So..
LAst week I got the parts from germany (watercooling)..
Long story made short I went for the external solution since, well I'm not very keen on starting to cut in my case (the case ain't really good for internal WC'ing anyway.. it's a LianLi PCV2100BPLUSSII which sucks for internal mounting of WC..
).
So, what's being cooled? EVERYTHING.. that's GPU's, motherboard chipset and VRegs and CPU..
My original setup was with 2x9800gx2 (xfx), xfx i790 motherboard and an intel Qx9650 cpu..
I got the Aqua-computer Aquaduct 360 XT MK2 external kit, and an extra Airplex XT 120 radiator which I mounted externally on a 120mm fan.
All this along with 16m of tubing (ohh I think I still have 10m left
), just in case.
I got the 8x1mm compression barbs.. which is 10mm OD 8mm ID.. that tube is hard not to get kinks in the bends, since it's only 1mm thick.. in hindsight I would have rather gone with 8x1.5mm tubes (11OD 8mm ID) which is 50% thicker and less chance of kinks in the bends.. But a few 90 degree elbows took care of the worst..
Mounting went nice, I thought.. and everything fit rather smoothly.. only thing is that the VReg coolers have plastic screws that's a tad too long, so I broke off one screw (finding out that I couldn't screw it further in).. but, after replacing the broken screw with a metal screw and cutting all of them about 3mm shorter, both vreg coolers fit snuggly..
Chipset cooler comes with 4 metal screws and there's no issues there.
The 9800gx2 coolers are WAY more solid than I thought (looking at the pictures on aqua-computer.de's www), and after cursing when dismantling the stock 9800gx2 coolers (dang you need small screwdrivers).. the mounting was very easy, reusing 4 screws from the original coolers, it fit snugly, only bad part is that there's no springs on the screws supplied with the coolingblock, so be careful not to tighten too much or you will bend the PCB!!! There's a VERY nice mounting instruction with the blocks aswell..
Cpu block is more or less selfexplanatory (got the couplext XT DI block)..
Well, I was so happy with the system when I was done tubing.. and filling and burping/airing went extremely smooth, no leaks (not really common with compression fittings, and all barbs from AC have good sealing rubber rings on all barbs.. ).. Well I was happy untill I started the pc after I was done leak testing.. The system didn't even post.. It got stuck on the (award bios with post-code display) 5d code which means: "Initializing onboard Super I/O".. and I resetting CMOS, tried with 1 memory stick, without SLI bridge, with SLI bridge.. sigh.. then I noticed 1 "half" of one of my 9800GX2 cards didn't light up the power connector on the card (green when connected, red when not), strange.. then I checked the "internal" SLI connector (which is realllllly easy to get disconnected) and found it loose, reconnected that (after much cursing and usage of plastic pliers).. Alas, didn't work.. More cursing when I found that my tubing was poorly planned for card removal.. But after filling the inside of my pc with papertowels, disconnecting the cards, removing the "faulty" card and reconnecting the tubes... Everything worked..
Sigh, so, all I've got todo now is find out why the card won't work.. Atleast my system is up and running, and so far performance is stellar.. GPU's are about 20-30C cooler, and CPU rarely goes over 45 even under load (no, haven't tried pi or any other cpu loader.., but viewing HD movies (H.264) and playing Pure makes it fairly hot).. I'm thinking about OC'ing the CPU and the GPU's but I've not been bothered too much with it yet..
Am I satisfied (apart from 1 not-working-as-intended graphics card)? Yes.. The pc has gone from very noisy to almost completely silent.. The Aquasuite software that you get with the Aquaduct is just awsome. You can tweak allmost any aspect, from flow, led color/brightness, fan speed (individually), audible alarm (both from internal buzzer and using pc soundcard) and LCD display. You can also connect internal sensors that you then can use as guidance for fanspeed and/or pump flow... (the fan on the extra 120mm radiator is also controlled via the aquasuite software).
Mehh.. nuff said..
Just thought it might be interesting for some, if you are wondering about getting an external watercooling system.. I can reccomend the Aqua-computer one..
