You think you\'ve got problems...

[EHM-0654 Murray]

On Thursday night/Friday morning (I was downloading the EVE-online client overnight) my main FS PC (a Koolance PC2 water cooled monstrosity with the current generation cooling blocks) turned itself off. When I turned it back on before leaving for work on Friday it went into CPU overheat protection mode (reached 50deg C) in under a minute and again shut itself down. Given I have my (currently) 3 PC's in a stack, I left it off and ignored the problem until this morning, when I discovered that one of the hose lugs on the water resovoir has sheared off entirely and there is almost no coolant left in the cooling loop any more! :[

Luckily (always try to see the bright side...) there is nothing remotely electronic anywhere near to the resovoir, I needed to drain it down to add the GFX card cooling block, and it was due a change of cooling fluid any how. Once I replace the resovoir and coolant (on order from the States... shipping is costing more than the parts to get them to me ASAP), I should have a fully working system again, but basically I am grounded until the replacement parts arrive and I can fit them...

[EHM-1343 Jonathan]

Ouch, unlucky, you should invest in a PC that doesn't overheat, water and electric don't mix lol!

[EHM-1617 Iain]

Watercooling is great when it works, but not so great when it doesn't work.

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Originally posted by Razza
Ouch, unlucky, you should invest in a PC that doesn't overheat, water and electric don't mix lol!

Yes they do Jonathan, I've mixed water and 'leccy before - only cost me a mobo

Anyway, lest we forget, when it is all working (which it had been for more than two years before the last disaster, which was my own fault...) I can get a constant coolant temperature of 30deg C (3200+ CPU and Northbridge only for those figures, I haven't run with the GPU in the loop as well yet) with the case fans and my main radiator fans (I modded the radiator to have a pair of 120mm's underneath blowing upward) turned to MIN on the fan bus I added; that only leaves the three Koolance fans above the radiator sucking the air out of the case and they are pretty quiet most of the time...  Like Iain says, great when it's working...

My next big step will be to replace the Koolance water-based coolant all together, and use a chemically and electrically inert liquid super coolant (3M fluorinet, if I can find a UK supplier for it...)

[EHM-1657 Jay]

A friend of mine years ago mucked around with liquid nitro, NOT good, I will leave it at that :s

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Originally posted by JayKae
A friend of mine years ago mucked around with liquid nitro, NOT good, I will leave it at that :s

Hahaha!

All the tests I've read of using liquid gases say don't do it - they're just too cold and damage the CPU before it gets a chance to warm  up enough...

[EHM-1539 Pierre]

Be a Caldari in Eve-online, they know a lot about electronics

[EHM-1627 Chris]

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20031230/index.html

This is what happened when the guys at toms hardware had a go at nitrogen coooling, i have seen one of their vids and the processor was at like, -50deg c!!!

NO that's cold

If your mobo keeps shutting down then adjust the BIOS so as it doesn't...although this could mean that your processor will pop!!!



In the shop where i work, on of the guys forgot to put the heatsink ect onto the board (he was trying to do like 7 things) and suddenly the shop started to smell!!!  the processor fried itself in under 10 secs!!!

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Originally posted by C_Blyth
If your mobo keeps shutting down then adjust the BIOS so as it doesn't...although this could mean that your processor will pop!!!

Chris,

Exactly... It's a safety feature built into the Koolance controller board that cuts all power (I won't explain the intricacies of the Koolance W/C hardware...) if the monitored CPU temp reaches 50deg C. I'm really gratefull that it does, means my CPU will be fine once I get the parts from the 'States...

While it's all off and upside down (to keep the few CC's remaining coolant in the radiator) I'll grab some pics for you'se all...

[EHM-0654 Murray]

As promised, and sorry for the quality; my Fuji needs a charge before I can use it, so these two were taken with my new phone (2Mpixel camera, but I haven't played with the quality settings yet, and it's "raw" JPG settings are clearly sucky...) I've rotated them so that the machine is the right way up (as if it were being used)

First shot is one of those general, "middle of the case" shots (and it looks cr4p when it's all powered down...). If you look carefully, you can see the two terminating points on the cooling loop (one of them is a connector on the GFX card...) Not only is the cooling loop clearly visible, but my lovely 2x512MB Corsair memory sticks as well...



Second shot shows the bottom of the 120mm fans under the radiator. They (along with the three 80mm fans above the radiator) provide the primary heat exchange. Otherwise, not much to say about this (other than the yellow zip ties holding everything together can be seen )

[EHM-1539 Pierre]

Geek

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Thank you.
 

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Woohoo! In quite the fastest shipping I have ever encountered (worth every penny I can now safely say...) my FS PC is back up and running, and I have a couple more shots of it for you.

First off, a shot of the core of the mobo, only running this time (told you it was better powered up):



And secondly, a shot of the temp readout:



That's with an Athlon XP 3200+, my mobo Northbridge, and an MSI 6800GT AGP on the cooling loop, after having run 3DMark'03 (9961 marks was the result, but I left everything running) with all the additional fans turned down to min on my fanbus.

And that, my friends, is why I am happy to use water cooling, even if it does cause the occasional heartache...

[EHM-1627 Chris]

wow 32degs...nice....yeah my Athlon XP 2000+ runs at 42, although the fan is so clogged with much, it's unbelivable...will try and take some shots of my PC to show you...was really good about 2 years ago...it's in need of a serious upgrade!!!

When i have the time....And Money!!