God damn, where is that banging head off wall smilie?

We got GF saying "do it right or don't do it at all" with his strict list of minimum required testing which will take very expensive equipment.

And we got pH who says it can be done with hardly any money in the equipment as long as the method it good..... i.e. Cathars and his own testing methods.

We got Ben.....well.....we got Ben.....

Cathars way doesn't require base plate or inlet/outlet temps yet he is still able to come up with fairly accurate "relative" numbers and has built 2 of the best blocks on the market using those methods.

So what is "good enough". :shrug:

Bah....

It's okay Ph, you didn't put me "on the spot", well maybe a little, but I did understand where you were coming from.

I was just wanting to highlight my personal views on the matter as really being somewhere in-between the sides being taken in this thread.

Call me a fence-sitter if you will. I perfectly understand the respective needs for both approaches.

Using a test method such as Cathar has done to help give indications in his developmental process is far different then stating block A is x amount better than block B and publishing it for public consumption (doing so will effect the going rate in the free market and open yourself up to lawsuit so you better be able to back up that data). Different horses for different courses.

What are the goals of this discussion, gettin kinda hazy in here.

Depends on what you are doing JayDee. I assume what you care about are (a) bitching :D and (b) improving the blocks you make yourself (in no particular order).

For me, I care about building a testbed where I can get the same results for a block on day one as on day 500 with good enough accuracy to write reviews for this site. I haven't exactly spent "hardly any money" on my own testing setup (I think it is still measured in hundreds of dollars spent rather than the thousands thrown around in this thread though). Can I get that last bit of accuracy needed to separate every single good waterblock from one another? Probably not. I can certainly give some good evaluation and buying advice though. If a $100 block and a $30 block are too close together for my testbed to separate then I'd go with the $30 one, for example.

I also care about temperature measurement and monitoring in my own personal PCs that I run daily. That's where all my messing with Maxim ICs and CF633s and gameport thermistors comes in. If you calibrate those types of setups and use a bit of thought in where you place sensors then you can really enhance your ability to troubleshoot your cooling and your system. Would I trust those kinds of methods enough to do a Procooling waterblock roundup with them? Nope. But I trust them with my $1000 PC (go figure).

As for Ben he cares about googling and blue sky and his post per day count. I wouldn't make big purchases based upon that.

I guess what I was trying to say (and missed the mark) with the earlier examples of good work done by testers using cheap equipment is that a testbed is an evolving thing. I started off with an interest and a minimum of equipment. I assumed it would be easy; I am a bright fellow after all. As I ran tests I realized there were some flaws with how I was doing things. I'd correct the human errors as well as I could, and then when I was still bumping up against problems I would upgrade a part here and there. Add the ability to measure water temps to 0.01C res with decent reproducibility. Add a bigger pump to offset that. Fiddle with how to control water temps. Add a die simulator and related hardware. Etc etc.

To me it is irresponsible to start some "Alliance" and make these recommendations that tons of money must be invested to get some "magical" accuracy. The errors in mounting coming from a tester who has never installed a socketA waterblock before and never worked in a lab are going to dwarf the accuracy of the equipment for months. Give things a try and see if you enjoy it. See if you can spare the time. If so, and if it's important to you, eventually a testbed will emerge. Do the best with what you have/can afford, be honest about your testbed's limitations, and upgrade as needed/as available. "I'm waiting to find that used with traceable certs" is a valid excuse for not going platinum RTD in my mind.

GF I think your thinking in the lines of a manufacturers point of view when testing. I gave that up long ago. I have no desire to sell blocks and rapidly loosing desire to keep designing them for my own use.

I am more interested in things from a reviewers point of view at this point. I pretty much ruled out myself doing this over the last year though.

pH you hit it in your first sentance on your last post. I am more tired of people claiming ambient CPU temps with 500mhz OC at 1.95Vcore on AIR and would like a well layed out article (or even a website) devoted to measuring temps in computers that we can point these people to and tell them not to say another word about their temps untill they do the things in the article/site. I like your current articles but they fall short of the reasoning for doing what your doing.

I have been thinking about putting up a website devoted to just this subject. Problem is I need some more experienced people to assist in the information put on it. Something I am considering as opposed to this WBTA deal. I like procoling and all but the subject matter is just to broad to really cover temp monitoring well IMO. I would like the site to just be about temp monitoring computers and maybe even other things.....

I couldn't care less about my post count, actually. :p

[edit: rambling removed]

I'm sorry for my ramblings about that ultra high accuracy bit. I was just trying to figure out a (relatively) cheap way of measuring that secondary loss. Obviously, as Bill himself pointed out, it's beyond our capabilities/means. I certainly didn't mean to imply that we would need to spend huge amounts of money (used or new).


Going over some theoretical figures, I'm trying to figure out how each individual error applies to the result: the C/W. One thing that's stomping me right now (a brain fart), is, if I have a temp differential (die to water) error of say, +/- 0.2 deg C, given say, a 70 Watt source (measured at +/- 2%), then what's my C/W's error margin?

http://www.rit.edu/~vwlsps/uncertain...rtainties.html
http://www.rit.edu/~vwlsps/uncertain...tiespart1.html
http://www.rit.edu/~vwlsps/uncertain...tiespart2.html

Fairly general overview. I have a set of old handwritten analytical chemistry lecture notes I actually refer to though for most basic stats.

