Computer tech blog

[Dr. Mario]

Yeah, and I am glad that I'm leaving soon, though... And, I am posting my desktop, showing my CPU's on-die temperature, with a modified heatsink you saw earlier, giving you an idea of what is Sunon 80mm turbo fan is doing to the heatpipe. And, yeah, I liked Nagomiko's work - one reason to put a wallpaper of a miko!

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[Smokey]

WTF?! 12 degrees?! WHAT?!
I don't get mine that cold, but i do get my CPU at roughly the same temp as the case (mobo)... see stats below...
And as promised, a photoshoot of my PC... (don't mind the mess, i hope it will dissapear when i install Liquid Cooling)
BTW, all pictures were taken with the system still running, the fans that appear to not be running are running, my camera is just so fast it captures them standing still... ^_^


Okay, here's the front of the PC, as you can see it's nice and airy, with a 120mm fan installed. I have another 120mm fan wich i will install under it, tomorrow... And yes that is a Garfield pluche, and yes that is GITS and LOTR you see there...


Next we have my case from an angle, taken without flash to show all the fancy lights... ^_^ BTW if you look closely, you can see that Garfield is sitting on that other 120mm fan...


And here we have my case from the side, showing that hueg fan...


Next we have a shot of the inside, showing the loosely organised chaos... ^_^


Here's my SLI setup (two ASUS GF8500GTs) and above that is my TV tuner card, wich is useless in Vista due to driver incompatibility...


And here's my 4GBs of DDR2-800 DRAM, i installed some heatsinks on them, since Corsair didn't do that with their ValueRAM...


Here's the ingenious solution of my case's fabricator to store the harddisks... ^_^ (above the PSU, btw)


But i have two more HDDs (and more to come ^_^), bte if you look carefully you can see that the bottom one is my PATA disk, connected with an (old, very old) rounded cable...


So that is it (plus the attachment ofcourse, showing the status of my PC), let's have the comments...

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[Dr. Mario]

Freaking nice case! And, CPU temperature still can be corrected with much faster Silverstone fan, and I'm using 45 Watts Athlon 64 OEM CPU (I didn't care about OEM processor chip, let alone customing my computer - also, after such heavy usage, it stayed at 20 - 25 Celsius at full throttle. I used Arctic Silver 5, my favorite choice of thermal paste.) And, this case definitely remind me of my wife's custom system, that she built herself (with some of my helps.)

I'm also anime addict, it's my own drug. ;

Added after 13 minutes:

And, eeehm... My case here isn't pretty at all, it used to be a part of office computer. It was of Datalink (DTK) computer brand, but I got it for free - a bank junked it. Best of all, it's made from Japan (assembled in China, but weight don't lie.) and totally customizable (that I can fit my new blue motherboard.) And, how did a CPU get cold? Simple, the fan intake's 1 - 2 inches away from the removable (side) case panel, and the bare metal side of panel just simply cool the air down before fan suck it.

[Smokey]

You like? cool, that means all that effort hasn't gone to waste...

Oh, btw i forgot to get a pic in of the front with the brushed aluminium door closed... ^_^so here it is :


btw, that red thing on top of the case is a gel-based hourglass... ^_^


And i don't think i can get my CPU's temperature to get that much lower with the current type of cooling i use, since the ambient temp of the case itself is too high for that... But that will be solved when i get liquod cooling, because i will then have a double 120mm radiator outside the case, and one in the relatively cool front of the case... (or i will have to reverse the airflow, wich will mean i will have one at the relatively cool back, and the radiator on the processor- naah that CPU radiator will get cool air anyway from the 240mm fan at the side..., plus then the only thing wich will be cooled with "conventional" heatpipe and therefore producing heat in the case/around the MoBo, will be the northbridge... ( i plan on cooling the GPUs and RAM with liquid aswell... ^_^)

And as for the anime, yes, most stuff on TV here is crap anyway, so anime is a welcome change...

And for the Case; I have had many different cases in the past, from a 16U Poweredge, to big tower ProLiant, to boring beige, to simply black... this is the second "nice" case i've had and the first i actually love (i love the simple design and the way the mainboard is fitted)...
Wich is good 'cuz the darn thing cost me â,¬115,- without PSU, so yeah another (be it small) reasoon to make this my flagship... ^_^

[Dr. Mario]

Yeah, I don't have either CATV, nor ClearQAM here either, not yet... T-T (Yes, my TV tuner's capable of tuning into Digital TV channel, the only problem is, I made an antenna which is a shitty excuse for an ATSC tuner, which is in my computer.)

Plus, you can also try Peltier (TEC) block, if you think water-cooling's too expensive. You will want to condensation-proof your motherboard too. I have done it before, I'm using it on x86 Cell processor, really kept it subzero cold, even under intense load.

Added after 14 minutes:

Also, please be sure either your current heatpipe or a new one can stand a massive heat from peltier block, just to be sure. (I think you will be fine. Thermaltake's heatpipe can withstand this kind of punishment, and also heatpipe is highly recommended for peltier setup. Run peltier off 2 AA battery for a short time to find cold side to stick on CPU's heatslug, to cool it. Yellow wire of PSU: 12 Volts / Red wire: 5 Volts.) To make it f***ing cold, use yellow wire of PSU link to red wire of peltier block.

Added after 12 minutes:

P.S. Make sure your heatsink's clip can handle going much further without shattering the peltier block. And Neoprene foam (black poreless foam - please be careful around the sticker glue!) is the best (so they said...) to condensation-proof your motherboard. If your heatsink use screw-type clip, great! (because it always use springs beside the screw, to equalize the clip pressure.) I don't think you would go for electro-cryogenic cooling, if you do, awesome.

