Upgrading from WCing to...?
 

Ok, been running my watercooled system for about 1 year. However, for the purpose of benchmarking... I would like to have some better GPU/CPU clocks. I can run my 1800+ @ 2.4ghz stable 24/7, which is fine for me. But how can I get some better cooling for benchmarking? I can run 3dmark @ 2650mhz. But as I said I want more, and my watercooled GPU deffinately could use some help. Oh, and I usually bench at a room temp of about 5C.

A TEC on just the GPU might be sufficient. But then we're probably talking about an external PS. I would like to still be able to take the rig to LAN parties. Can my AntecTrue550W PS power a descently performing TEC?

What about taking the fan off my heatercore and just dumping the heatercore in a tub of ice water? Would I have to insulate as much as if I was using a TEC?

What are your thoughts? Looking for best price/performance w/ practicality in mind... I suppose I could just build a seperate rig for LANs... but I'm not that rich yet. What's the life span on a machI?

Thanks for your knowledges as always.

Still keeping within water-cooling you may want to look at building an external water-chiller and pump a water-alcohol mix through your system. Do it right and you could be looking at ~-35C liquid temperatures, and this will give a level of cooling that will be better than what the Vapo/Proms can do. Do it with a tap and reservoir system that allows you to switch between an external water-chiller loop and the in-case radiator (for lanning) and it can be a relatively ugly but portable system. Of course while lanning you'll still have the alcohol/water mix in your loop, but this shouldn't impact performance by more than 2C.

That's the sort of option I'd be looking to expand upon.

The Antex 550W PSU can happily power a 172W TEC at 12V for your GPU, and I've done just this a number of times.

You will need to insulate all surfaces, sockets and tubes that are chilled and exposed to the air otherwise you will get frost build up which will melt and drip water over everything whenever you shut the chiller off.

Bingo - high performance portable lan rig - and promII beating benchmark rig when at home.

cathar, would i read that correctly as the antec 550w will power a 172w pelt _in addition to_ a basic system, or only the pelt itself?

just curious, that seems like a lot of power to feed through a psu with a system attached.

Yes, the antec will power the system + tec. The 172W TEC's when driven at 12V will draw around 100W of power and provide around 100W of cooling effect*.

* - By "Cooling Effect" I mean capable of keeping up to a 100W heat load at or below ambient. For less heat-loads they will be substantially below ambient.

hot damn cathar, your god.

i got a 550w Antec Truecontrol a few weeks back and i am looking into powering a 150w pelt, i will have to see how much my rather large system is drawing atm, but i guess my PSU will do just fine, thanks :)

makes sense - i keep forgetting about the whole 12v thing with pelts. i'm running more crap than i would in a pelted system quite happily on a 400w. and if the psu can't handle what it's rated for, the mfr needs a good back-handed bitchslap :)

pelts sound like so much fun. i bet i could really run the crap out of my vid card with a pelt and a voltmod... no need for upgrades with that :)

Thanks Cathar. I was thinking waterchilling aswell. Yet, I haven't read up on it much, guess I'll check out the procooling articles and see where that takes me. What do you think I'll be spending?

EDIT: Didn't find any great articles, any links for me?

$37 for a pelt, maybe $40 for upgrading to a maze4 GPU block, + misc hardware sounds like a great deal... I can't decide. About how much heat will that pelt add to my CPU temps oposed to an overclocked 9800Pro?

Appriciate the help!

about 300 euro's per year... :evilaugh: Your electricity company will start sending you valentine cards :)
Add in a 80W tec for the GPU also and for the price you pay for electricity (if you run your system 24/7) you could have bought a vapochill :drool:

172w pelt = 100w (or so) at 12v = double the heat you will get from your GPU

i am the only person in my family who uses energy effecient light bulbs. in my house there are about 14 60-100w bulbs, if i were to swap them all out with 10w high effeciency bulbs, i would be able to power a 1000w TEC for about 6 hours a day without a change in our bill.

Besides, with the 3 high eff. bulbs in my room now, i have gone from 3x60w to 3X10w, so from 200w to 30w... thats a difference of 170... heh, 2w wont make that much difference.

and besides, how much does a vapochill draw? :p

yeah, and with those, you also have to remember the lightbulbs are 100w @ 120vac (at least for those of us here in the US), whereas the tec's are 100w@12v, which is considerably less current.

although, running a 24/7 tec system will run up your bill... i know mine went up a few bucks every time i added a new system in to the list...

i recently changed the 50-100-150 3ways in my office tho from incandesent (SP?) to florescent energy savers - "200w equivalent". needed more light, less power consumption :) i think i may get more tho, for those late nights working. bright, quality light helps a _ton_ when you're about to crash out but you need to finish a project. and these replacement bulbs are way better than the tube kind - better on head and eyes :)

hehe, mine are 240v lightbulbs, so i've saved even more :D

those must be bright bulbs...

i wear shades and sun block indoors :p

btw, standard Vapochill...

