Dual AMD dilemma -- air vs water
 

Hi all!
Okay, originally I wanted to go watercooling for my Thunder K7 board, but recently I've read a lot of articles about the Swiftech MCX462 HSF which is supposed to perform pretty well. Well, I wanted other people's opinions about whether I should stick with air (get the Swiftech) or go with water (DD Maze2).

Main goals:
- I wanted a fairly quiet setup (however, my SCSI drive idles at 40dB)
- I wanted it to be reliable (110%)
- It would have to deal with being moved around every once and a while (2 times a month)
- I want cool CPUs (around 32C +- 3C)

What I have:
- YY cube server case
- already getting 40C idle and 47C full load on my Vantec CCK HSF with a 1.2 GHz proc (according to the BIOS temp monitor)
- blah blah blah, other junk

Concerns:
- 1) Would having 2 of the 700+ gram Swiftech MCX462 HSFs put undo stress upon the motherboard?
- 2) Would switching to watercooling make that much of a difference in heat and noise reduction? (especially heat since I plan on getting the MP 1900 proc)

Thanks for all replies! ANY OPINION WANTED! Thanks a bunch! Happy Holidays and New Year!

[ 12-25-2001: Message edited by: artemis0007 ]

Speaking from experience the Swiftech will not be a quite solution. I got the 462 myself with the delta 68cfm. It is very loud so now I am going water cooling. There is one thing you can do is that you can make the fans run at 7v instead of 12v to slow the fans down and it will be pretty quite. Just make sure you have good airflow inside the cube. I don't think you will be putting too much stress on that nice board, unless you move your case a lot. If it just sit there you should be ok. I like my swify a lot and I was going to do the 7v mod, but I want to try H20 cooling. As for H20 cooling it would be harder for you to work on you computer cause of the hoses, pump, res, and etc. Since you said you are going to play with it a lot you might have a chance of knocking a hose loose and get water everywhere. So you might want to watch for that. You also mention you want it to be 110% reliable. Will I don't think that can every happen. With air cooling your fans might go bad, with water cooling your pump might go bad. I don't know what you are using this computer for. But if the computer is a server I think you should stick with air cooling. If it a machine you play with I think water cooling will be more fun. If money is an issue, air cooling will ofcouse cost less then water. Alpha 8045 or the SK6 will get you result very close to the Swiftech. If money is not an issue you can alway add peltier to the water cooling system and freeze your cpu.

Question: Can you o/c on the Thunder K7? I

A Glaciator or the Akura with the 70mm fan provide good, quiet cooling. I will probably try a couple of Glaciators on the dually I am building before switching to Danger Den blocks. IMHO, a well built watercooler is the way to go.

Revision 3 Thunders can be overclocked with Soft FSB. Golden Sockets or processor bridge surgery is neccessary to change the multiplier. A KT7 style volt mod will allow Vcore adjustment and memory can be tweaked with WPCredit.

Thanks for the posts! The Thunder is used as a server so I should probably stick to air cooling for now. I'll check out those HSFs you guys recommended. Are there any HSFs that use the 4 mounting holes in the mobo besides Swiftech? I really really really hate those *&#^%^*#% clips! I guess I should make a ducting system for the HSFs. Oh well, Thanks again!

I don't think my board is overclockable since its the first version released to the public.

I think the Alpha does.

Pal8045 is the only other heatsink on par with the mc462.

I wouldn't bother changing to another heatsink, water would be about your only worthwhile route. You might get 1-2C better with the 8045, but they are $40 each.

just a note, the swifteach I dont beleive will fit on the Thunder K7, I originally planned on buying the swifttech, but the capacitors are in the way of the massive ass copper chunk at the bottom of the thing.

I thought that the new Swiftech MCX462 would fit because the corners of the block are cut off.

