators, mosfet, etc)

7. The big question - how the hell do I cool all this? :-) I'll oc the CPUs a little up to 4GHz to start with, and with the FBDIMMs and chipsets I'm gonna need to move a lot of heat. I have no objection to attaching an external radiator to the back of the chassis if a suitable one won't fit in the case. I was thinking that the stackable rads from Swiftech might be a space saver, along with their MCP655 pump with a speed controller. But the truth is that I've no idea of the power of pump or size of the rad I'll need to do the job well, or if any available kit or all-in-one external cooler will do the job. Any solution should be powerful enough to handle cooling for a couple of GPUs if I add them in later. I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty putting something together, I'll just be leaning heavily on this forum over the next couple of months for help!

8. As I said, I'm not a gamer. This box is primarily for work, so the quieter the cooling solution, the better. I've read that some pumps can hum/vibrate fairly loudly.

9. Is it a no-no to cool skulltrail CPUs, chipsets and RAM on a single loop? What about the GPUs (when I add them) - is there a typical "best practice" for looping around 2 CPUs and 2 GPUs?

10. Is liquid even the right thing to do, or could (high-end) air adequately cool a skulltrail within the space my chassis affords, and do so quietly?

Ok, I think that'll do for now. Thanks for reading this much, and I know some of the answers won't be quick, so thanks in advance for taking the time to share your experience. If I ever get the whole thing up and running, I'll be back for overclocking advice :-)

cheers,
Alp.
 
Big post for a first one.

1) ask this in the relevant section.
2) I wouldn't try to water-cool RAM. Buy some with decent in-built cooling.
3) DangerDen make good blocks so just get theirs if they will fit.
4) I wouldn't use Koolance blocks unless I was buuying a complete Koolance kit (which I would never do). The new Swiftech GTZ is very good as is the D-Tek Fuzuin v2.
5) which a lot to cool in a not very big case it makes sense to go for smaller tubing. I've done 3/8, 7/16 and 1/2 and I like 7/16 best but 3/8 is perfectly OK.
6) Don't know that motherboard but good case cooling shold be enough to allow stock motherboard cooling for now.
7) Get a good radiator. Simple. A PA120.3 or a TFC quad; something big and able to wash the heat out easily without needing loud fans. The Swiftech RadBox is a neat solution for hanging rads on the outside of cases, the MCP655 is a great pump so you're on the right lines. You could do worse than getting a complete Swiftech kit; I've got one for my AMD system and it works well.
8) Anything that moves can vibrate which is why you can get anti-vibration mounts for pumps; or simply don't let it touch the case, suspending it using the tubing itself to hold the pump off the case.
9) There's no such thing as a no-no in water-cooling really. If you want to do it, do it. But my advice would be to put the gpus on a separate loop simply because you're going to be generating a mass of heat!
10) Air will do well for cpus depending on the level of your aspirational overclock. gpus can get very noisy though with stock cooling and it can be hard to use after-market gpu coolers on sme high-end cards and in SLI/Crossfire rigs.
 
Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply Mike. The RAM question was more about the possible cooling options, rather than performance attributes, which is why I though this was a good forum for the question. Apologies, I'll pose that question elsewhere.

You've helped me a lot, thanks again.

Alp.
 
Hi Sash. I'll mostly be doing development work. It'll have Vista 64 and Solaris 64 as the dual boots, but the majority of time will be spent in Solaris while running 3 to 4 VMs through the Sun Hypervisor. The VMs will be db servers, app servers, etc, with loadrunner testing the scalability of the software I'm developing. The other part of my work is investigating the scalability of functional programs, so having the 8 cores is more useful for me than having an i7 chip, though the i7 may be faster for single thread apps.

If I have time, I might play Crysis :-)
 
alp said:
Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply Mike. The RAM question was more about the possible cooling options, rather than performance attributes, which is why I though this was a good forum for the question. Apologies, I'll pose that question elsewhere.

You've helped me a lot, thanks again.

Alp.
Click to expand...


With regards to RAM module cooling, 99% of RAM should be fine with the stock heatspreaders and adequate case airflow (normally 2x120mm fans - one intake, one exhaust). Some more exotic solutions exist, like Corsair's Dominator series, OCZ's XTC/Reaper series, etc. but the benefits do not - IMHO, having looked at as many benchmarks as I have done - justify the additional cost (of course, if you're looking to wring the last drop of blood out of your rig then fine... you are playing with Skulltrail, after all).

