The Watercooled PC Appreciation Thread...

[Munson]

Mine is plugged into a 6G SATA socket on the board, and works with or without the Marvel controller enabled, so I guess that means I'm using this ICH thingy? All I do know for sure is that it's SRS rapid. It boots and shutsdown quicker than anything I've seen, and Windows is amazingly snappy. Explorer feels like it's done working before I even let go of the mouse button. Definitely no questions about performance. Can't be arsed to benchmark it.

Anyway, it hasn't crashed now since the last time I posted that it had. Looking good. I'll leave it going all weekend as it is, and if it hasn't BSOD again by Monday, I'll load Steam up and wait. I'm convinced Steam is the issue for me now. Or a driver/process related to it, if you know what I mean.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Your boards ICH will have 6gb support mate, older 1156 boards and later 1366 boards will only have the 3rd party marvel controller...it's criminal how bad it is

 

[Gareth]

The Marvell controller is total sh*te, I lost my rag with it after it kept on f**king up the boot order and not knowing what drive to boot from despite it being set correctly in the BIOS.

 

[mantis946]

Will have to try on a new board, sadly my motherboard passed away today due to a faulty hex core lol pretty sure it's fried the CPU voltage controllers

 

[Munson]

Just in the interest of anyone who searched, and came across my BSOD issue (not that it was especially on topic)

It's not crashed for ages now. With or without Steam running. It seems that flashing the drive firmware and mobo BIOS has indeed fixed my problem. Not sure which one is to thank. Most likely the drive firmware, but quite probably a combination of the two.

The machine is now a flawless victory. Crazy performance and rock solid stable. Ripe for some proper overclocking way above this 4.4Ghz bulls**t.

 

[Silent_Scone]

In a new system it was only going to be that tbh...the old firmware was terrible

 

[Munson]

I know man I know. I've never really had such problems with any of my builds, so it became new territory for me. It's been fun beating it though

The plus side is that the Vertex 3 is stupid fast.

 

[mantis946]

Well I've since updated my setup, it isn't finished yet as I'm getting a new set of GPU's (3x 5770's scales badly and the noise is becoming an issue)

 

[Tez.]

I stopped building pcs 12 years ago and this stuff looks crazy .

all I know now is my PC is a dell all in one and I can put sd cards in the side awesome ! Lol

 

[Cliotoby]

I stopped building pcs 12 years ago and this stuff looks crazy .

all I know now is my PC is a dell all in one and I can put sd cards in the side awesome ! Lol

Lol. Job Fucken done.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Mantis, your MB is the worst thing I've ever used. I managed to blow mine up trying to hit 4.8ghz on my i7. There's not enough cooling on the VRM and it fails. Bin it!

 

[mantis946]

Mantis, your MB is the worst thing I've ever used. I managed to blow mine up trying to hit 4.8ghz on my i7. There's not enough cooling on the VRM and it fails. Bin it!

I'm running it stock on the I7 so I don't think it will be going bang any time soon

Cheer's for the heads up though !

 

[Silent_Scone]

Fair enough! If you can put a fan on the rear of the MB though I would!

 

[Cliotoby]

Id love to play with one of those I7 (2011) black edtion things. £800 a cpu, but major potential for OC's some people rekon 6GHz on air...

 

[Silent_Scone]

You won't hit 6ghz on air on an X79, ever. There are some massive design flaws with the chipset and it's probably not going to be current for long. The problem as I said earlier is the VRM is massively overloaded, and sometimes doesn't have sufficient cooling.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking they have a stable OC when actually they don't as the CPU is throttling down due to the VRM temperature in the background. Intel rushed production to hit dead lines for manufacturers and as a result it's pretty broken. Also to hit over 5Ghz you need to top 1.5v which is not happening on air

 

[Cliotoby]

Fair-nuff. Im still on an i5 750 running 4.2 on a closed water cooler. Does the job. Not sure if I should be upgrading though.

 

[Addicted]

I haven't taken any recent pictures but here's the latest loop design for me:

Ignore the cables for the fans and the cables on the right for my Aquaero 5 - these were tidied up and also topped up the reservoir - this was literally just after I installed it, leak tested and removed the bubbles!

Always wanted a second block on the second 5850, but the blocks are impossible to find for a decent price so I'll leave it until I upgrade - and currently there's no need to upgrade still!

 

[Gareth]

This is an up-to-date pic of mine:

It's very recently had a full flush, new fluid & tubing.

Are they EK fittings Addicted? The Bitspower 45's I have known to leak.

