Well, I hope that everyone had a safe and happy holiday season so far.
I certainly have.
I have had family staying with me since Tuesday evening (they leave in two more days...*sigh*) and it's been a pleasure talking to my two nieces ( aged 20 & 17). I'm not sure that the pleasure was mutual, I probably bored them to death rambling on about my new obsession- computers.
And my plans to water cool my baby, Sprocket.
So much so in fact, that (probably to shut me up) while out shopping today they saw a H2O kit on sale at CompUSA and in a moment of sheer generousity they bought it for good ole Unka Clocker.
When they came back and gave it to me I was speechless....for two reasons.
Firstly, I thought it was incredibly sweet that they thought enough of me to get it and secondly, because it is the most reviled and despised water cooling kit on Earth...the infamous Thermaltake Aquarius II.
What's an old man to do?
Not wanting to kick a gift horse in the mouth, I grinned and thanked them and tucked it away, planning on trying to return it on Wednesday.
But noooo....
"Aren't you going to put it in? We wanna see it!"
" We're going out to see Mona Lisa Smile ( which neither hell nor high water could convince ME to see ), why don't you put it in while we're gone?"
Weeeellll, okay.
So much for returning it.
So I'm now a part of the watercooled elite.
The kit is definately low end...small radiator, low-flow pump ( take note Abu- the pump reservoir has a blue LED in it! and cheesy waterblock, but it all was relatively easy to fit. TT wants you to mount all the components (pump, reservoir and radiator) using high-strength magnets, which I simply could not force myself to do, so I had to improvise a bit.
Fortunately I'm a very clever boy and she's up and running as I type( obviously).
I need to run her in some and cycle the thermal paste a few times, but initial results are fairly amazing.
After 1 1/2 hours of Folding (100%) temps are stable at 31c.
I realize that these aren't trustworthy stats after such a short time, but I'm still surprised- I expected much worse.
Makes me want to find out what a real set up will do.
I have a family dinner coming up and probably won't do much more tonight ( well, at least for a hour or two) so I'll post pics tomorrow AM.
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