RBX nozzle comparison

[Zogthetroll]

dang you pH and 'noodle. I had quite a response typed up and my pc restarted so you beat me to it. *threatens pc with rolled-up newspaper*

ok, silliness aside, I still have a few comments to make that weren't covered by the two of you. Liquid 3D, I have a lot of respect for the restraint you showed when responding to some of the comments here, as well as your obvious dedication to furthering your education. By way of an apology, in no way was my comment about "shoddily done reviews" directed at you or your review. That was more of a general bemoaning of the state of many reviews on the internet, as I'm sure you've noticed. As for your comments about your writing style, there is nothing I like more than reading an accurate review that has wit and humor in it. Without the character contributed by the individual writing style of the author, an article could easily become "sterile" as you mentioned. but I was also going to bring up pH's point about your target audience. Since your stated first intent in writing reviews is to educate your fellow watercooling enthusiasts, you should take a serious look at how the article is written. No, you are not writing a "review for eigth graders", but although we are certainly not your average person (hey, lets face it, we're all obsessed with computers here), we do come from all walks of life and many levels of education. As someone who is still learning the more basic aspects of this wonderful hobby/obsession, I find that if I have to work to understand not only the concepts, but the words used to convey them, then the learning curve becomes much steeper, which is unfortunate as many may be put off by this. Not that you should dumb down your writing, just (as was mentioned previously, work on making things clear) I hope that my comments have been viewed as more of a critical analysis than hostile attacks, and hope I was not who you had in mind regarding attacks toward JMKE and [M]. However I do stand by my comments regarding the responsibility of those who edit and publish material on the internet (or any medium for that matter).
And as for my comments regarding DD's engineers, I definately think DD is a great company, having done wonders for those of us who are into watercooling, but I was speaking as a fellow engineer when I was being critical of the actual work involved in "designing" the RBX. Yes, there is a lot of work involved in the manufactuaring, marketing, and distribution of any product, just in this particular case, i'm casting my doubts on the design section of that process. To the typical engineer, given an existing product its often easy to see what might be changed/improved upon, but it takes real imagination & work to come up with something that is really new and different. Hence my great respect for Cathar, and other that strive to design their own unique blocks.
I hope the past few posts have been helpful in explaining where some of us here are coming from, and in giving you some ideas to work with. good luck with your future reviews.

[jaydee]

To Liquid3D:

How about less talk and dribble and more numbers. People are generally less patient these days and don't want to read a freaking book on what should be a simple review.

1) State your testing methods and equipment with as little wording and most detail as possible. In fact making a seperate webage with all that info and link to it is prefable (IMO). This can be setup as a time table/log type of thing that let's everyone know how you progressed with your testing methods and equipment over time. By linking to this page it cuts down on the size of the review and it also lets people not interested in that (the majority) to be able to skip it and get to what they want to see. It also makes us critics more happy to be able to see your progress over time. The more changes for the better the less we have to bash you about.

I would also recommend getting your OWN webspace for this (Not for the reviews, but your testing setup and methods). It is your info and would be a shame to loose it if the site goes down or you decide to write for other sites. Also makes it easer for you to change things. If you need hosting let me know and I can set you up a subdomain and FTP account on my host at no charge and no ads or anything.

2) Basics of the block design. Anyone that is interested in the design of the block normally already knows how it works, the rest don't care about the design and more so how it performs. Show a few pics of the design and a VERY BASIC theory on how you think it works and/or how the designer thinks it works. Should only need 2 pics and less than a paragraph of wording.

3) The results should be in 2 forms (IMO). One in graphs and Two with just numbers. Your graphs were ok. They showed both. Remember the majority of readers are not to enlightened with technical knowlege. Simpler the better amd that goes for WORDING aswell.

4) Conclusions at the end. Make it short and sweet. One paragraph or less.

