E4300 and 650i overclocking

"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Phil Weldon wrote:
'~misfit~' wrote:
Ahh, OK. having done some research I now know that diamonds are
*very* thermally conductive. I only hope that your paste has a high
percentage of diamonds to carrier. Maybe you could heat it and hope
that the diamonds settle? Probably not at that size.

Anyway, good luck. :-)
Glad to hear from you.

Thanks. I check this group infrequently these days but always read your
posts. :-)

Having tried butter as a thermal grease, I
guess I'm willing to try anything B^)

Hehee! Yeah, I'm familiar with your TIM experiments.

Diamond is extraordinarily
conductive for heat (also, unfortunately, diamond is also very
conductive electrically.) If I remember correctly, there are two
axes for thermal conduction, the less conductive axis is about twice
as conductive as copper and the more conductive axis is about seven
times as conductive as copper. With random orientation that is still
going to be at least twice as conductive as silver (or so I suppose.)
Diamonds for machining have really dropped in price; at McMaster-Carr
(which is NOT a low cost tool and material supply house), a one carat
diamond, mounted for use in shaping surface grinder wheels, is less
than $65 US. The fine stuff for lapping should be even cheaper, so
five grams should have quite a bit of diamond powder. I'd guess that
the major expense is separating the particles by size. The finest
grade is likely TOO fine. But for $7 US, I'm willing to try it.
Graphite didn't work out well for me, but maybe diamond will show
promise. Then there's the possibility that the oil based carrier
will be to thin. I've just looked at the Intel boxed retail E4300,
and it comes with thermal compound already applied to the heatsink.
Evidently these Core 2 Duos have MUCH flatter and smoother surfaces
than past CPUs. The amount of compound is so small that not only
will the coverage be translucent, it will be darn near invisible.

I do plan to test the 'diamond grease' in a jig before I consider
using it on a CPU.

Wise move. I hope it pans out for you, fortune favours the brave they say.
:-)

The motherboard is so densely packed that anything short of chilling
the entire case volume is going to be tricky, especially since there
are FOUR heatsinks in addition to the CPU heatsink; two chipset
heatsinks connected by a heat pipe and using a fan and two DC-DC
voltage converter-regulator strip heatsinks without fans. And then
there are the memory heatsink. All will need adequate airflow.

Yeah, with the amount of heat being produced in a modern, 'power-spec' PC,
you need the equivalent of a hurricane passing through your case.

I agreed with Ed Medlin about the power requirements and picked up an
Antec 550 Neo HE ( three 12 VDC rails, 18 Amps each) at a CompUSA
going out of business sale.

Nice!

If this turns into a blog, just shoot me ... please.

Hehee! I thought I was the only one who thinks blogs are for perverse
extroverts.

Please, keep us informed of your progress. It's good to hear from someone
who knows what they're doing rather than dreamers or rich-kid
guess-and-hope guys. g

BTW, for some reason I LOL'ed when I read you say this in another post:

"My memory arrived a few minutes ago...."

Just struck me as funny. shrug

Good luck with the build.

Regards,
--
Shaun.
hehehe...........I thought about saying something about that too Shaun. The
only problem is that when you get to our age it seems that our memory always
arrives a bit late.......:-)


Ed

Ed Medlin wrote:
"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Phil Weldon wrote:
BTW, for some reason I LOL'ed when I read you say this in another
post: "My memory arrived a few minutes ago...."

Just struck me as funny. shrug

Good luck with the build.

Regards,
--
Shaun.
hehehe...........I thought about saying something about that too
Shaun. The only problem is that when you get to our age it seems that
our memory always arrives a bit late.......:-)

Indeed it does Ed. Oh well, as long as it arrives eh? :-)
--
Shaun.

Phil Weldon wrote:
'Ed Medlin' wrote:
Lets see........Wife and I are going to the Corrales vs Clottey
boxing match next Sat. Since it is a Showtime fight, tickets and
parking costs are close to an E6600........LOL..........BTW, I
think I am going to go the E6600 route in a couple weeks probably
starting with air cooling and then water. Maybe we can compare some
benches and see how it all works out. Something tells me that you
might win out if only in the cooling area. It will be an
interesting project anyway.
_____

It'd be great to learn from each other in this experiment. I'm
looking forward to it. Perhaps others will join in.