Think about it logically. The upper limit on the calculated C/W will be when you overestimate the temperature differential by the largest amount and underestimate the wattage my the maximum amount. The lower limit would be the smallest temp differential divided by the largest wattage. So let's say you have a real 0.2C/W; that's a 14C delta T. The range of C/W you can get from your error is 13.8/71.4 =0.19 to 14.2/68.6 = 0.21 or your C/W value is +/- 0.01. That's actually pretty good; you'll see bigger differences than that from wb mount to wb mount.

Digitec and my YSI probes are guaranteed to 0.3C accuracy out of box. My Fluke is probably a little worse. This number is a worst case scenario statement from mfgr that the temperature will be within this range of the true temp; it is not a measure of how tightly the instrument responds to a change in temperature. I would expect the digitec to be offset by as much as 0.3C, but when using it to monitor changes in temperature the error in the delta T is much less. Meaning the linearity in response is quite good. I can't necessarily say the same about my TCs and so I don't care for them as much.

Um what I am saying I guess is I have bigger error bars if I want to compare my numbers with your numbers than I do if I want to compare a block I test on today with a block I test next month on the same setup.

Seems as if post count has been visually turned of anyway?

On the topic of temperature measurement, this PDF should be interesting. If nothing else it gives a good description of resolution, precision, accuracy, calibration, sensitivity, stability(system drift).

http://www.luxtron.com/product/produ...iescatalog.pdf

It would seem that there are massive numbers of reviewing sites that are not to worried about law suits. Hell some have 15 block "shootouts" or "roundups", yet claim to be able to tell which is best.

I'm not sure who here posted it but, ".........the hardest part of a roundup, as they are usually done, is rounding up all the blocks."

Just pointing out that if legal issues were a restraint, we wouldn't see all those off the wall articles being posted.:shrug:

Yep I removed it, I didnt want that to be a factor in discussions anymore. Would rather people gain credibility based off what they say not how many times they say it.

That is true and evident by non action in the past. If watercooling were to get bigger and more big money was involved, you can bet there will be lawyers along for the ride. I agree not much of an issue now but something to keep in the dark recesses of the mind.

This is an interesting point. I don't see how it can really be inforced though. Then again if the manufacturer had their own evidence of how well their blocks worked then we wouldn't need reviews in the first place. I think you could only get in trouble if the manufacturer had it's own results which are severly different than yours and yours were negative to theirs. Then they might be able to put some sort of image damaging law suit together. This might be a larger issue in the future.

Was Googling around this aft, and came across this little gem:
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/index.htm

Enjoy: I will! ;)

Time to stir things up a bit!

I'm looking into a mercury thermometer from Cole Parmer.

The purpose is to calibrate my temp probes, but firstly the temp readings on my chiller. I want to get as close to 25 deg C as possible, as the coolant test temp.

Link to thermometer:
http://www.coleparmer.com/catalog/pr...=1&sel=0800130

That thermometer has a range of 19 deg C to 27 deg C, and is accurate to +/- 0.1 deg C. (ASTM# 17C)

The thing is, I don't know if the "ASTM method" is relevant: in this case, it's "Saybolt viscosity". Does anyone know?


The other problem I have is that this thermometer appears to be meant to be used "fully submerged". Although Cole Parmer provides a tutorial on how to compensate (calculated) for that, as far as I can tell, if I used it only partly submerged, I would be throwing off the accuracy of a reading by a maximum of 0.002 deg C. Is this of importance?


My third question would be: do I really need to get the NIST certificate (yearly?), and why?


Lastly, could I actually use this thermometer to measure a temp, while the pump is running, or would it be preferable to briefly stop the pump for a reading?

Bump!

Since that last post, I picked up the Cole Parmer thermometer. I'm preparing to run a series of test on the chiller, to measure the performance.

Thanks to Capt Foo Foo, I now have the software that goes with the chiller. It has full logging capability.

Now to figure out the validity of the chiller's temp readings... then a mod for more flow!

For now, since money is tight, I'm concentrating on picking up a multimeter and an oscilloscope. Both of those will also allow me to complete the redundant power array, another project that's been sleeping...

did you read the specs on that thing ?
"Immersion depth - Total", and its 275mm long
wheeee

Yep, sure did. I even have a compensation formulae, from Cole-Parmer, for partial immerson. Surprisingly irrelevant (but will still be applied).

sounds good Ben
your eyes are doubtless better than mine, but you will find the constant reading of that thing a pain
perhaps you could set an optical sensor to 'read' the reflective bead . . . . .
(thinking GPIB here 'cause you don't need the bandwidth)

Why don't I just remove my reticular implant, and hook it up to my pc, and log the data? ;)

I see your point. I'll try it out and see how it responds. Either way, I need to do something, anything... if I have to re-run the whole test series once i have my temp probes hooked up to my PC (the ones that will be used for the testbench), then I'll do that.

Either way, I have to get some decent results, so that when I swap the pump, I can measure the difference in performance of this chiller. No decent results -=> the pump swap is on hold until I can get some serious data.

In the mean time...


Here's a link to a table generator (for temp probes) I thought might come in handy:
http://listserve.minco.com/sensorcalc/