Eating my own words...

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Hey all

Some of you will no doubt have been wonder where the heck I have been for the last few weeks. :s

Truth to tell, after the staff shake-up at IVAO-GB, I thought I'd take a little time away from the division and play Doom 3 to completion, but that idea went belly up at the end of last month when the watercooling system I was using popped a leak and fried my mobo (and only the mobo, somehow)

The new mobo took a couple of weeks to get here (thanks Dabs.com), but the new watercooling bits needed to arrive from the States (and Koolance/Tekheads were dragging their heels...) Anyhow, a lovely big parcel turned up at work this morning with all the bits to (mostly) redo my entire watercooling rig (only bits that I'm keeping are the reservoir/pumps and the radiator, and I'm only keeping the radiator 'cause I couldn't afford a new snazzy one from Tekheads)

Hopefully, by Sunday evening I'll have a working Windows PC - my b'day tommorrow, so I'll not be doing very much PC rebuilding...

[EHM-1358 Tim]

I said to my friends at school, if I was to play Doom 3 i would put it on my laptop and then play it on the toilet. But for some stupid reason ive decided to get the game!;D

[EHM-1464 Andrew]

water cooling... insane.. one of the reasons i may buy a new desktop computer.. so i can have all the crazy extras...

what system are you running that needs such intense cooling?

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Originally posted by andycb
water cooling... insane.. one of the reasons i may buy a new desktop computer.. so i can have all the crazy extras...

what system are you running that needs such intense cooling?

Ain't going to start down the "liquid cooling is brill, and here's why" road again, especially after this incident, but I'm sticking with it, and that's good enough for me.

As for specs, long before woe and gnashing of teeth of the last month, it was a dual Athlon 1900+ (with SCSI HDs and a big-ass GFX card) that was kicking out enough heat to keep the front room warm all by itself, and the house I was living in at the time was bleedin' warm, especially in summer, so I got a Koolance PC2-601 (the first run beige Koolance cases).

'Bout a year ago, I swapped out the dual mobo for a KT6-delta and the SCSI HDs for a faat IDE drive, but never bothered to "fix" the liquid cooling for the new mobo (cutting out the unnecessary cooling blocks, replacing the coolant). Some wierd stressing went down between then and now, causing one of the two CPU blocks to slowly leak liquid all over the northbridge, hence dead KT6-Delta.

As mentioned, I'm replacing coolant, blocks and hoses with the current generation of Koolance kit, which Koolance themselves admit works a million times better that the old stuff I had.

[EHM-1464 Andrew]

do you just use water in the system or is it a special coolant?

[EHM-0641 Rico]

Murray, Are you still with the GB-Division ??

[EHM-1358 Tim]

Yes I think he his.

[EHM-0962 Zhen Yi]

Nice to see you back Murray!

Hmm......Athlons usually don't give out much heat.......not too sure about older versions like yours though........maybe you just need to ventilate your system better!

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Wee... Lots of posts to reply to... Weekend was (understandably) a bit hectic so I'm answering this from work during my lunch (when I'd normally be playing Traffic Giant Gold, I might add...). And good news is the beast is running happily (and d**n cool with the new water blocks...)

do you just use water in the system or is it a special coolant?

It's a water based coolant that Koolance pre-mix and ship in a plastic pack. If you are aware of adverts for feminine hygene products, it looks like the infamous blue liquid (and glows really brightly under UV light...)

Murray, Are you still with the GB-Division ??

I'm still with IVAO-GB, but no longer staff. As I get things back to normality, I'll start controlling again; and if I can still use the old IVAP I'll fly as well...

Hmm......Athlons usually don't give out much heat.......

Do they scud! The heat profile of the Athlon product line is higher than that of the equivalent Pentium product line (and always has been). Personally, I can't wait for the 90nm Athlon 64s to ship, as they'll drop the heat output hugely...

[EHM-0962 Zhen Yi]

I have to disagree on this......older Athlon lines do run hotter than their pentium line equivalent but in recent times it's been the opposite with the pentium line running scorching hot (higher GHz Pentiums that is) and the AMD line running much cooler.....still it's good to hear that the heat output will drop further Any news when those chips are coming out?

[EHM-0654 Murray]

I'll have to be a little more careful about what I'm saying in future... Zhen Yi mate, you were right and I apologise for thinking otherwise...

I've been looking for comparative benchmarks between the socket A Semprons and their clock-for-clock AthlonXP  brothers, and while I've yet to find one, I did come across Tom's Hardware's comparison between the Sempron and the Celeron, and they confirm that the heat differential is most definitely lower for the Sempron...