Work in progress, Finally using my new box

mo · 11-04-2002, 02:26 PM

Ok... after many weeks and many many mistakes Im finally running on my new box. I am going to visit my friend this evening to borrow his digital cam and hope to post some pics for everyone this evening. Id like to thank EVERYONE on here for all their help. This place is what really got me excited about watercooling and Im so happy that its finally come together.

Presently running P42.53 @2.98. Still need to play with the settings and get it past 3ghz. Temps are whats worrying me though as Im at 50 degrees idle right now. Basically Ive seen a 9 degree increase in my temps since Ive added the 90 degree at the pump intake. Im hoping its just too much AS3 but I have a feeling my rad and the fact that Im using L1A's with weak airflow is whats causing the problem.

One question I have is this. Has anyone ever seen a northbridge with a bump in the middle? On my IT7 max2 board, when I removed the northbridge heatsink, I noticed the northbridge is not flat. It has a big bump in the middle and the heatsink had a hollow foam square around the edges to raise it to the level of the 'bump'. Very odd. Anyone seen this before?

g.l.amour · 11-04-2002, 03:12 PM

i'm not gonna elaborate on the NB surface.

but the other stuff u pointed out:

reason for watercooling in my case is twofold:
1) silence (most important)
2) overclocking (nice side effect)

now if u are going to mount some 0.6A drawing behemoth fan, that is going to get u near 60mm delta noise pollution.

if i were u (if u have enough room in the case)

mount an extra rad (doesn't even have to be in parallel to see some really nice temp drops) and get rid of the 90° bend. even with normal pvc tubing i can get a curve with a diameter of 10-15cm (3-5") dunno if that is sufficient, if not get some si tubing. shouldn't cost that much...
the temps u mention seem to indicate some seriously underpowered rad, BI style maybe?

g'luck on the quest for the holy temps

Can O' Beans · 11-05-2002, 01:49 AM

It sounds like my Albatron board's northbridge (intel). Has the foam around the edge(I'm guessing for stability). If you're talking about what I think you are, the "Bump" is actually the core of the northbridge chip, similar to the bare core AMD CPUs or Intels if you remove the heatspreader.

gmat · 11-05-2002, 04:44 AM

Yeah northbridge chips (and maybe southbridges for cost sake) follow the same path as GPU and CPUs, the dye size gets smaller. The 'bump' you see is the chip itself, what's around it is only 'filler' ceramic or plastic.

mo · 11-05-2002, 06:42 AM

so to use a waterblock on the northbridge, I need to use some sort of spacer to raise the block to the level of the northbridge?

gmat · 11-05-2002, 07:13 AM

Huh ? Bottom of waterblocks is usually flat. The "core" of your NB is *higher* than the package, right ?
If so, the WB will be in contact with the core, which is the 'hot element'. Just like AMD CPUs...

Can O' Beans · 11-05-2002, 11:50 PM

Just make sure you tighten down the NB waterblock evenly i.e. don't crank down one side, then do the other. Do each side a little bit at a time to prevent damage to the NB core. AMDs are notorious for cracking, but I'm not sure how the Intel chips hold up. Better safe than sorry though.

mo · 11-06-2002, 07:15 AM

My problem is I cant use bolts to hold it down. There are no holes that I can use and Im scared to drill through the pcb. Im stuck with AS epoxy (maybe diluted with some AS3) which is why I got a little taken aback when I saw that its got this round bump in the middle.

Unless someone has any alternative ideas Im going to mimic what ABIT did with their heatsink and use some thin foam on the edges of waterblock to raise it to the level of the northbridge core.

mo · 11-12-2002, 08:15 PM

Heres one with showing the res on top

mo · 11-12-2002, 08:16 PM

Some UV goodness

Still working out the settings on this darn thing so need to work on the contrast ...

mo · 11-12-2002, 08:19 PM

Last one showing the back of the rad and the exhaust (bottom right). Gonna try to take some time this weekend to put in the NB block and change the exhaust to the bottom of the case so I can get rid of that 90 degree elbow...

gmat · 11-13-2002, 05:42 AM

How did you settle your NB problem ?

mo · 11-13-2002, 07:36 AM

Im going to use a thin layer of foam on the edges to mount it. That way I can push the block down on the nb without worrying about it staying on crooked...