IMO a review of one block should not take up more than 1 page. IMO 1 page per block on comparisons. The article in question here should have been no more than 1 1/2 pages long IMO.

All this is my own opinion of course I speak for myself as always and not for ProCooling.

Glad you posted here Liquid3D. Get tired of people coming here backing up OTHER people's work. Much better to discuss it with the author him/her self.

[Liquid3D]

I am truly grateful for all the help! It's true many people have their struggles, and many are much less fortunate then I am. I too re-kindled my interest in PC's because I loss partial use of my legs. I can walk, but can only stand for a few minutes. In so far as my personal problems and struggles in life, they weren't really germane to the conversation, that simply came from an emotive place. One thing I do want to make clear, I am very fortunate, and extremely grateful. Although I live in Low Cost housing, I have a million dollar view, and live in a wonderfully quaint New England town a few feet from the ocean.



I too had a car accident after my original back injury, being struck in the medical van on the way to a Pain Management clinic, hehe. I'm lucky I can look back and laugh at the irony in that. Yet it did give me the opportunity, to stop running around as a 30-something yr-old kid, trying to surf bigger, and bigger waves, until I perished. It gave me pause to self-acutalize, mature, and begin to write (beyond PC hardwarel). At least I was able to do those things, because I had so many problems when I was young, it was easy to rationalize living in Central America, california, Colorado, Utah, Hawaii, etc surfing, and basicaly doing a lot of playing. years prior when my addiction came to a head, I went from a maximum security prison, to a 21-month inpatient drug treatment program, to the National Student Exchange. All so I could go to the University of Utah take graduate level Philosophy classes, and ski Park City, and the Wassatch. By the way I never killed anyone or anything, I was cuaght carrying a pistol without a permit, as cocaine makes one slightly paranoid. And I'm not proud of my past, I spend almost every day learning to forgive mysself, but remembering I owe society a debt for saving me. The program I entered practized self-acutalization through total honesty. they didn't care about drugs, they cared about why you did them. They knew anything could be a drug. There are all sorts of addictions. Drugs, money, status, power, relationships, etc. They allowed me to experience the childhood I'd never had (and I don't blame my family either). Looking back, when I'd left that program I was physically 25, and emotionally 15. I'd picked up where my emotional development arrested. Anyway, I'm basically saying, I really don't sit around feeling sorry for myself, I am a VERY fortunate person. I'm very lucky to be able to think, when so many drink or drug themselves into mental illness.

I am being completely honest, when I say the last few posts have been the most astute, and thoughtful advice I've ever recieved resulting from a critque of a review. I did read the article on improving flow rate, and bookmarked it for reference. I'd also like to thank Jay Dee 116, that was a very kind offer. This is why I became slightly defensive around JMKE, he has assisted me in this area, with the following www.ksBrainstorms.com . I have a long way to go, and perhaps what frustrate's me most is my illnesses. I'm often very tired, or unable to work a full 8-hours even though I'm not on my feet. At 41, my body has been ravaged from all angles. When I stopped using drugs twenty years ago, it seems I abused myself physically extreme skiing, surfing, and biking. I had an excellent diet, but lately Ben&Jerry's is winning the battle.

All that personal fodder aside, I simply wanted to share this info about myself, as I acutually joined this forum about 10-days ago (before the review was published). I feel this is one of, if not the best, water-cooling forum on the Net. Yes that contradicts my earlier statement, I was being defensive, and that's one reason I apologized. So I want you to know, I'm not that pompous ass who attempts to be superior through wirting style. I re-read the article, and will be implementing much of the advice I've read here.