-Bubba
LAst week I got the parts from germany (watercooling)..
Long story made short I went for the external solution since, well I'm not very keen on starting to cut in my case (the case ain't really good for internal WC'ing anyway.. it's a LianLi PCV2100BPLUSSII which sucks for internal mounting of WC..
). So, what's being cooled? EVERYTHING.. that's GPU's, motherboard chipset and VRegs and CPU..
My original setup was with 2x9800gx2 (xfx), xfx i790 motherboard and an intel Qx9650 cpu..
I got the Aqua-computer Aquaduct 360 XT MK2 external kit, and an extra Airplex XT 120 radiator which I mounted externally on a 120mm fan.
All this along with 16m of tubing (ohh I think I still have 10m left
), just in case. I got the 8x1mm compression barbs.. which is 10mm OD 8mm ID.. that tube is hard not to get kinks in the bends, since it's only 1mm thick.. in hindsight I would have rather gone with 8x1.5mm tubes (11OD 8mm ID) which is 50% thicker and less chance of kinks in the bends.. But a few 90 degree elbows took care of the worst..
Mounting went nice, I thought.. and everything fit rather smoothly.. only thing is that the VReg coolers have plastic screws that's a tad too long, so I broke off one screw (finding out that I couldn't screw it further in
).. but, after replacing the broken screw with a metal screw and cutting all of them about 3mm shorter, both vreg coolers fit snuggly..Chipset cooler comes with 4 metal screws and there's no issues there.
The 9800gx2 coolers are WAY more solid than I thought (looking at the pictures on aqua-computer.de's www), and after cursing when dismantling the stock 9800gx2 coolers (dang you need small screwdrivers).. the mounting was very easy, reusing 4 screws from the original coolers, it fit snugly, only bad part is that there's no springs on the screws supplied with the coolingblock, so be careful not to tighten too much or you will bend the PCB!!! There's a VERY nice mounting instruction with the blocks aswell..
Cpu block is more or less selfexplanatory (got the couplext XT DI block)..
Well, I was so happy with the system when I was done tubing.. and filling and burping/airing went extremely smooth, no leaks (not really common with compression fittings, and all barbs from AC have good sealing rubber rings on all barbs.. ).. Well I was happy untill I started the pc after I was done leak testing.. The system didn't even post.. It got stuck on the (award bios with post-code display) 5d code which means: "Initializing onboard Super I/O".. and I resetting CMOS, tried with 1 memory stick, without SLI bridge, with SLI bridge.. sigh.. then I noticed 1 "half" of one of my 9800GX2 cards didn't light up the power connector on the card (green when connected, red when not), strange.. then I checked the "internal" SLI connector (which is realllllly easy to get disconnected) and found it loose, reconnected that (after much cursing and usage of plastic pliers).. Alas, didn't work.. More cursing when I found that my tubing was poorly planned for card removal.. But after filling the inside of my pc with papertowels, disconnecting the cards, removing the "faulty" card and reconnecting the tubes... Everything worked..
Sigh, so, all I've got todo now is find out why the card won't work.. Atleast my system is up and running, and so far performance is stellar.. GPU's are about 20-30C cooler, and CPU rarely goes over 45 even under load (no, haven't tried pi or any other cpu loader.., but viewing HD movies (H.264) and playing Pure makes it fairly hot).. I'm thinking about OC'ing the CPU and the GPU's but I've not been bothered too much with it yet..
Am I satisfied (apart from 1 not-working-as-intended graphics card)? Yes.. The pc has gone from very noisy to almost completely silent.. The Aquasuite software that you get with the Aquaduct is just awsome. You can tweak allmost any aspect, from flow, led color/brightness, fan speed (individually), audible alarm (both from internal buzzer and using pc soundcard) and LCD display. You can also connect internal sensors that you then can use as guidance for fanspeed and/or pump flow... (the fan on the extra 120mm radiator is also controlled via the aquasuite software).
Mehh.. nuff said..
Just thought it might be interesting for some, if you are wondering about getting an external watercooling system.. I can reccomend the Aqua-computer one..
-Bubba
