New Pc

[clocker]

Originally posted by Virtualbody1234@5 November 2003 - 10:00
Hey clocker, have you been able to get any temperature readings for your graphics card? I was wondering how well you think the Zalman video card cooler was doing?

How much does that cooler cost?

VB,

I have been reconfiguring the case again, so I haven't really had a chance to gather much data.
The heatsinks ( which are huge) do get warm, and the top one (the backside of the card, actually) gets as warm as the bottom (active side) so the heatpipe transfer definately works.
After I get this thing back together I'll hook my temp probe to the vid card and we'll see.
I'm still experimenting with fan placement.
I've decided to try site-specific cooling rather than front/back/top fan placement.
In a full tower case you really need either big ( 120mm) fans or 80mms set at a pretty high rpm to generate any appreciable airflow through the case.
Instead I've now placed a fan to blow directly over the video card heatsinks and another to blow directly on the bottom of the HDD unit. Both fans are pulling air from the exterior of the case itself.
This required a complete stripdown of the pc again, so I'm further refining the wiring and setting up what I hope will be the final fan control module. I'll take some pictures when I'm done...with any luck later today.

The video card cooler runs about $25-30 US, so that would be what, about $500 Canadian?

[Virtualbody1234]

Originally posted by clocker@6 November 2003 - 08:21

The video card cooler runs about $25-30 US, so that would be what, about $500 Canadian?

About $500 Canadian

Oh no that's way to expensive!











$30 USD After conversion it's really more like $40 CDN.

I have only found one supplier so far around here and he want's $50. I'll keep looking.

[clocker]

To be honest VB, I'm really not too sure what that thing cost.

My local PC shop got in a big bag of Zalman goodies and I ravaged it before it hit the shelves. In exchange for being the beta tester/guinea pig I get a pretty healthy discount.

[clocker]

Stage Three
(hopefully the final stage of the aircooled era... )

Just for grins I suspended several pieces of paper on string from the roof of my case. I wanted to see if it was possible to visualize the airflow in my case.
Results were something of a surprise and disappointment. Even with the fans at full blast ( keep in mind that these are the orange Thermaltake fans that come preinstalled in the case) the paper bits really didn't move around much. I was hoping to see better.
I theorized that in a large full tower case the standard arrangement of intake fans low in the front and exhaust fans high in the back plus one blowhole fan in the roof just didn't cut it. The fans would have to be much larger and possibly spinning at a higher rpm to get any demonstrable air current.
So I decided that instead of trying to generate a current of air and hope that it would get where it was really needed, maybe arranging the fans to be site specific would yield better results.
I figured that the three areas of fairly constant heat generation were the CPU (obviously), the harddrive and the videocard.
So I started hacking away and here is what I came up with.
The fan on the floor is mounted in such a way that it blows air ducted from the bottom of the case right over the heatsinks of the cooler on the video card.
The harddrive is mounted on the wall on vibration isolating standoffs. Behind it is another fan, again ducted to the outside of the case (this is visible in the second pic)
The heat from the monster heatsink is exhausted from the back by two fans (btw, all the fans are on switches and rheostats)....

This second pic is of the back side of the motherboard mounting wall.
The fan for the HDD is visible in the lower LH corner. This is also where almost all the wiring for the different components is routed. I forgot to drill (at least) one hole while I had the pc disassembled, but I'll get around to it soon.


Results for this setup are extremely encouraging so far.
I ran the burn in test 4 times back to back and at the end the CPU had maxed out at 34C and the HDD was at 23C. This is a significant improvement over my last set of numbers.

Edit: VirtBod,
I'm going to run 3D Mark 2001 tonight and I'll hook up my temp probe to the Heatpipe sinks on my card. I'll let you know the temps ( although I can't vouch for the accuracy of this thing...)

[Virtualbody1234]

Great idea to cut a hole in the bottom of your case.

I have done the same thing except that I cut two holes, 80mm each. No fans or ducts, just fan grills. I have 2 fans at the usual place at the back of my tower. So that makes for 3 exhaust fans (including the on in the PS). All 3 run at a very slow 1450 RPM. Good airflow and superquiet.

Now, just to make my graghics card silent. That's what I need. B) I'm still working on that. I've been looking around for some copper or aluminium parts to build my own passive cooler.

[Evil Gemini]

Very Very clever

[clocker]

Okay, more revisions and tests.

The two fans on the back wall were removed.
One was placed on the front of the case.
Current fan configuration is:
One fan front case
One fan case roof
One fan behind HDD
One fan directed at the video card
Heatsink fan
Two fans in the PSU

All of the case fans are running on 5V and thus, very slowly.
HS fan is controlled by the motherboard- average speed is 1650rpm.

I have OCed the CPU from 2075Mhz up to 2300Mhz.
These are the results of my last burn-in test...

After a 30min. test the CPU temp rose by only one degree C. Within 1 minute of the test's end the temp dropped back to 36C. HDD temp didn't move at all, it stayed constant at 28C. Video card temp rose .2 degrees- from 26.2 all the way up to 26.4C.

I have also run 3D Mark2001 video tests. This stresses the vid card much more.
The card temp (measured on the bottom,active side, heatsink) maxxed out at 28C.
My bechmark scores only reached 7450, which seems low, so apparently I have some tweaking to do. I have the newest Omega drivers and the program to tweak my video settings, so I'm sure that I can do better.

VirtualBody,
I am sold on these heatpipe coolers! They really seem to provide a very high level of heat dissipation (especially when augmented by site specific fans). If you have access to a milling machine the heatsinks would be child's play to machine. I'm not so sure about the heatpipe itself, I'm not at all familiar with the technology ( i.e. what's in those pipes?).

this picture is upside down, btw...
Although the technology really seems to work, the implementation seems intuitively FUBAR to me. Those massive heatsinks would appear to trap a lot of heat between them. Perhaps if you made a heatsink to fit the video card CPU but ran the heatpipe off the side and rotated the main heatsink 90 degrees (vertical instead of horizontal) you could achieve superior results with no fan assist.
Just a thought.

I'm not really sure how much further I can go with straight air cooling.
I might repeat the burnin test disabling one fan at a time and see just how far I can go. It's possible that the blowhole fan (roof) and the front case fan are unnecessary, or at least not critical. All in all though, I am very pleased with the results so far.