hmm, ive got all the parts that i need now to finish this beast off.
im gonna build a PVC resevior for it, and put it inside the case, and im gonna paint the pipes blue. its gonna look good
i ran unreal for quite a long time yesterday, temps were good
ive got 2 hard drives in the system... a WD 80GB (fdb bearings) and a Seagate barracuda 160GB (quiet as hell) (they are sitting in a polystyrene box now, almost inaudible)
the WD gets hot when you copy a lot of data (make it work) :/
each side of the waterblock looks like this
CHHH
C
CHHH
CP
C=copper plate P=pipe
(its just 2 1.2mm copper plates and 3 15mm pipes with 2 elbows)
i tried swapping the hard drives around, putting the WD at the bottom position, right next to the pipe, with the seagate on top.
i ran a stress test today... (ambient is 32C)
i ran CPU burn till my cpu got to 53C (ive only ever see it get to 55 on this rig)
then i did a big data copy from one HDD to the other...
what happened was the WD heated up to 50C while the seagate stayed at 41C (the seagate only increased 2C the whole time (and very slowly))
this is strange because the seagate is furthest from the copper pipe, and its got the blazing hot WD inbetween itself and the pipe.
i looked up the data for the WD drive... it says 5.5W idle, and 5.8W read/write.
this is very strange, because 0.3W doesnt cause that type of dramatic change.
ive tried the WD in both positions of the waterblock, screwed it in very tightly...
these are the possible scenarios i can think of:
1. Bad contact between HDD and waterblock > use thermal grease
2. The temp probe is sitting on some hot chip on the hard drive, with bad thermal conductivity to the chassis of the HDD.
3. The WD sucks ass, and i should get another barracuda. (they dont make that high pitched whine, which is a real plus) (its very faint, and the polystyrene pretty much kills it)
so i could get my HDD and WB all messy with thermal grease... but i really doubt its gonna do anything.
if the problem is number 2, then perhaps the WD needs individual chips cooled :/
eh, easier to get another barracuda.
but WD issues aside. my Seagate is sitting at 41C now (9 above ambient)
which isnt bad... but what happens when we have some killer summer heat? and the ambient temp is 43C? i cant have my HDD sitting at 52C.
so id kind of like to get another pump, and make a 2nd res, and have a loop just for the hard drives, dedicate say 4 of the 16 pieces of the radiator to them (because they are special anyways
the whole PC ran fine with just 12 pieces anyway.
so that is something i might do in the future.
another thing i thought of...
is since the temperatures get so killer in summer here, and no radiator can really deal with such temps, perhaps i should have an evaporation bowl somewhere on my pc, which i fill up in those times of extreme heat?
it could just be like a copper bowl which my coolant water flows past, and is normally unused, but in times of extreme heat, i could fill the bowl with water, and have my temps drop dramatically.
(for my first watercooling experiment, i just ran my PC out of a bucket, with no radiator, and the evaporation from that kept it pleanty cool)
i notiuced the other day ive got some nice real estate under my pc for such a thing...
i was initially unhappy with the aesthetics of this beast, but ive got some plans for it, and its gonna look pretty sick actually
it'll be done this week
here r some pics.