Well, I've been looking some more, and figure I'll be going the Intel 965
way... Mainly financial reasons ;-) Also, I read the NVidia chipsets use way
more power than the Intels do. Performance of the 680i *is* better, but
nearly immeasurably so.

*The shortlist*:
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 S775 I965P ATX
CPU: Intel CORE 2 DUO E4300 1.8GHZ
Memory: Kingston 2GB 800MHZ DDR2 LOW-LATENCY CL4
Video: Asus EN8800GTS/HTDP/320M GF8800GTS
DVD+-RW: Samsung DVD+-R/RW/DL/RAM/LS SATA BULK
PC case: Antec ATLAS EC: ATLAS EC 550W (truepower) ATX
Harddisk: Seagate BARRACUDA 7200.10 320GB SATAII

All this for just short of 1000 euro's. I can order it at one supplier here
in the netherlands.

Any remarks?

--
Met vriendelijke groeten, Thomas vd Horst.

"Thomas" wrote in message
.. .
Phil Weldon wrote:
'Ed Medlin' wrote:
Lets see........Wife and I are going to the Corrales vs Clottey
boxing match next Sat. Since it is a Showtime fight, tickets and
parking costs are close to an E6600........LOL..........BTW, I
think I am going to go the E6600 route in a couple weeks probably
starting with air cooling and then water. Maybe we can compare some
benches and see how it all works out. Something tells me that you
might win out if only in the cooling area. It will be an
interesting project anyway.
_____

It'd be great to learn from each other in this experiment. I'm
looking forward to it. Perhaps others will join in.

Well, I've been looking some more, and figure I'll be going the Intel 965
way... Mainly financial reasons ;-) Also, I read the NVidia chipsets use
way more power than the Intels do. Performance of the 680i *is* better,
but nearly immeasurably so.

*The shortlist*:
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 S775 I965P ATX
CPU: Intel CORE 2 DUO E4300 1.8GHZ
Memory: Kingston 2GB 800MHZ DDR2 LOW-LATENCY CL4
Video: Asus EN8800GTS/HTDP/320M GF8800GTS
DVD+-RW: Samsung DVD+-R/RW/DL/RAM/LS SATA BULK
PC case: Antec ATLAS EC: ATLAS EC 550W (truepower) ATX
Harddisk: Seagate BARRACUDA 7200.10 320GB SATAII

All this for just short of 1000 euro's. I can order it at one supplier
here in the netherlands.

Any remarks?

--
Met vriendelijke groeten, Thomas vd Horst.
I have been looking at I965 boards, but have decided to go with the NV650i
route instead. I really have no preference as far as performance or price
since they both are very close. One of the main reasons is that I would like
to see how the performance numbers add up using the E4300 (Phil) and the
E6600 (me) in overclocking. Using the same basic chipset would be comparing
apples to apples instead of apples to oranges. I am going to try and use
components as close as I can (maybe different brands) to his system just for
comparison. Your system looks very good for the price. It is hard to believe
that components have come down so much in price since my last build. I would
go with 4gigs and probably faster memory (for overclocking headroom), but 2
should work out fine. I will probably go with Vista sometime down the road,
but since I have an extra XP Pro here I will use that for now. Vista loves
extra memory and will use it. Keep us advised and we can compare some notes.


Ed

'Ed Medlin' wrote:, in part:
I have been looking at I965 boards, but have decided to go with the NV650i
route instead. I really have no preference as far as performance or price
since they both are very close. One of the main reasons is that I would
like to see how the performance numbers add up using the E4300 (Phil) and
the E6600 (me) in overclocking. Using the same basic chipset would be
comparing apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.
_____

I seem to have 'buck fever', I can't pull the trigger B^(

I've been prepping the case (Enlight server case, nine 5" bays and 1 3.5"
bay in the front panel, ~ 8.75" wide X 17.5" high X 25" deep), checking
component spacing, dressing cables, taking photos, finding technical
questions in the motherboard documentation. And finishing my taxes.

The front panel header for indicator LEDs and power switches has a different
connection for the Power LED. There are two side-by-side pins, one is for a
Power LED and the other is for a standby LED; the second terminal for each
LED must be grounded. My case has plenty of LED indicators in the front
panel (seven) but of course the Power LED connector from the front panel is
a three pin plug with pin 1 and pin 3 connected, one being ground.

