clocker
11-26-2004, 12:53 PM
Anyone here have any hands on experience with one of these things?
My local MicroCenter has had a demo machine set up for a few months and it seems to be doing quite well.
I have been in contact with a Finnish modder who has been getting very respectable results with a heavily modified model and the temptation has been growing to try one out...the oddity factor far outweighs the theoretical shortcomings.
My Finnish friend has basically done two things to improve the performance.
First, he extended the inlet to the cooling tower so the hot water from the block is released near the top, not next to the outlet (pump) as is stock.
Secondly, and most important I think, he enclosed the finned tower in a plexi tube topped with a 172mm fan which draws air up the full length of the reservoir and boosts the convection cooling effect.
Although this last mod totally destroys the Zalman's stated advantage of being completely passive, hence silent, he reports that very slow fan speeds are all that is necessary to significantly improve the performance, so noise is still negligable.
I have been toying with a major revamp of Sprocket...one that incorporates several of the big mods that I've implemented in the past, and this might be the topping on the cake.
My case is actually large enough not to be dwarfed by the Reserator's size and I can envision a way to mount it so the unit would be (semi) integral with the case's base, making (limited) movement possible without draining the whole system.
Obviously this would never be a LANparty rig, but then again, it's not now either, so I lose little.
Thoughts?
My local MicroCenter has had a demo machine set up for a few months and it seems to be doing quite well.
I have been in contact with a Finnish modder who has been getting very respectable results with a heavily modified model and the temptation has been growing to try one out...the oddity factor far outweighs the theoretical shortcomings.
My Finnish friend has basically done two things to improve the performance.
First, he extended the inlet to the cooling tower so the hot water from the block is released near the top, not next to the outlet (pump) as is stock.
Secondly, and most important I think, he enclosed the finned tower in a plexi tube topped with a 172mm fan which draws air up the full length of the reservoir and boosts the convection cooling effect.
Although this last mod totally destroys the Zalman's stated advantage of being completely passive, hence silent, he reports that very slow fan speeds are all that is necessary to significantly improve the performance, so noise is still negligable.
I have been toying with a major revamp of Sprocket...one that incorporates several of the big mods that I've implemented in the past, and this might be the topping on the cake.
My case is actually large enough not to be dwarfed by the Reserator's size and I can envision a way to mount it so the unit would be (semi) integral with the case's base, making (limited) movement possible without draining the whole system.
Obviously this would never be a LANparty rig, but then again, it's not now either, so I lose little.
Thoughts?