Comments on a new system.
 

Argh - image was too big the first time, so I have to type this all again....

It's an Athlon 1333, not yet OC'd since I need to reformat this weekend. Via-Aqua 1300 pump, BlackIce original for a rad, Maze 2.1. 3/8" ID thin-wall Tygon. Coolant is distilled water + water-wetter, mixed for about 3% water-wetter.

Maybe later if I get bored I'll go through the long discussion about it again, but right now I'm pissed at losing the post..., here's a couple pics. I can take more if someone wants a close-up of something. And yes I know it looks kinda rough - it's functional now and I'm still in the process of cleaning it up.

Edit: Should have mentioned in there that all the fittings except the rad are 1/2" OD and so don't need clamps with the 3/8" ID tubing. Damn tight fit getting that stuff on, but once it's on there it works good.

Other pic...

Nice job man...what kinda temps u get with it

How'd you get it so clean? Mine looks like a rats nest:rolleyes: I need round cables. Nice job BTW;)

/me likes the 'hazardous area' sticker :cool:

very clean, how does it perform? what OC did it allow you to hit? (assuming you have overclocked it)

Looking real good, but something wrong here?

That T-fitting right after the outlet of the pump, doesn't it destroy the flow? :confused:

Ok - I don't often surf around the msg-boards much on the weekends (need something to do at work on mondays), but since monday is a holiday I'll make an exception and actually post this from the system pictured above :)

Answering questions from top to bottom

I'm just using the in-socket temp probe on the KT7A-RAID for measurements right now (reading it with MBM5.1 or so), and under 100% load right now (as I write this) the temp is 46C. I doubt it will go up any higher than that unless my ambient temp increases.

Cleanliness? I left the digi-cam at work but I'll get a picture from the angle of hte second pic of the top of the case, I just moved my "rats nest" of cabling up there (where I don't have any windows or plans to put any)

Ya - that sticker kicks ass, especially since it's an authentic one I stole from an OLD IMB mainframe computer. That IBM used to take up 3/4 of our computer room at work and we recently disposoed of it, so I have a few communication cards, a couple CPU's, that sticker, and prolly some other stuff around from it.

I haven't really gotten into the serious tweaking much (just finished re-installing windows yesterday), but it's currently running at 1533 at the max voltage that the KT7A will allow, and is more stable than it ever was with the HSF on it. The old HSF was a Volcano II and I couldn't go from 1333 to 1400 on that thing without problems. I don't know if I actually need the max voltage to stay at 1533 or not, but the water can take care of the extra heat and I'll prolly end up needing that voltage soon as I get into more tweaking.

I don't have a flow meter on it, so I don't know what the T-fitting does to the flow. I've also never run it without that fitting, so I can't compare temps with/without. But I know that it works really well as an air-trap forcing the water to turn like that instead of passing straight-through (straight-through may work, haven't tried that). I added a bit more water-wetter to my system after a couple days of running (my water was clear again, dunno where the water-wetter went), I just put a capful into the top of the fill-tube, and I could see the turbulence and mixing happening in the tygon just above the T. It looks like very little water actually does move up into the T, but the stuff that does slows down a lot while it churns around in there before heading back out, which is good because tiny air bubbles won't rise out of water that is moving too fast, they just get carried along with the flow.

Hmm...., temp reading is up to 47C now. Also, idle temp is usually around 33C if yer wondering.

Also, I made an interesting discovery the other day - not all 100% CPU usage loads create the same amount of heat. I've tried a bunch of different things lately that all pin the CPU at 100% usage (monitor that with XP Task Manager), but encoding a DVD into a DivX video is consistently 4 degrees hotter than anything else I've found so far. And it gets up to that temp quick, so it's not just cause it takes 10 hours to finish (and yes, thats what I have running in the background now thats making it hot - I consider my CPU stable when I can queue up 10 hours of work at 100% load and it finishes with no crashes and no video corruption in the resulting avi.)

You should try toast. It usually takes my system 2c hotter than the others I've used. Also with toast if you can make it for 30 minutes your system is rock stable. Most of the time I would say 5-8 minutes but someone else posted that his could make it to 20 before it whould crash.

You should try 'cpuburn' (burnk7 for AMD)
http://users.ev1.net/~redelm/

It gets my system 4-5 degrees hotter than anything and is really taxing on the +3.3V and/or +5V on most PSU's, my AOpen 300W (my 8K7A only uses the +5Volt line) goes from 5.20 to 5.01-5.02 with burnk7 while prime95 or whatever only lowers it to 5.10 Volts.

Well, the CPUBurn has been burning away for ~20 mins. Not really watching the voltages but it's gotten the CPU temp up to 52C now. The rad and tubing is just slightly warm to the touch, so my coolant temp is probably in the mid 30's somewhere. I just need to get that heat energy off of the CPU core and into the rad faster. I don't want to go into the below-ambient (or below-freezing) cooling just yet because I don't wanna deal with condensation, but a pelt on the CPU should bring the core temp down and bump the coolant temp up. And the hotter the rad is relative to ambient, the more heat it can/will dissipate. (exhaust air from the rad doesn't feel even slightly warm)