We’ve already proven that we’re not afraid to risk a little “free hardware” to prove a point, and we’re completely familiar with methods that would have prevented condensation from accumulating in fragile areas. These methods include painting the entire board with nonconductive sealant, sealing the entire area around the CPU with nonconductive putty such as kneaded eraser, and filling the LGA with dielectric grease. Unfortunately, most of these solutions cannot be completely removed from the motherboard. While we only needed our system to run for 12-hour intervals, we do recommend most of these precautions for extended use.

The one drop of water that stopped the system had left a trail, starting at the evaporator and running past the round hole in the foam barrier, down the side of our CPU socket, and into the Land Grid Array (LGA). Nonconductive putty was added to fill the gap between the CPU’s heat spreader and socket’s pressure plate.

A new layer of tape seals the CPU area to the reinstalled, custom-cut foam layers. The foam sheet with the round hole was reinstalled over this tape.

A bead of putty fills the space between the evaporator’s mounting block and top foam sheet. These minor changes allowed our system to run eight, but not the full twelve hours between dry-offs.
Removing the CPU after an eight-hour test session revealed drops of condensation on each of its 1366 contact pads. Air circulating under the CPU was the problem, and that problem can be solved by filling the LGA with dielectric grease. Petroleum jelly makes an adequate substitute for dielectric grease when used at moderate to low temperatures, such as those experienced with sub-ambient CPU cooling systems.
As seen in our 2008 Overdrive Competition, applying putty around the CPU socket is another option to further prevent air from getting underneath it. Unfortunately, voltage regulator chokes immediately adjacent to the socket of the motherboard we used today would have severely obstructed such work.
- Cooling Comes Full Circle
- The Compressor Returns
- The Test Platform
- Cooler Express Installation, By-The-Book
- Insulation Installation
- Just Add...Water?
- Reworking The Installation
- Basic Overclocking
- Reaching The Goal
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: 3D Games
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: Synthetics
- Power And Efficiency
- Victory At Last?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i3-gaming,2588.html
For the CPU to become the choking point, you need the GPU to be extremely powerful. Tom's Hardware formerly used unrealistic tests like Half Life 2 at 640x480 just to prove the CPU performance difference in games, but the fact that nobody used those settings eventually lead to the discontinuation of that testing method.
Did you mean Corsair?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i3-gaming,2588.html
For the CPU to become the choking point, you need the GPU to be extremely powerful. Tom's Hardware formerly used unrealistic tests like Half Life 2 at 640x480 just to prove the CPU performance difference in games, but the fact that nobody used those settings eventually lead to the discontinuation of that testing method.
There was a thread several months ago comparing the Intel Vs AMD platforms regarding the graphic card bottleneck. Suprising enough Intel cpus capped at a certain overclock where as AMD did not, eventually becoming faster FPS but required a much higher clock speed. It was determined that Intel has a limit on pcie bandwidth. Good luck finidng it, its probably over 6 months old.
back to the arcitle, very interesting, and extremely expensive to even consider doing something like this.
Add in the cost and time required to set this type of thing up as well as coating the MB ... lol, I don't even want to think about actually trying to go this extreme.
Water is good for me, and if I want extreme, I will wait till winter and throw my radiator out the window while its freezing outside and pump antifreeze through it lol.
Nope coolmaster has a whole line of PSU's... they are decent and perhaps compareable to Corsair for albeit a slightly lower price point. But Oc'ing to 5.ghz and above is really crazy stuff here. I am actually happy with 3.0 and above already stock but damn, I dont think i would like to tax my system to 5.0 and above, regardless of cooling! It would cost more, but I do see the sport of it and commend those that take time to reach 5.0 and above figures with regular water cooled systems.
The article specifically states that the "added expense" figures are based on the 480W it takes to run the cooler. It assumes you're already planning to use the rest of the system at whatever speed you can get WITHOUT the cooler, and tells you how much MORE it costs to use the cooler. I think its fairly well explained, but feel free to point out any specific spot I missed, thanks!
Phenoms can reach that, why would you overclock an Athlon II anyway? This is a little pointless toms had to disable hyper-threading. Effectively killing off I'd say 45% of the CPUs juice. Im already running my Phenom II X6 @ 4.5GHz on water cooling. It runs everything vary well and with the money I saved on the CPU, I got 5850s in crossfire. All in a Micro ATX case...
I'm sure Tom's have 2 x 5970 at their disposal and if they don't, just don't start to work if you don't have the proper tools. Cause the quality (results) will disapoint. Come on... I know there are Tom's fanboys on this website, which is understandable, but bottlenecking a stock 980X with a 5850 and then making graphs with how FPS don't change if you increase the frequence is just... sad.
There's a nice German fellow working on a 5 stage cascade at xtremesystems, too bad its taken him over a year and a half without completion. Tom's should go ninja it from him when he finishes and bench a i7-980x and a Atom N270.
Too many of hese 32nm melting below 1.4V (Highest I tried on air for my i7-920 was 1.55V).
however the price/performance/convenience factor completely obliterates the result ... as was expected ...