Any idea as to the amount of pressure the NB can handle? Just use my hand or clamp it after applying epoxy?

gmat · 11-13-2002, 10:53 AM

I don't know about your chip specifically. My KT133 is quite sturdy, more than a CPU indeed. My take is you can clamp it as hard as you can, as long as the mobo doesnt flex too much...

mo · 11-17-2002, 08:51 PM

This link (http://ambient.no-ip.com) shows all the pics from my present setup. Hope you guys like them. Still working on figuring out what to do about the temperature (47-48degrees idle, 51 load). Im looking at getting a BIX2 to replace the HC to see if that is the problem.

Will be posting some benchmarks on the site later on tonight and would appreciate if anyone has any good utilities that can help in burn in tests. Will be using Sandra 2k tonight again and would like find something a little more aggressive.

gmat · 11-18-2002, 06:06 AM

I like:
- The heatercore shroud
- The nice airtrap
- The low fan count
- The pump
- The overall quantity of work that went into that setup

I dislike:
- the wrong HTML on your page, i only see the code, no formatted HTML. Please add the (head) tags and (doctype) etc..
- plutonium-like glowing colors (freaks 'normal' people out) I know it's the goal there but i like getting positive comments from women as well... (ok it's a taste matter

) Hehe.

Anyways, the BiX2 shouldnt perform any better than your killer HC. If you get it, run it in parallel with you current HC to really increase cooling capacity...

mo · 11-18-2002, 08:14 AM

Thanks for the input... I will check on the box when I get home and fix that. as for the glow, there aint enough!!! Thanks to ben input I now have a can of UV die spray paint *cackle* Them panaflo fans about to undergo plastic surgery. One thing I HATE though is the darned clutter. I always thought that case was huge but now Im realising it aint that big afterall. heh. Still got a long way to go before I consider it 'neat'.

I also feel that the heatercore SHOULD be plenty for this setup... Im very happy with my overclock at the moment. Since added the NB block Ive gained an additional 120 mhz (was just barely at 3060 mhz stable before) and improved case temps slightly, but at 41 degrees case temps, its warm in there... And for all I know the very high case temps could be whats causing the problem with the 48 degree idle cpu temp. (It SHOULDNT though if the fans are pulling air into the case from the outside..)

At this point Im just shooting in the dark. Im not really aware of the water temps and the flowrate in my loop. The pump should be sufficient to ensure that an acceptable flowrate is going through so Im going to focus first on getting a couple of temp sensors that I Can put in the loop and a decent lcd that can read those temps and Ill go from there...

airspirit · 11-21-2002, 05:53 PM

48 idle is very hot. Mine was idling at 43 when my room was 95F, and I didn't have the best setup. Is your block lapped and mounted right? If it is lapped well, did you use too much goop?

mo · 11-21-2002, 09:58 PM

Both are possiblities I guess and Im desperate enough to try both.. wouldnt harm to lap the block some more to be safe then use as little AS3 as possible... (Think Im going to use cooling flow this time instead... got some left still).

Anyone have recommendations as to how to best lap a waterblock? About the only powertool I have though is a dremel...

Brians256 · 11-21-2002, 10:18 PM

There are some very good tutorials on how to lap an HSF, which is really the same concept. However, I'll try to sum it up.

Use a very flat surface. A piece of plate glass (such as from a window) is very flat. Don't use concrete or your kitchen table. Those aren't flat.

Put a piece of sandpaper on the glass and tape down the edges to keep the sandpaper from moving. You will want to start with coarse and move to fine sandpaper. Each stage should be a finer grade of sandpaper. I can't remember the numbers for what you start and what you move to, but you should spend a bit of time with each grade of sandpaper before moving to the next. The first grade of sandpaper should make the waterblock completely flat (which means not bowed or cupped) although it will be a rough surface. Then, each successive stage should make the surface more smooth.

Use a black marker to put an X across the waterblock bottom for each stage. This way, you know when to move to the next type of sandpaper, and you will also know if you have an area on the surface which is not being smoothed out. The X should be gone before you move on to the next grade of sandpaper.

Alternatively, take your waterblock to a machinist and tell him to take a couple of thousandths off the bottom with his milling machine. That will make it very flat!