If you're playing with FB-DIMMS, good luck. They're pretty exotic for even an Overclocker's forum, but the same rules apply. However, I was under the impression that Skulltrail platforms only support 8Gb of memory...
 
mrthingyx said:
If you're playing with FB-DIMMS, good luck. They're pretty exotic for even an Overclocker's forum, but the same rules apply. However, I was under the impression that Skulltrail platforms only support 8Gb of memory...
Click to expand...

It can definitely take 16GB of mem, though I did see a couple of early reviews of the mobo which stated a limit of 8GB. Might have been an early beta version of the board.

I understand that FBDIMMs are difficult to oc. Several skulltrail reviewers couldn't believe how hot the AMB chip on the dimms got, and I have to think they were using reasonable case cooling for their review. They weren't oc-ing either. That's why I was looking at a water cooling option. But if the general consensus here is that it's not a great idea, I'll give it a miss for now.
 
alp said:
It can definitely take 16GB of mem, though I did see a couple of early reviews of the mobo which stated a limit of 8GB. Might have been an early beta version of the board.

I understand that FBDIMMs are difficult to oc. Several skulltrail reviewers couldn't believe how hot the AMB chip on the dimms got, and I have to think they were using reasonable case cooling for their review. They weren't oc-ing either. That's why I was looking at a water cooling option. But if the general consensus here is that it's not a great idea, I'll give it a miss for now.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, as sticking watercooling gubbins into a computer is never a bad thing. But there won't be that much benefit to be had.

Too much is made of temperatures in these days of reasonably accurate monitoring tools. It's a bit like mugging/etc. in the real world: simply because reporting is getting better, doesn't mean the problem is getting worse or is already bad...
 
Also remember that the more high-end the component, the less it is aimed at overclockers. FB-DIMMs generally go in servers which no-one should be overclocking. It is rated at a speed and it is really not advisable to push it beyond that. Same goes with the whole skulltrail workstation thing. People who have these things want stability and ultra-reliability from a workstation and if it isn't fast enough they bu better processors.

If you tinker with it, and then you get software issues with what you're writing, how will you know if it's your software, your Loadrunner scripts or the underlying hardware which is at fault?
 
I must totally agree with MikeTimbers here. You buy this sort of system for reliablity. you start overclocking, and the whole point of your system goes out the window.
 
I gotta say, choosing a SkullTrail system to watercool on your first attempt is a bad idea. Watercooling is complex and risky and it's best to start off small, and then work your way up when you know what you're doing.
 
never say never, I've seen quite a few watercooled and overclocked skulltrail systems.. in fact from what I can see seeing as skulltrail is actually a pimped out server board its aimed pretty squarely at gamers and overclockers so I would be disappointed if it wouldn't play ball.

The FB dimms are a slightly different matter though, they do appear to be just server ram so I wouldn't bother trying to clock that.

To cool it however you could get a MIPS ram freezer 4, that'll watercool 4 sticks of ram quite easily, I've used one and it was very straightforward.
 
Rroff said:
RAM overclocking generally ends in tears at some point down the line, for marginal if any real world benefits.
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This.

Modern systems have far too much bandwidth for what they actually use: Core 2 systems are brilliant exponents of this. Your Xeons will be much the same.
 
I have a bunch of Production servers based on dual quad 3GHz xeons and they're so damn fast I can't see why anyone would bother to overclock them when the risk of instability outweighs any potential benefit. Simply staggering performance.
 
matt100 said:
in fact from what I can see seeing as skulltrail is actually a pimped out server board its aimed pretty squarely at gamers and overclockers
Click to expand...

I think so. Even the initial BIOS allowed good overclocking options, and later version added more voltage regulation options. Besides, the 9775s are very oc-friendly. Multiplier from 8 to 10 gives 4GHz without even upping the voltage, and that's all I'll do for starters.

matt100 said:
The FB dimms are a slightly different matter though, they do appear to be just server ram so I wouldn't bother trying to clock that.
Click to expand...

I've no intention of clocking the FBDs - I just want to cool them down. The AMBs get damn hot, and I just want to minimize the heat in the case. Incidentally, Kingston have added a HyperX FBD to their range which is clockable, but not a 4GB dimm unfortunatley, and I want to max the RAM out.

matt100 said:
To cool it however you could get a MIPS ram freezer 4, that'll watercool 4 sticks of ram quite easily, I've used one and it was very straightforward.
Click to expand...

Thanks Matt, I'll check that out. My case came with an extra fan that hovers over the board, so I'll see how that copes to start with.
 
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