Revisited
The black stuff is industrial strength velcro, the "hook" side attached to my heatercore. There is another strip, similar size, on the other end of the heatercore. I swear I took pictures of it but maybe I didn't. I'll try to remember to do so. Matching pieces of "hook" side were attached to the heatercore. The heatercore pops on w\ a slight pressure fit, and then pieces of "loop" side of the velcro are pushed on and hold everything in place! Undoing the shroud for fan or HC cleaning is as easy as removing the top clamshell (not pictured yet) and pulling the "loop" pieces off. Industrial strength velcro is just what it says it is.. VERY strong!
A nice big pic now!
120mm panaflos attached to the shroud w\ more flexo installed over their wires. Connected to my 1 touch bay-bus circuit (more details coming!). bay-bus circuit is sitting on top of my knight electronics minilab (8 logic switches, 8 indicators, 4 way function generator, variable DC supply, +/-12V supply, 5V supply and prototyping area). The white stuff sitting in front of the pump is pax.mate foam to deaden the pumps vibration (does any okay job, still gotta get something better). The reason it isn't attached yet is because I am going to paint the chassis once all the holes for the "mods to come" are taken care of. Leaktested for 3 days (over a weekend) and then fired up
TEMPS!
Ambient: 26.6*C
Idle: 37.0*C (bios sensor, thermal diode uncalibrated)
Load: ??? No OS loaded!!
I couldn't do load testing since I lacked a video card and ram for the board. I eventually stole the XMS2400 corsair and GF2MX from my main box (the voodoo3 was on vacation)
MORE DISASTER!
This is why you should always run some sort of additive, even for short amounts of time (4 days). This crap built up in my block and the rest of my system (light green haze on tubing walls) after ONLY 4 days. I have come to the conclusion that it is some sort of galvanic corosion because even AirSpirt's *SOL mix (from pro/forums) didn't clean it out, so it had to be inorganic.
I disassembled teh block and scrubbed it out with alcohol, but the copper was still dark. I scrubbed it out with some ketchup and it was good as new. The acids in the ketchup ate the crap right off of it. Flushed it out throughly with alcohol and distilled water.
When I originally pulled the block off because of the corosion, I noticed that the surface hadn't mated as well as it should, approximately 40% of the thermal paste had none of the characteristic ridging on it that is indicative of a good fit. This probably had something to do with me not putting the block on correctly in terms of tightening down all the springs. None the less, I decided to lap the block. After 3 hours of block lapping on a monday night (3 monster garages down) with wet/dry 220, 400,600, 1000, 1500 and brasso, here is what we have...
Ooohh. shiny. It probably would have gone a bit quicker, but I only had 1 sheet of 220 wetdry and I think i really got all the use out of it I could have. The block was HIGHLY concave (curving inwards towards the water carrying area. I needed only a 1/4 of the thermal paste I did pre-lapping when I reapplied it. Some have reported that lapping their P4 IHS also dropped their temps by an average of 4 degrees, but I'm not feeling that crazy.
After hunting around, I finally found a place locally that carried Water Wetter. The 12 Oz bottle was only $7, so if you can get it locally, do so. 'Net prices for it are simply wallet rape!
I filled the system again: this time with distilled water and 2 capfulls of WW. The ideal concentration of WW is 5%, and my system takes a little under a half gallon to fill, so 2 cap fulls is about right. Also added a few drops of the blue UV dye that I got from SVC on sale ($4.99)***
Oooooh pretty!