11-04-2002, 02:26 PM	#1
mo Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Canada, Montreal Posts: 136	Work in progress, Finally using my new box Ok... after many weeks and many many mistakes Im finally running on my new box. I am going to visit my friend this evening to borrow his digital cam and hope to post some pics for everyone this evening. Id like to thank EVERYONE on here for all their help. This place is what really got me excited about watercooling and Im so happy that its finally come together. Presently running P42.53 @2.98. Still need to play with the settings and get it past 3ghz. Temps are whats worrying me though as Im at 50 degrees idle right now. Basically Ive seen a 9 degree increase in my temps since Ive added the 90 degree at the pump intake. Im hoping its just too much AS3 but I have a feeling my rad and the fact that Im using L1A's with weak airflow is whats causing the problem. One question I have is this. Has anyone ever seen a northbridge with a bump in the middle? On my IT7 max2 board, when I removed the northbridge heatsink, I noticed the northbridge is not flat. It has a big bump in the middle and the heatsink had a hollow foam square around the edges to raise it to the level of the 'bump'. Very odd. Anyone seen this before?

11-17-2002, 08:51 PM	#15
mo Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Canada, Montreal Posts: 136	This link (http://ambient.no-ip.com) shows all the pics from my present setup. Hope you guys like them. Still working on figuring out what to do about the temperature (47-48degrees idle, 51 load). Im looking at getting a BIX2 to replace the HC to see if that is the problem. Will be posting some benchmarks on the site later on tonight and would appreciate if anyone has any good utilities that can help in burn in tests. Will be using Sandra 2k tonight again and would like find something a little more aggressive. Last edited by mo; 11-17-2002 at 09:15 PM.

11-21-2002, 05:53 PM	#18
airspirit Been /.'d... have you? Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Moscow, ID Posts: 1,986	48 idle is very hot. Mine was idling at 43 when my room was 95F, and I didn't have the best setup. Is your block lapped and mounted right? If it is lapped well, did you use too much goop? __________________ #!/bin/sh {who;} {last;} {pause;} {grep;} {touch;} {unzip;} mount /dev/girl -t {wet;} {fsck;} {fsck;} {fsck;} {fsck;} echo yes yes yes {yes;} umount {/dev/girl;zip;} rm -rf {wet.spot;} {sleep;} finger: permission denied

11-04-2002, 03:12 PM	#2
g.l.amour Cooling Savant Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: on da case Posts: 933	i'm not gonna elaborate on the NB surface. but the other stuff u pointed out: reason for watercooling in my case is twofold: 1) silence (most important) 2) overclocking (nice side effect) now if u are going to mount some 0.6A drawing behemoth fan, that is going to get u near 60mm delta noise pollution. if i were u (if u have enough room in the case) mount an extra rad (doesn't even have to be in parallel to see some really nice temp drops) and get rid of the 90° bend. even with normal pvc tubing i can get a curve with a diameter of 10-15cm (3-5") dunno if that is sufficient, if not get some si tubing. shouldn't cost that much... the temps u mention seem to indicate some seriously underpowered rad, BI style maybe? g'luck on the quest for the holy temps

11-05-2002, 01:49 AM	#3
Can O' Beans Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Pa - USA Posts: 264	It sounds like my Albatron board's northbridge (intel). Has the foam around the edge(I'm guessing for stability). If you're talking about what I think you are, the "Bump" is actually the core of the northbridge chip, similar to the bare core AMD CPUs or Intels if you remove the heatspreader.

11-05-2002, 04:44 AM	#4
gmat Thermophile Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: France Posts: 1,221	Yeah northbridge chips (and maybe southbridges for cost sake) follow the same path as GPU and CPUs, the dye size gets smaller. The 'bump' you see is the chip itself, what's around it is only 'filler' ceramic or plastic.

11-05-2002, 06:42 AM	#5
mo Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Canada, Montreal Posts: 136	so to use a waterblock on the northbridge, I need to use some sort of spacer to raise the block to the level of the northbridge?

11-05-2002, 07:13 AM	#6
gmat Thermophile Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: France Posts: 1,221	Huh ? Bottom of waterblocks is usually flat. The "core" of your NB is higher than the package, right ? If so, the WB will be in contact with the core, which is the 'hot element'. Just like AMD CPUs...

11-05-2002, 11:50 PM	#7
Can O' Beans Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Pa - USA Posts: 264	Just make sure you tighten down the NB waterblock evenly i.e. don't crank down one side, then do the other. Do each side a little bit at a time to prevent damage to the NB core. AMDs are notorious for cracking, but I'm not sure how the Intel chips hold up. Better safe than sorry though.