Brad, you have a good point. It would be a bit of a waste to spend $40 - $80 more just to get another 1 - 2 C better cooling. But if I stick with my Vantec CCK6035D HSF, would it be able to adequately cool off an Athlon MP 1900? Basically, this is the main reason for this discussion. I was also planning on getting those new MP 1900 CPUs, but I'm not sure if my poor little HSFs will be able to handle the heat.

Thanks for the responses! Keep them coming!

update
 

Hi all!
Just to update, I emailed the Tyan techies to see what the max weight limit that the board could take as far as HSFs go. Well, their reply was that they "have not tested for this type situation in our labs" and that the two Swiftech MCX462 HSFs (combined mass about 1.5 kg) " are about 2 lbs of weight and will bend the board and any long term flex will warp the board especially when heat is introduced."

That's what they told me. Guess I won't get the Swiftys.

Does anybody know what the mass of the Danger Den Maze2 blocks are? I wanted to know if it would be heavier than my Vantec CCK @ 386g.

Thanks!

I would go watercool myself, it's very reliable, quiet and cool if it's made right. Home made if you know how, it' s so much fun when you create something and it perform equal or better than some brand product.

True true. But if I go watercooling, I'll have to stick with the brand stuff because I don't have the tools or the space (my apartment is very small).

I was just looking around the forums at Overclockers and saw that someone used a fan adaptor to get more CFMs and reduce noise. I thought that was interesting, but at this point I think that I should try to reduce the amount of weight on the mobo.

Danger Den doesn't include the weight of the Maze2 in its description. Anybody know how much it weighs? Estimates good too.

What about AL WB ,
Cu is not that much better if you look at the whole picture.
Heat transfer consist of heat conductivity (material, thickness, coef. :lambda W/mK) and heat transport from one material to fluid (coef. alpha (W/m2K) which is very complex it depends from temp. ,preasure, speed and kind of fluid, gas or vapour that take or give heat to solid wall. It also depend on quality and shape of this surface).
So heat transfer (K) is : 1/K= 1/alpha + thickness/lambda
then heat fluid (W/s) equals Q/t= K*(Temp. diff.)*A ; A=surface(m2) and if we know that alpha for fluids ranges from 2000...4000W/m2K , you can quickly calculate that alpha(surface, turbolence...) is a lot more important than lambda (material).

That's why I'm trying to do AL block that perform equal or better than Cu. Check this thread: link btw. it weights ~350g

you could get the nano block or a clone of it.
very small weight and outperforms most blocks in lower flow systems.
I wish that I had but my DD is still very good even though I could have got similar performance from a $30 less expensive block.

Morphling, that is damn good machining! Anyways, the reason I was leaning toward Cu blocks is because I was planning on getting a Black Ice II or Extreme which is a copper core. I didn't want a battery effect to occur.

Thanks Yoric, I'll take a look at the Nano block.
umm... who makes it?

Implementation question:
Would there be an adverse effect to system cooling if I had a lot of 90 degree bends in the water circuit?

I was curious since f155mph made a good point that I might accidentally knock a hose while working in the case, so I thought that having the piping run along the walls of the case would be best, but would require lots of elbows.

Thanks for the replies everyone! Keep em coming!

90 degree elbows hurt flow rates but if you have a good pump and use the nano block I think that should work fine
definitely get clamps for all your connections that will prevent hoses from being pulled out unless you are really trying to pull the hose off.
check out the double header 3 for an extreme setup which was very well planned out. it is under articles on this site I think. It could give you some ideas.

the original nanoblock is made by chip at overclock watercool

Hey Yoric, I couldn't find the nanoblock over at overclock-watercool. Could you post a link to it please?
Ummm, I was planning on getting an EHEIM 1250 pump. I'm not sure at this moment how many elbows would be needed (I haven't totally planned it out yet).

BTW, I did more snooping around and found the CoolerMaster HHC-001 Heat Pipe HSF. Looks really interesting and performs almost as good as the Swiftech MCX462 but weighs a lor less (520g).
http://www.ipkonfig.com/Reviews/Heat...pe/index.shtml

Also saw the Sidewinder TC-4 copper waterblock. That looks promising (cause it uses the 4 mobo holes and it's copper!).