 

[Chapppers11]

What does overclock mean?

 

[Cliotoby]

What does overclock mean?

Like remapping a car. Gets more power out of it from a few tweaks.

 

[Silent_Scone]

This is an up-to-date pic of mine:



It's very recently had a full flush, new fluid & tubing.

Are they EK fittings Addicted? The Bitspower 45's I have known to leak.

You know you only have to change the fluid 6 to 12 months at a time don't you?

 

[Gareth]

Yes, it's been in there since it was built, I've flushed it completely and switched to EK liquid.

 

[The Fatty]

What does overclock mean?

its a term used for driving a bit of hardware past the specified operating limit. The most common overclocked hardware is the CPU and RAM, which is overclocked to a faster frequency by upping the voltage and increasing either the cpu multiplier or bus speeds. The side effects is that the hardware runs hotter and thus needs better cooling. It also reduces the life of the hardware and if done incorrectly can cause it to fail completely.

 

[Wilkeh]

You know you only have to change the fluid 6 to 12 months at a time don't you?

I've never changed mine and had it 2 years

 

[Silent_Scone]

if it doesn't have dye in it and is the right ratio you could get away with 2 years tbh. It's when you have the colouring in there that it degrades quickly. CBA with all that

 

[Wilkeh]

Nah it's all clear liquid. Pretty old style of pipes, like bendy black ones of some sort. I'm selling the system anyway so will just advise them to replace the fluid.

 

[Munson]

Sorry for the continued hijack, but those who had even a passing interest in my BSOD issue, may like to hear that the BSOD did actually persist.

In the end, it was fixed 100% by disabling the "turn off discs when possible" option.

 

[Addicted]

Are they EK fittings Addicted? The Bitspower 45's I have known to leak.

Yep all EK fittings, not a fan of the hype with Bitspower so go with what's practical Still cost well over £40 for them all .

I have another full set in Silver, but switched to black as I prefer them!

 

[Gareth]

EK fittings weren't out when i did mine, i've spent gods knows how much on Bitspower fittings, probably £200+

 

[mantis946]

Black and red is so much win ! I need to invest in a new card drastically, anybody have any recommendations ? Preferably an ATI, was thinking the 7850/7950.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Are you planning on going Crossfire?

If so I wouldn't bother and go with Nvidia. What's your budget? 660GTX is a good shout.

 

[mantis946]

I'd say anything up to £200 - I'd like the option of xfire in the future, however after using 3 cards - it will be two at most lol

 

[Silent_Scone]

Nvidia's 560 is a pretty good option, good bang for buck. I just can't recommend AMD cards to anyone as I hate crossfire

 

[Gareth]

I've started collecting parts for the 'rebirth' of my current system:

 

[kaz19880]

your pcs make mine look so outdated lol i do need a new case and would love to water cool but i cant see the point with my current amd fx8350 it doesnt get the abuse to need water cooling

my current case does have a massive 12" fan on the side with blue leds though

 

[mantis946]

Shame it's not practical.

 

[wozzaa]

The mayhems aurora stuff is fine to use, just got a shorter life and it's not compatible with certain pumps etc.

In the right system though, they say it will last 6 months.

 

[Gareth]

900D is finally ordered, so will be commencing my build from tomorrow, it's expected to take a little while but won't be 6 months like the last one, hopefully a month tops.

 

[wozzaa]

900D is finally ordered, so will be commencing my build from tomorrow, it's expected to take a little while but won't be 6 months like the last one, hopefully a month tops.

Been looking at the 900D, as an upgrade for my 800D then going for a dual loop set up.

Then saw the STH10 case today while browsing, not as nice as the corsair to look at. But a lot more options in terms of customising.

 

[Nickson]

900D is finally ordered, so will be commencing my build from tomorrow, it's expected to take a little while but won't be 6 months like the last one, hopefully a month tops.

Jealous.

The 900D is an awesome looking case.

On the verge of finishing up my watercooling build now.

A baby in comparison to some of yours!

I've got all of the parts, it is just taking some time to fit. Such as yesterday, fitting the 200mm rad in the front of a 650D was a pig! Dremel had to come out and a lot of material removed. Looks good though!

Res to mount next and need a block for my GFX card.

Rough spec..

EVGA x79 FTW
Intel Core i7 3930k
16GB Corsair Vengeance
GTX580 (Wanting another for some SLi fun).

Needing to mount my EK res + D5 pump and it is pretty much finished with regards to modding the case.
Everything else is just plug and play!