11-06-2002, 07:15 AM	#8
mo Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Canada, Montreal Posts: 136	My problem is I cant use bolts to hold it down. There are no holes that I can use and Im scared to drill through the pcb. Im stuck with AS epoxy (maybe diluted with some AS3) which is why I got a little taken aback when I saw that its got this round bump in the middle. Unless someone has any alternative ideas Im going to mimic what ABIT did with their heatsink and use some thin foam on the edges of waterblock to raise it to the level of the northbridge core.

11-13-2002, 05:42 AM	#12
gmat Thermophile Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: France Posts: 1,221	How did you settle your NB problem ?

11-13-2002, 07:36 AM	#13
mo Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Canada, Montreal Posts: 136	Im going to use a thin layer of foam on the edges to mount it. That way I can push the block down on the nb without worrying about it staying on crooked... Any idea as to the amount of pressure the NB can handle? Just use my hand or clamp it after applying epoxy?

11-13-2002, 10:53 AM	#14
gmat Thermophile Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: France Posts: 1,221	I don't know about your chip specifically. My KT133 is quite sturdy, more than a CPU indeed. My take is you can clamp it as hard as you can, as long as the mobo doesnt flex too much...

11-18-2002, 06:06 AM	#16
gmat Thermophile Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: France Posts: 1,221	I like: - The heatercore shroud - The nice airtrap - The low fan count - The pump - The overall quantity of work that went into that setup I dislike: - the wrong HTML on your page, i only see the code, no formatted HTML. Please add the (head) tags and (doctype) etc.. - plutonium-like glowing colors (freaks 'normal' people out) I know it's the goal there but i like getting positive comments from women as well... (ok it's a taste matter ) Hehe. Anyways, the BiX2 shouldnt perform any better than your killer HC. If you get it, run it in parallel with you current HC to really increase cooling capacity...

11-18-2002, 08:14 AM	#17
mo Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Canada, Montreal Posts: 136	Thanks for the input... I will check on the box when I get home and fix that. as for the glow, there aint enough!!! Thanks to ben input I now have a can of UV die spray paint cackle Them panaflo fans about to undergo plastic surgery. One thing I HATE though is the darned clutter. I always thought that case was huge but now Im realising it aint that big afterall. heh. Still got a long way to go before I consider it 'neat'. I also feel that the heatercore SHOULD be plenty for this setup... Im very happy with my overclock at the moment. Since added the NB block Ive gained an additional 120 mhz (was just barely at 3060 mhz stable before) and improved case temps slightly, but at 41 degrees case temps, its warm in there... And for all I know the very high case temps could be whats causing the problem with the 48 degree idle cpu temp. (It SHOULDNT though if the fans are pulling air into the case from the outside..) At this point Im just shooting in the dark. Im not really aware of the water temps and the flowrate in my loop. The pump should be sufficient to ensure that an acceptable flowrate is going through so Im going to focus first on getting a couple of temp sensors that I Can put in the loop and a decent lcd that can read those temps and Ill go from there...

11-21-2002, 09:58 PM	#19
mo Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Canada, Montreal Posts: 136	Both are possiblities I guess and Im desperate enough to try both.. wouldnt harm to lap the block some more to be safe then use as little AS3 as possible... (Think Im going to use cooling flow this time instead... got some left still). Anyone have recommendations as to how to best lap a waterblock? About the only powertool I have though is a dremel...

11-21-2002, 10:18 PM	#20
Brians256 Pro/Staff Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Klamath Falls, OR Posts: 1,439	There are some very good tutorials on how to lap an HSF, which is really the same concept. However, I'll try to sum it up. Use a very flat surface. A piece of plate glass (such as from a window) is very flat. Don't use concrete or your kitchen table. Those aren't flat. Put a piece of sandpaper on the glass and tape down the edges to keep the sandpaper from moving. You will want to start with coarse and move to fine sandpaper. Each stage should be a finer grade of sandpaper. I can't remember the numbers for what you start and what you move to, but you should spend a bit of time with each grade of sandpaper before moving to the next. The first grade of sandpaper should make the waterblock completely flat (which means not bowed or cupped) although it will be a rough surface. Then, each successive stage should make the surface more smooth. Use a black marker to put an X across the waterblock bottom for each stage. This way, you know when to move to the next type of sandpaper, and you will also know if you have an area on the surface which is not being smoothed out. The X should be gone before you move on to the next grade of sandpaper. Alternatively, take your waterblock to a machinist and tell him to take a couple of thousandths off the bottom with his milling machine. That will make it very flat!

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