With an SLI capable motherboard, when only one graphics board is installed
it must be in the left most PCI-Ex X16 slot. In the case of the EVGA 680i
motherboard this slot has one PCI slot between it and the left edge of the
motherboard. The fan on the EVGA 8800 GTS is then only about an inch from
the case bottom. I don't know the direction of the air flow, but it seems
that a new hole in the case bottom will be in order.

The present case fan complement is two 80 mm fans and one 120 mm fan.

One last observation; the ~ 150 page manual doesn't get around to the
connector and BIOS section until the halfway point. The first half is all
about the nVidia Windows software functions for over clocking. There are
nearly two dozen settable parameters for memory alone!

Enjoy.

Phil Weldon

"Ed Medlin" wrote in message
t...

"Thomas" wrote in message
.. .
Phil Weldon wrote:
'Ed Medlin' wrote:
Lets see........Wife and I are going to the Corrales vs Clottey
boxing match next Sat. Since it is a Showtime fight, tickets and
parking costs are close to an E6600........LOL..........BTW, I
think I am going to go the E6600 route in a couple weeks probably
starting with air cooling and then water. Maybe we can compare some
benches and see how it all works out. Something tells me that you
might win out if only in the cooling area. It will be an
interesting project anyway.
_____

It'd be great to learn from each other in this experiment. I'm
looking forward to it. Perhaps others will join in.

Well, I've been looking some more, and figure I'll be going the Intel 965
way... Mainly financial reasons ;-) Also, I read the NVidia chipsets use
way more power than the Intels do. Performance of the 680i *is* better,
but nearly immeasurably so.

*The shortlist*:
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 S775 I965P ATX
CPU: Intel CORE 2 DUO E4300 1.8GHZ
Memory: Kingston 2GB 800MHZ DDR2 LOW-LATENCY CL4
Video: Asus EN8800GTS/HTDP/320M GF8800GTS
DVD+-RW: Samsung DVD+-R/RW/DL/RAM/LS SATA BULK
PC case: Antec ATLAS EC: ATLAS EC 550W (truepower) ATX
Harddisk: Seagate BARRACUDA 7200.10 320GB SATAII

All this for just short of 1000 euro's. I can order it at one supplier
here in the netherlands.

Any remarks?

--
Met vriendelijke groeten, Thomas vd Horst.
I have been looking at I965 boards, but have decided to go with the NV650i
route instead. I really have no preference as far as performance or price
since they both are very close. One of the main reasons is that I would
like to see how the performance numbers add up using the E4300 (Phil) and
the E6600 (me) in overclocking. Using the same basic chipset would be
comparing apples to apples instead of apples to oranges. I am going to try
and use components as close as I can (maybe different brands) to his
system just for comparison. Your system looks very good for the price. It
is hard to believe that components have come down so much in price since
my last build. I would go with 4gigs and probably faster memory (for
overclocking headroom), but 2 should work out fine. I will probably go
with Vista sometime down the road, but since I have an extra XP Pro here I
will use that for now. Vista loves extra memory and will use it. Keep us
advised and we can compare some notes.


Ed

"Phil Weldon" wrote in message
link.net...
'Ed Medlin' wrote:, in part:
I have been looking at I965 boards, but have decided to go with the
NV650i route instead. I really have no preference as far as performance
or price since they both are very close. One of the main reasons is that
I would like to see how the performance numbers add up using the E4300
(Phil) and the E6600 (me) in overclocking. Using the same basic chipset
would be comparing apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.
_____

I seem to have 'buck fever', I can't pull the trigger B^(

I've been prepping the case (Enlight server case, nine 5" bays and 1 3.5"
bay in the front panel, ~ 8.75" wide X 17.5" high X 25" deep), checking
component spacing, dressing cables, taking photos, finding technical
questions in the motherboard documentation. And finishing my taxes.

The front panel header for indicator LEDs and power switches has a
different connection for the Power LED. There are two side-by-side pins,
one is for a Power LED and the other is for a standby LED; the second
terminal for each LED must be grounded. My case has plenty of LED
indicators in the front panel (seven) but of course the Power LED
connector from the front panel is a three pin plug with pin 1 and pin 3
connected, one being ground.

With an SLI capable motherboard, when only one graphics board is installed
it must be in the left most PCI-Ex X16 slot. In the case of the EVGA 680i
motherboard this slot has one PCI slot between it and the left edge of the
motherboard. The fan on the EVGA 8800 GTS is then only about an inch from
the case bottom. I don't know the direction of the air flow, but it seems
that a new hole in the case bottom will be in order.

