Zeus

[x88x]

Originally Posted by artoodeeto

Should we be alarmed at the box of matches next to the case?

Hahaha, I didn't even notice those. I lost my lighter, so I was using those to light my butane torch for working with the heatshrink tubing.

Does anyone have experience with the 45nm Penryn CPUs? I'm really curious as to why I'm not getting lower temps on this, almost to the point of pulling the waterblock off and redoing the thermal paste just to make sure everything's good.

[artoodeeto]

If only there was a way to run the cooling system pipes thru the fridge...
It's been years since I last ran a WC setup, but from my experience the temps I got weren't remarkably low, they were just stable and the load temp wasn't much different than the idle. Checking the thermal grease might be a good idea, and also make sure there aren't any air bubbles in your water tubes (I'm sure you would have heard them by now if there were any).
Would it work to use automotive coolant instead of water, for better heat absorbtion?

[Airbozo]

Originally Posted by artoodeeto

If only there was a way to run the cooling system pipes thru the fridge...

It's easy.

The hard part is missing any pipes or wires when drilling the holes for the tubes. I converted an old refrigerator to handle my keg and tap and was able to drill the hole without hitting anything. It so happened that one of my friends used to work at an appliance repair store and he was able to pull up the technical manual on my 'fridge to show me where the cooling pipes and wires were run.

Another friend (who is part of our beer brewing circle) just cut a hole in the gasket around the door and ran his tubing through that. A little silicone around the tube and no leaks...

[x88x]

Originally Posted by artoodeeto

I got weren't remarkably low, they were just stable and the load temp wasn't much different than the idle.

I haven't seen what my new load GPU temps are, but moving from my old WC setup with 2 120mm rads to the new one adding a 120.3, my GTX260's idle temp got almost cut in half. That's why I was so surprised to see that my CPU idle temps only went down about 5-10C.

Originally Posted by artoodeeto

Checking the thermal grease might be a good idea, and also make sure there aren't any air bubbles in your water tubes (I'm sure you would have heard them by now if there were any).

I think all the air has come out by now. Between letting it run for a couple days, letting it sit for a day, and flipping it over every now and then during the process, I think they're all out. At least, I'm not getting any more air floating up to my fillport anymore.

Originally Posted by artoodeeto

Would it work to use automotive coolant instead of water, for better heat absorbtion?

Actually, I'm using Feser One's black non-conductive fluid atm; idk what the difference in heat transfer is from regular water though.

[SXRguyinMA]

straight distilled water absorbs heat much more efficiently than it does when mixed with antifreeze. the antifreeze is there for just that...to keep the water from freezing. Most race teams use a combo of distilled water and water wetter (to lubricate the water pump seals) as it absorbs heat much better than antifreeze does. well that and if it spills in a crash water doesnt make the track nearly as slick as antifreeze does.

If I had the time I'd like to empty my loop (currently filled with thermaltakes coolant, used for the UV green effect) and replace it with straight distilled water and see if it makes any difference with the temps

[x88x]

I use the Feser One stuff mainly because it's non-conductive. That way on the off chance that there is a leak/spill, I don't have to worry about it shorting stuff out. I know pure distilled water is also non-conductive, but in the case of a spill, it's not gonna stay distilled very long.

[SXRguyinMA]

lol true. I know the thermaltake stuff i'm running is non-conductive as well, just a little added peace of mind incase I happen to spring a leak

[x88x]

Well, it's taken probably about 6 hours of research, 3-4 hours of work, and 3 computers, but I finally have both Vertex drives flashed to the 1.41 firmware, wiped, RAID'ed, and Win 7 installed.

More updates as I work stuff out.

[SXRguyinMA]

dang all this makes me want to forget going to SSDs anytime in the forseeable future lol

[x88x]

Hahaha, well, the performance gain is definitely worth it, and it wouldn't have been anywhere near the pain it was if a) I weren't a perfectionist, and b) I were working with different hardware. I wanted to start out fresh, with as clean a drive as possible, so according to an official guide on OCZ's website, that means I needed to run their special wiping program on each drive both before and after flashing the firmware. So, to do that, I needed a working system that was running on something not one of the SSDs. So, I dug out my last remaining free SATA HDD, and installed Vista 32-bit on it (some of the apps have issues with 64-bit...). However, once I had pulled any data I needed off the SSD that I had been using, then ran their program on it, I tried to boot their firmware flashing disc, and after a long time researching and trying different stuff, I determined that something about my MBB was making it fail.... So, I head over to another (older) system, and the flashing works on there... So, back and forth between those two for a while, and I finally had clean, fresh drives. (For anyone who was counting, yes, that's only 2 computers. The third one was my laptop with the instructions on it...).

I will say though, that because the technology is still fairly immature, running SSD(s) is still a bit of a pain, but if you want to squeeze as much performance as possible out of your system, it is very much worth it.