Some points were made which really illuminate what's happening here. I happen to love those well written essays in neurophilosophy by authors such as Thomas Nagel; http://www.silcom.com/~teragram/bat.html While I beleive many PC-Enthusiasts are highly intelligent people, who have no problem understanding extrapolate (by the way your right, to extrapolate is to take known facts and create a hypothesis, I basically did the opposite) if i'm "writing to educate," then I'm "singing to the choir." It's difficult to find that balance of reaching a large audience, yet being able to use terminology which best describes. I guess that's what makes the article on Maximizing Flow Rate so dam god. it takes highly technical information, and makes it accessable to a large audience. I see now I'm doing the opposite. Because I lack some of the proper testing hardware, I beleive I may be trying to compensate with esoteric terms. This is a an esoteric subject, but even I said watercooling is becoming more mainstream. Thank you all, I'm being serious when I say I haven't had such a good lesson in writing since I took a Sophmore level philosophy class at Mount Holyoke College. I really struggled in that class, and I remember that Professor telling me some of the same things you are. Thank you.

[jmke]

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[Supa]

i found it informative, thanks liquid

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by jmke

at Jay Dee 116:

thanks for the pointers there, although it took 3 pages to get a kind word out of you , but liquid3d can be a good "poker"
I added those graphs at the end of article, so at least I did "one" good thing as editor, up to the next challenge, what doesn't kill us only... jadadada


edit: win some Corsair memory @ our site

3 pages? I am slipping....

[Zogthetroll]

@ jaydee116, LOL, well, if you call that slipping, its probably for the best.

@Liquid3D, Hey if anyone else hasn't said it yet, Welcome to the Forums! happy websurfing.

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by Zogthetroll

@ jaydee116, LOL, well, if you call that slipping, its probably for the best.

Certainly some truth to that.

[jmke]

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[Groth]

Time to spread the love, eh jmke? Sure, why not?

Starting with the petty...I never would have guessed "the radiator can only act on the water running though it." So much for my plans to combat oceanic warming by collecting heater-cores. "removable top is also replaceable to fascinate installations on other platforms. " Heaven forbid my installation be bored by other platforms.

Seems to be a bit of confusion with the nozzles. The one with the tiny holes is #5, even though it looks like a 2 when you have it flipped over. The blank nozzle as a three-barb to two-barb converter: not a bad idea actually, though I'd use the blank for its original purpose, a custom nozzle.

More serious: If you know Halo doesn't fully load the CPU, why use it for processor heating? Especially when comparing overclocked and stock temperature. Games are generally graphics card limited, the CPU likely did no more work at 3525 Mhz than at 3000 Mhz (and indeed the temperature increase corresponds well with the voltage increase alone). And why use something that you can't keep running until equilibrium is confirmed?

In other bitchin' - frickin' pop-up pictures! What's wrong with just having a link to the large photo, so I can decide whether I want a new window or not? I don't need NinjaLane to open me a half-dozen tiny browser windows!

[jmke]

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[Zogthetroll]

And that, is why I use mozilla. I get to remain blissfully ignorant of pop-ups. aaaaahh. I noticed he also gave the demonic xtc waterblock a 5/5 rating. so much for that rating system. I didn't bother much with the review, just checked out the rest of the site. not too bad really.

*edit* if its a P4 you definately need a sensor as close to the cpu as you can get it, prefferably with the IHS removed, since various people have experimented to show how inacurate the so-called cpu temp diode on the P4 actaully is.

[jmke]

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[Groth]

Temperature in the reservoir is good, but best would be to plumb a temperature sensor into the water line just before the waterblock. Putting it into a T-fitting is convenient.

The P4's thermal diode shoud be okay as long as you only compare temperatures with others from that same CPU/motherboard/load-program combination. You can do a very rough offset calibration by plotting a graph of (CPU temp - water temp) vs. clockspeed. It should be a straight line that intersects zero degrees at zero clock.

For a load program, this bunch is great. There are others around too, compare and use the hottest.

And always have a proof-reader.

Zog: I'm not bothered by pop-ups. When I click the thumbnail pics, the status bar said "Pop-up Blocked". No pictures for me til I told The Proxomitron how I wanted NinjaLane's pages dynamically re-written, then they were links like I wanted.

[jmke]

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