A Watercooling Test

[clocker]

Can you say hooray!!?
NM, I'll do it for you.

The last of the parts for my loop redesign finally arrived.
The replacement Neptune GPU block and a very cool reservoir showed up late Saturday.
Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication I wasn't aware they had come till just this morning, meaning that I lost my day off and won't be able to start working again till Wednesday.
Integrating the reservoir into the loop may be tricky and require some extra time/modification (in fact, right now it looks well nigh impossible) but I have two days to come up with a solution and it's not critical it be installed at all, so it may join my collection of interesting but not yet integrated parts.

Seems like I'm back on track again....

[Virtualbody1234]

Hooray!!

Miscommuncation? Sounds to me that you really wanted the day off.

[clocker]

Well, it was Easter and I had eggs to search for....

[clocker]

Well now.

At last, I finally have all the parts sitting before me and not one ounce of desire to actually play with them.

Work has been a total clusterfuck this last month...two people have left the shop so now there are only three of us carrying the load. It is sooo tiring dealing with the unrelenting pushiness and stupidity of the general public...every PC problem is a matter of utmost importance and every delay is an excuse to raise hell. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that my FUF (*Fuck You Fund*) is healthy enough that I could walk away at any time (although I am sorely tempted to dip into it and get the Dell 2405 I lust after...so far I've resisted).
Anyway, I've rearranged my schedule and now have two consecutive days off- Sunday and Monday.
This should make working on Sprocket much easier as I can start a project without having to complete it in just one afternoon (I do have "real life" stuff like cleaning, laundry, shopping, etc. that must be done as well, you know)...what a luxury.

So, today I'm going to begin preparing the new parts for installation (I might even leak test outside the case for a change!) and do the swap over the course of my next "weekend".
Along with the hardware changes there are also some cosmetic case improvements I want to make and having two days off in a row should make it possible to comfortably achieve it all.

K then...back to Hardware World stuff. (/bitch session)

So far, I'm lovin' 64bit XP...there have been some measurable performance gains (although Aquamark3 refuses to run at all so video performance is unmeasured as yet- I cannot bear to sit through 3DMark and watch it crawl) and stability has been excellent.



(WinRAR benchmark test...)

Because SMART info is not accessable through a RAID array I reinstalled without the array and have been monitoring the Raptor temps...they are fine, so I'll be reinstalling again later today and going back to the snappy performance that RAID provides.

Just thought I'd give ya'll a heads up about what's going on.

[lynx]

Pity you couldn't reach 3GHz.

[clocker]

I screwed up my calculations.
Damnit.

She's actually booted to the desktop at 3.3 GHz, but not at all stable.
This is probably due to my desire not to exceed 1.6v vcore.
Were I more adventurous I could prolly run 3.1 or so daily but don't see the point.
2.8-2.9 GHz whilst RAIDed seems like a sweet spot temp/stability-wise.

I've pretty much decided to hang on to this setup for a while...AM2 doesn't look too promising and Conroe would be too expensive, so I'm wary of trashing the CPU- she's a real sweetie for only $200.

[Virtualbody1234]

I've pretty much decided to hang on to this setup for a while...

[ApacNTS]

pics? must see the new sprocket in all her glory

[clocker]

The "new" Sprocket has not yet escaped gestation.
The parts are under construction/assembly/modification and I'm pondering the inclusion of the new (very cool) reservoir or whether to take the easy way out and simply keep the already installed (and quite practical) Swiftec minirez in place.

Pictures will follow.
Currently I am trying to get an Coolfontz 4x20 LCD to work...not having much luck as yet, dunno whether it's a problem working in the x64 environment or just something I'm failing to do properly.
Probably the latter.

[clocker]

Here's what's going on...
The new DDC pump with the high flow top installed...

You can see that this top allows the intake to be fed directly into the impellor, bypassing the restrictive standard intake channel. Pump output increases nearly 30% with this mod alone.
Next is the new reservoir...

About 10" tall and 3" in diameter, this is heavily finned aluminum (anodized to prevent galvanic corrosion) and sexy as hell IMO.

Now, what I'm thinking of doing is this...

Integrating the reservoir and the pump, eliminating two barbs and hose connections and greatly simplifying the loop in general. It may be possible to mount this internally- I can't really tell as yet.
The alternative would be to place it outside the case on the backplane.
The first option is neater but the second may be easier.

I have to strip out the current loop to get an idea of what might work the best...that should happen Sunday.

Decisions, decisions.