Any watercooling gurus out there?

[Guest]

My setup:
ECS K7S5A Mobo
1.4Ghz Athlon @1500Mhz (10.5x142.7)
300 Watt Generic PSU

I know Athlons run hot. When I first got mine it had the stock fan that came with it and was running at 62C. I deceided to go to watercooling because I want to overclock. I bought a 2Cool Computer Aluminum Water Block and a mini fridge (the type you put under a bar). The fridge came with a cooler tray that holds 1 gallon of water. Filled it up and pluged it in and let it sit over night. Next morning water temp was 34F/1.1C and air temp in the fridge was 30F/-1.1C. After attaching the block and tubing etc., I fired it up. Heres the problem. My CPU is back up to 60C after 2 hours of running and the water temp in the fridge is up to 70F/21.1C. Case temp is 30C. My submerged pump moves 125 GPH. Any suggestions on why everything is so warm? Is it:

A:Not a large enough volume of water so its heating up quickly?

Bump moving the water too fast through the system so it does not have enough time to cool efficiently?

C:All of the above and/or something else entirely?

Also the room that my computers are in is very warm even with AC on. Between 75F at night and 80-90F during the day. Although with a virtually closed watercooling system I don't think this would influence it too much.

Any suggestions/help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[mark_h]

seems very odd that water temp is 21c & cpu is @ 60c
i would first look at seating of waterblock
are you usins shims ect???
what thermal paste are you using???
i dont think its the pump moving to much water cos im running a open system & cpu temp is hardly affected by flow rate (iv'e tried lots of different settings)
and if the waters @ 21c its getting cooled pretty well

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not using any shims. Any advice on using them? Will they help? As for thermal paste I'm using a generic type. I don't think its very good. I've considered getting Artic Silver II. I think the water block is seated fairly well. I cranked down the bolts and don't want to push them any more for fear of cracking the chip. But the block won't wiggle at all. Any good way of knowing if its seated evenly, etc.?

Thanks for your help.

 

[CALV]

I recently went watercooled, Im not using a fridge though
I have 80 litres of water, and my 1 gig athy @ 1400 heats that up!!!!, not by a lot, but about 5C or so during a day, its not the ambient temperature raising it as I tested it overnight too, so the small amount of water you have will probably be the problem, try it with more water, even without the refrigerator and monitor the water temp to confirm. My pump is also rated higher, 1250 ltrs/hour which is 264 gallons (imp) or 317 gallons (US). my waterblock is COLD to the touch right now, water temp is 21.2C and cpu temp is 34C, I documented the whole project on <A HREF="http://www.calvsplace.cwc.net" target="_new">my site</A> it may give you an idea or two.


Next time you wave - use all your fingers

 

[killall]

badly attached waterblock or just one which is plain bad

if in doubt blame microsoft...

 

[mark_h]

just another thought check you hav'nt got an airlock in the waterblock(is it lower than your water supply)
shims dont help cooling but they do take away any doubt that your heatsink is sitting squarly
but as you've got a bolt down you wont have a problem if all the bolt are evenly tightend

 

[Guest]

Well gentlemen thank you for your assistance. But unfortunately things have gone from not so good to absolutely horrible. I tried all mentioned solutions, except shims, and the last time I was attaching the waterblock I snaped off the middle hook on the ZIF. So I then deceided to mount the bar cross cornered on the ZIF. It actually worked. Fired of the machine, went into Windows 2000 and everything was fine. Left the room, came back and blue screen of death. Machine won't even go into BIOS now and nothing appears on the screen. Wasn't sure what component had failed so I started to swap each piece out with my other working ECS K7AMA 1.4GHZ T-Bird. Hard drive was fine, memory was fine, then tried the video card of the now dead machine and it didn't work. I thought great I've narrowed it down. Then put my original video card BACK into my K7AMA and it won't work now either. I've cleared the BIOS and still get nothing. Nothing shows up on the monitor. The fans run, and I can hear the hard drive running but nothing on the screen. So I basically went from 2 functioning 1.4GHz to none. Any suggestions? Thanks again for all the previous help and for any future help.

 

[garett]

is your k7ama post beeping when you turn it on?

before trouble shooting any further, i would suggest unhooking your HD from the power supply to prevent it from being damaged by all that hard clicking when you turn it on.