The present case fan complement is two 80 mm fans and one 120 mm fan.

One last observation; the ~ 150 page manual doesn't get around to the
connector and BIOS section until the halfway point. The first half is all
about the nVidia Windows software functions for over clocking. There are
nearly two dozen settable parameters for memory alone!

Enjoy.


Fwiw, I have the EVGA 680i , along with the Core2 Duo E6600.
I really like this mb with all it's settings, and it has been very stable
for me since I put it together about 6 weeks ago.
I have mine running 3.24 ghz ( cpu default is 2.4), with no problems. I
could probably get it higher by upping the voltage, but am happy where it is
now. I am running the Zalman 9700NT heatsink/fan on it.
I also went with the faster PC8500 Corsair Extreme ram, and am glad I did,
it really likes running at 1066 mhz.



--
Don

I seem to have 'buck fever', I can't pull the trigger B^(

I've been prepping the case (Enlight server case, nine 5" bays and 1 3.5"
bay in the front panel, ~ 8.75" wide X 17.5" high X 25" deep), checking
component spacing, dressing cables, taking photos, finding technical
questions in the motherboard documentation. And finishing my taxes.

Yep.....That is what I am in the middle of too. I sure as hell wish I had
started earlier (say that every year).

The front panel header for indicator LEDs and power switches has a
different connection for the Power LED. There are two side-by-side pins,
one is for a Power LED and the other is for a standby LED; the second
terminal for each LED must be grounded. My case has plenty of LED
indicators in the front panel (seven) but of course the Power LED
connector from the front panel is a three pin plug with pin 1 and pin 3
connected, one being ground.

With an SLI capable motherboard, when only one graphics board is installed
it must be in the left most PCI-Ex X16 slot. In the case of the EVGA 680i
motherboard this slot has one PCI slot between it and the left edge of the
motherboard. The fan on the EVGA 8800 GTS is then only about an inch from
the case bottom. I don't know the direction of the air flow, but it seems
that a new hole in the case bottom will be in order.

Yea. They put out about as much heat as the C2D probably.

The present case fan complement is two 80 mm fans and one 120 mm fan.

One last observation; the ~ 150 page manual doesn't get around to the
connector and BIOS section until the halfway point. The first half is all
about the nVidia Windows software functions for over clocking. There are
nearly two dozen settable parameters for memory alone!

Enjoy.

Phil Weldon

With that amount of OC'ing settings I am going to take a very hard look at
them. The price is comparable to the Asus offerings I have seen. Asus has
been my choice in MBs over the years, but EVGA has made some good inroads. I
haven't decided on a case yet. My old Lian Li is going to remain housing my
current I630 3.0g @ 3.6 system. It has lived through probably 5 internal
systems and it is several years old. I have been looking at some cases that
have water cooling already built into them. Do you have any suggestions on a
water cooling system or ready-to-go cases? My old water cooling system is in
a drawer and all over the place. I need to get new tubing and probably add
at least 2-3 blocks so it is probably better, and even maybe cheaper to just
start anew. I even found a couple of Peltiers in there...:-). I doubt if I
will use them, but it is an option if I try and get crazy.......:-). I can't
find any markings on them, so I don't have any idea on their wattage or if
they even match. I do have an auxiliary PSU that I used with Peltiers in the
past that fits into a PCI slot that uses external power that I used with
Peltiers in the past. It even has a thermistor and will control fans' speed
and will run 2-3 case fans too. It is a neat little item that Thermaltake
made some 5-6 yrs ago for a short time.

Ed

'Ed Medlin' wrote, in part:
With that amount of OC'ing settings I am going to take a very hard look at
them. The price is comparable to the Asus offerings I have seen. Asus has
been my choice in MBs over the years, but EVGA has made some good inroads.
I haven't decided on a case yet. My old Lian Li is going to remain housing
my current I630 3.0g @ 3.6 system. It has lived through probably 5
internal systems and it is several years old. I have been looking at some
cases that have water cooling already built into them. Do you have any
suggestions on a water cooling system or ready-to-go cases?
_____

The manual for the nVidia chipset motherboards (at least in the case of
EVGA) seem to have a great advantage over the manuals for motherboards that
use other chipsets. nVidia evidently writes the manual. Consequently the
quality is much better. And the text does not seem to have been translated
back and forth among several languages. At least for those whose first
language speakers. I'd hope the much greater resources of nVidia also
result in better quality translations. Of course a few of the pitfalls of
technical writing still crop up. (The ASUS 650i motherboard manual seems
well written but is far less helpful.) nVidia also has overclocking manuals
available for download.