Power Supply Requirements:

Cut-in voltage : 10.9V
Peak current @ 12V (50ms) : 12A +/- 1A
Peak current @ 10V (50ms) : 14A +/- 1A
Continuous mode voltage : 9.6V
Current @ 12 V and 100 W heat load: 6.6 A

Hope you have low wattage lamps/lights for those bulbs. Otherwise you'll start to go through bulbs pretty quick. Or so my dad says??

I need a good do it yourself waterchiller link. Not expensive, but a POS. Although, I might just go with the 172W pelt, although I am worried about how much heat it's going to add to the loop... err should I just add another heatercore :shrug:?

If I went w/ the 172W pelt I would just have to machine a coldplate, drill a couple holes in my current block, and get some mounting hardware. And of course buy the pelt... and maybe buy another heatercore? Gemme your thoughts. I don't run my rig 24/7, unless I'm downloading, or am in the mood to get somemore folding done.

it doesnt matter about the lamp used, the wattage is the amount of power the device consumes, not what you feed it, the only limit is the maximum that can be fed to it. for instance a 200w transformer can still power a 10w device so long as its at the same voltage (and frequency).

anyway, if your putting 172w of heat into your system, you may need another heatercore, but it depends on how much your heatercore can handle. see if you can find out how much it can disipate, and how to work out what it disipates defending on the cfm of air flowing through it. that way you can keep the water at ambient without excessive fan noise.

a second heatercore is allways a benefit imho, it just adds that little extra.

Overkill = Overcool = Overclock.

that would make a nice sig.

My 172mm fan is RATED for 139CFM I think. I have a Chevette heatercore + shroud. I also need to remount my CPU block, didn't do that great of a job on my last mount.

My heatercore hasn't cooled my water close to room temp since I added my GPU block. W/ my cpu only running at 2140 (1.75vcore) and my 9800 Pro @ 441mhz. Air coming into the heatercore is 20.6C, air coming out is 26C, water temp from my t-line (which is between heatercore --> CPU) is 24.1. Socket reader gives CPU temp 32.5 100% folding. GPU is not under any load.
Another day when I had my system at it's usual 2392mhz (1.8vcore), ambient was 23F, air leaving heatercore was 27C, water temp was read at 33C? This was during prime95 torture test w/ a CPU socket temp of 48C, which I'm really not use to. But I think I was running 3dmark before the reading.

Here's a very old pic of my heatercore.
http://www.angelfire.com/me/lastreso...ges/shroud.jpg

Shroud is a piece of sheetmetal bent and JBwelded at the corners, then JB welded to the back (front of case side) of the heatercore at it's corners. I have a 1.25" space between heatercore and fan. I painted the shroud after masking off the finned area of the heatercore. When JB welding the 5/8" barbs on I know some JB weld dripped down onto the back side of the core which MAY be blocking some of the avanues to the "fins." But I think most of it is just stuck to the back of the tanks, above the "avanues." Fan is, of course, pulling and I have a piece of neoprene sealing the space between hc/fan.

Are lightbulbs different in different parts of the world (i.e. different resistances)?
Applying twice the voltage to a part with the same resistance should double the current through it (and quadruple the power dissipation!)...

Lightbulbs in different parts of the world are made for their target voltages.

A watt, is a watt, is a watt, no matter what voltage is applied. All that is changes between different scenarios is the resistance of the lightbulb when then dictates how much current flows. Since P = VA (roughly speaking for AC), and P is measured in watts, then a when two different lightbulbs in different voltages consume the same number of watts, then they are still sucking the same amount of power, just with different resistances for each.

Except you haven't because electricity is charged in kW/h, not based on current drawn by individual devices. A 100W lightbulb consumes a similar amount of power to a 100W TEC and thus costs a similar amount to run (probably cheaper to run the bulb because you don't lose power transforming the voltage to 12VDC first).

How about an extension on Cathar's idea:
extend the hose run that's an inlet for your CPU, and temporarily submersing it in a bath of LN2, probably in a cheap styrofoam cooler? When not benching, you could just tuck the extra length up inside your case.