[Smokey]

Well, from the cooling methods i have reviewed, i did like peltier, because it's way, way out the box thinking, but it is also near impossible to get by in holland, and damned expensive when you find one that actually sells it, plus peltier will need a cooling device to keep it's hot side cooled, so i will still need a liquid cooling system, or better... Peltiers are heat pumps, really flippin' good heat pumps, but nothing more than that... Chuck a peltier element on a cpu and expect it to do it's work on it's own and you'll fry the CPU and likely the peltier element too...

I have also taken a (brief) look at Liquid Submersion cooling, wich is also a pretty cool idea, as long as you use a dielectric fluid... but waterproofing (water in that term not to be taken literally ^_^) the case is too much of a hassle for me and i would end up draining the complete system far too often because i want to add/replace components...

Liquid Nitrogen/ Liquid Helium... yeah, extreme, and extremely cold (N goes to -196C and H goes to -269C) but also extremely impractical, expensive and lethal to the CPU, so i'll pass on that one... ^_^

Then there is Phase-Change cooling, wich is interesting and also extremely efficient ( i would dare say it rivals peltier, because peltier cooling is highly dependant on the type of cooling used with it), capable of turning the PC into a tiny piece of alaska... ^_^
Only drawback is (well, aside from the need to insulate every part of the cooling system, since the pipes will sweat, and of course that it can only cool one component per unit) the price, it cost twice the money of the quad radiator liquid cooling setup i have planned for the PC...

And well, Active aircooled heatsinks...: Yeah, they of course work for the components, and they work well, but i'm not aiming for "adequate", i'm aiming for complete "overkill" so that idea is out of the question...

Passive heatsinks: eehm, we don't live in the nineties anymore, and even though i have two videocards wich are still cooled by this method i doubt that i will ever see a practical passive heatsink for a quadcore Phenom, and i will doubt that it will be able to handle much excesses... so no, thanks...

No heatsinks: come on guys, srsly; I'm not running a bloody 386 here...

Heatpipe: yes nice and pleasing to the eye too, but i already have it and i want something a bit better... ^_^

Leaving me to settle with watercooling...
And maybe, just maybe i will give Phase-Change a shot, but that will be later on, way later on... ^_^

Oops, ranting again... ^_^

[Dr. Mario]

I agree on that. But I still stick to Peltier for a powerful CPU, anyways. And it will still have the same problem, the board around the CPU will just sweat as well. ._.
Plus, the surplus in both Japan and America has, pretty much, plentiful of those little b*****d that I can just put my hands on it, and buy 'em stupid cheap. (I'm gonna warn you, my Jap friends, the surplus here that do get the peltier from scrap, are pretty hard to find. If you have found 'em, wonderful! -

Added after 1 hours 37 minutes:

However, if you Japanese, found me wrong, please correct me here... *-" I sometimes don't remember real well. Thanks. *bows*)

And I love Japan so much, so much beautiful places and fields! (reminiscing a wonderful evening at a temple)
Oh, sorry if I'm derailing off topic...

[Smokey]

Well, phase-change coolers come with all the insulation and padding needed (at least those from asetec do, for â,¬694,- they'd better have that stuff included...)...
But i think that when i do get my hands on one of those VapoChill units, a peltier heatpump might actually be a good idea to stick it in between the CPU and the cooler...

Added after 10 minutes:

Btw, i have found a relevant cooling block... ;010

http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mcw6500-T1.asp

[Dr. Mario]

That will just work fine.
And, by the way, the computer case temperature is also affected by how cold / warm is the room's surrounding air. It doesn't affect water cooler by a large percentage. It does to a regular heatsink, though.

[Smokey]

Yep, that's why i want to go beyond air cooling, because in the summer those fans would just be turbocharging hot air into my pc... (my room gets all the sun, and it's under the roof, wich makes it nice and toasty in the summer)...

And of course, should i get my hands on 4 crossfireX cards, watercooling would prevent vacuum problems... ^_^

[Dr. Mario]

Yup. And, I don't think I may be having that much problem with air-cooling, yet... If I get to move back to Japan, well, it will get real toasty in the summer. Here in Montana, sort of (Helena was actually a desert, at least I heard about it.) - oh, and if anyone not knowing about Montana's weather, it's definitely strange: Hate it? Wait ten minutes. Poof! Now you're satisified with the weather now.

[Smokey]

Oh, we have weird weather here too... Back in Hardenberg, (the shitho- my birthtown) if it was raining on one side of the river, it could be sunny and warm on the other... and that river was just 25 meters wide...

[Dr. Mario]

Yep, that was what I heard.

[Smokey]

Okay, i know i'm not supposed to ask that here in this thread, and i also know that i am once again being the king of OT by doing this, but i do so have to know...

How did you hear that??

(man, i am looking so surprised now, my eyes are starting to hurt)

[Dr. Mario]

Okay, here goes: I have heard that from few peoples and also fooled around on Internet (Good old Wikipedia and Google!)

Also, ever wonder what will happen if the fan on the heatpipe just quit working?
(It just have happened to me - it shot to 63 Celsius! I had to straighten the metal strips in the fan plug, it's working fine now, and I'm watching the on-die temperature, just to be sure.)

Added after 4 hours 44 minutes:

Got it right back on track. I burnt it in, by playing a test video file (similar to Blu-ray Disc's M2TS) on VLC media player (with multi-core usage feature on), for a short time - it got nowhere near 23 Celsius, even in full throttle. Whew, almost fried it! Luckily, it used Germany Army Specification Hi-Temp silicon, otherwise I will have to buy another CPU. (Seemingly, AMD have made the right decision using this kind of material right in Germany. Japan's better, but still better than nothing.)