The April "Maximum PC" has a review of ten system cases in the $130 - $300
range, at least on of which has grommetted holes for water cooling tubes.
Convertible 19" rack mount server cases are very deep, leaving room for
placing the entire water cooling system within the case (that

When I move from air to water I'll a mix of components, most of which aren't
meant for CPU cooling. The only part I am dissatisfied with is the pump. I
have a Thermaltake water cooling system, I consider the radiator far too
small and the pump inadequate. I have three CPU water blocks ranging from
crude (drilled and tapped copper) to OK. I have two aquarium pumps with
much greater flow, but I don't like that the aquarium pumps are 120 VAC (but
still smaller than a fist.) Now that CPU power consumption has dropped I'll
consider using two air cooled Peltier arrays on either side of the
drilled/tapped copper water block with the cooled water pumped through the
CPU water block.

There is a very interesting connection system, 'Luer Lock'. The connectors
are used for liquid transfer (intravenous drips and syringe needles for
example.) A great variety is available; adaptors for plastic tubing,
valves, tees four-way connectors, manifolds, .... The 'lock' is very
positive and fluid tight, yet easy to engage/disengage. Unfortunately the
internal diameter for fluid flow is only ~ 1/8 inch. That may require
multiple tubes and/or higher pressures. At any rate I have dozens of these,
some pretty exotic.

Phil Weldon


"Ed Medlin" wrote in message
. net...
I seem to have 'buck fever', I can't pull the trigger B^(

I've been prepping the case (Enlight server case, nine 5" bays and 1 3.5"
bay in the front panel, ~ 8.75" wide X 17.5" high X 25" deep), checking
component spacing, dressing cables, taking photos, finding technical
questions in the motherboard documentation. And finishing my taxes.

Yep.....That is what I am in the middle of too. I sure as hell wish I had
started earlier (say that every year).

The front panel header for indicator LEDs and power switches has a
different connection for the Power LED. There are two side-by-side pins,
one is for a Power LED and the other is for a standby LED; the second
terminal for each LED must be grounded. My case has plenty of LED
indicators in the front panel (seven) but of course the Power LED
connector from the front panel is a three pin plug with pin 1 and pin 3
connected, one being ground.

With an SLI capable motherboard, when only one graphics board is
installed it must be in the left most PCI-Ex X16 slot. In the case of
the EVGA 680i motherboard this slot has one PCI slot between it and the
left edge of the motherboard. The fan on the EVGA 8800 GTS is then only
about an inch from the case bottom. I don't know the direction of the
air flow, but it seems that a new hole in the case bottom will be in
order.

Yea. They put out about as much heat as the C2D probably.

The present case fan complement is two 80 mm fans and one 120 mm fan.

One last observation; the ~ 150 page manual doesn't get around to the
connector and BIOS section until the halfway point. The first half is
all about the nVidia Windows software functions for over clocking. There
are nearly two dozen settable parameters for memory alone!

Enjoy.

Phil Weldon

With that amount of OC'ing settings I am going to take a very hard look at
them. The price is comparable to the Asus offerings I have seen. Asus has
been my choice in MBs over the years, but EVGA has made some good inroads.
I haven't decided on a case yet. My old Lian Li is going to remain housing
my current I630 3.0g @ 3.6 system. It has lived through probably 5
internal systems and it is several years old. I have been looking at some
cases that have water cooling already built into them. Do you have any
suggestions on a water cooling system or ready-to-go cases? My old water
cooling system is in a drawer and all over the place. I need to get new
tubing and probably add at least 2-3 blocks so it is probably better, and
even maybe cheaper to just start anew. I even found a couple of Peltiers
in there...:-). I doubt if I will use them, but it is an option if I try
and get crazy.......:-). I can't find any markings on them, so I don't
have any idea on their wattage or if they even match. I do have an
auxiliary PSU that I used with Peltiers in the past that fits into a PCI
slot that uses external power that I used with Peltiers in the past. It
even has a thermistor and will control fans' speed and will run 2-3 case
fans too. It is a neat little item that Thermaltake made some 5-6 yrs ago
for a short time.