Just wanted some other opinions about these two things. Thanks!

it is called the vtuned subminiature waterblock on the waterblock page of the site.
$12 not bad but you do need to find a way to clamp it to the die

hmmmm... maybe some of that Artic Silver epoxy would come in handy, but that would be permanant. The clipping mechanism in the picture on the site doesn't look too secure though.
Thanks Yoric!

AMD's spec is up to 300g, so we know that the Thunder K7 will be able to handle that much at least.

From memory the maze1c isn't much more than 300g.

300g ?!?!?!?!?! That's it?! That's per socket, right? Well, I guess my thought about the Icehole fan adaptor is out unless I have a sling attached to the top of the case to support it. Hmm.... thanks Brad!

I think that I'll be able to get the Maze2 block if I drill out holes in the mobo tray and use a plexiglass or acrylic backing.

Probably thread the bolt through the holes like this:
block -> mobo -> mobo backplate -> rubber -> acrylic backing
spring still stays on top of block.

Does this seem like a good idea?

yeah, per socket.

realistically that is quite low, there are so many heatsinks in the 400-500g range right now, and noone has had a problem.

Joe has been running 2x sk6's on his thunder for a long time now, he hasn't had a prob

yea. I've been running 2x Vantec CCK-6036Ds and the board is okay. But I was thinking of getting 2 Iceholes and 80mm fans to make the sucker a little bit quieter. Also, I wanted to make it a little flashier since I was going to move the board from my Al case to the YY cube case (which will be heavily modded).

I like watercooling, but I have some space restrictions for the cube case. It does have a lot of space, but I almost use up every spot! I have 8 hard drives and CD and CDR. It will use up the front 6 5.25" bays and 2/4 3.5" HD racks in back.

Not really related, but has Joe ever considered watercooling his Thunder board?

why not have the rad out the side of the case, between where the hdd's are and the cd's?

Joe won't watercool it, oc'ing it is too damned difficult anyway, and who'd want to kill a $450 board?

hmmm... I haven't thought about that. I'll give it a go when I get back to my apartment tomorrow. The main concern is opening and closing the side panel. Also wouldn't the extra hose length (to allow the door to swing open) restrict the airflow?

not if you route them carefully enough, like have the extra hose length coiled up on the floor or something

okay.... that didn't work. I made a cardboard mock-up of the Black Ice II and Extreme and I tried to position one of them on the right side panel. Well, the door didn't close (and there were no fans on it either!!!). Sooooo, I tried the left panel (motherboard side) and the Black Ice II might *just* squeeze in there without touching anything protruding from the mobo, maybe. The fans would have to be really thin and my expansion cards would have to be short (lengthwise). The B.I. Extreme fits a little better, but again I need really thin fans (thinner now since the extreme is thicker than B.I. II). Well, it was worth a shot. Any other suggestions would be very very very helpful. Thank you!

why didn't it fit, was it sitting on the hdd bays, or the cd bays?

you could also try roof mounting it

It didn't fit when the rad was mounted on the right side door (cube case has swing open doors instead of slide open). The Black Ice II was just an inch too wide (it either hit the hdd rack or the 5.25" rack or both) and the BI Extreme could just fit inbetween the two racks, but it's such a tight fit that I can't open the door anymore.

Roof mounting it would work only if the rad was on the outside of the case (along with the fans). Internal mouting on the roof is next to impossible because I need that 1" space at the top to route all og my cables through (since my mobo is EATX and blocks the other cable routing holes). I guess if I mount it on top I should make a covering for it to keep the dust out (sort of what Koolance did), but I really wanted to keep everything internal.

Well if worst comes to worst, I could leave out some HDDs but it'll be a tough choice. Thanks!

BTW: will Joe include the Sidewinder TC-4 WB in the next part of the roundup?

that sucks then dude, what about in the floor of the case?