Ed

Ed Medlin wrote:
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 S775 I965P ATX
CPU: Intel CORE 2 DUO E4300 1.8GHZ
Memory: Kingston 2GB 800MHZ DDR2 LOW-LATENCY CL4
Video: Asus EN8800GTS/HTDP/320M GF8800GTS
DVD+-RW: Samsung DVD+-R/RW/DL/RAM/LS SATA BULK
PC case: Antec ATLAS EC: ATLAS EC 550W (truepower) ATX
Harddisk: Seagate BARRACUDA 7200.10 320GB SATAII

All this for just short of 1000 euro's. I can order it at one
supplier here in the netherlands.

I have been looking at I965 boards, but have decided to go with the
NV650i route instead. I really have no preference as far as
performance or price since they both are very close. One of the main
reasons is that I would like to see how the performance numbers add
up using the E4300 (Phil) and the E6600 (me) in overclocking. Using
the same basic chipset would be comparing apples to apples instead of
apples to oranges. I am going to try and use components as close as I
can (maybe different brands) to his system just for comparison. Your
system looks very good for the price. It is hard to believe that
components have come down so much in price since my last build. I
would go with 4gigs and probably faster memory (for overclocking
headroom), but 2 should work out fine. I will probably go with Vista
sometime down the road, but since I have an extra XP Pro here I will
use that for now. Vista loves extra memory and will use it. Keep us
advised and we can compare some notes.

Thanks Ed. Well, I finally pushed the 'order' button... Your remarks, and a
very good review of the Asus P5NE-SLI (650i) made me sway in that direction.
Also, as I'm getting the 8800GTS, I now have the option of using SLI in the
future. Thanks for the heads-up!

About the memory, well, I'm still using XP, so for now, I'll stick to 2GB.
Let's see what the future holds!

Some components are on the waiting list, so it'll be about 2 weeks before I
can start the build. Can't wait ;-)

--
Met vriendelijke groeten, Thomas vd Horst.

'Core 2 Duo and 680i overclocking'

Or, things my mother never told me.

I have begun assemble my EVGA 680i motherboard / Intel Core 2 Duo system.
With this motherboard (and I imagine it is at least partially true for other
SLI motherboards)

(a.) when you use a single nVidia 8800 class display adapter
(1.) you lose one PCI slot (out of two)
(2.) the CMOS clear jumper can not be accessed without removing the
display adapter
(3.) the on-motherboard power and reset buttons can not be accessed
(4.) the CMOS battery can not be changed without removing the
display adapter
(5.) one of the chassis fan connections may no longer be usable

(b.) when you add a second nVidia 8800 class display adapter you lose one
PCI-Ex X1 slot (out of two)

(c.) the explanation for the Power LED in the EVGA 680i manual is WRONG;
the header is non-standard; two POWER LED pins are actually are set to
control TWO LEDs, one for POWER and one for STANDBY. Ground for the two
LEDs (or one) must be 'stolen' from another pin (I'll use the GROUND pin for
the HD LED and be thankful for a case that has extra indicator LEDs.

On-motherboard Ethernet ports and on-motherboard audio now seem like a
necessity rather than a luxury.

Phil Weldon

"Phil Weldon" wrote in message
hlink.net...
'Ed Medlin' wrote, in part:
With that amount of OC'ing settings I am going to take a very hard look
at them. The price is comparable to the Asus offerings I have seen. Asus
has been my choice in MBs over the years, but EVGA has made some good
inroads. I haven't decided on a case yet. My old Lian Li is going to
remain housing my current I630 3.0g @ 3.6 system. It has lived through
probably 5 internal systems and it is several years old. I have been
looking at some cases that have water cooling already built into them. Do
you have any suggestions on a water cooling system or ready-to-go cases?
_____

The manual for the nVidia chipset motherboards (at least in the case of
EVGA) seem to have a great advantage over the manuals for motherboards
that use other chipsets. nVidia evidently writes the manual.
Consequently the quality is much better. And the text does not seem to
have been translated back and forth among several languages. At least for
those whose first language speakers. I'd hope the much greater resources
of nVidia also result in better quality translations. Of course a few of
the pitfalls of technical writing still crop up. (The ASUS 650i
motherboard manual seems well written but is far less helpful.) nVidia
also has overclocking manuals available for download.

The April "Maximum PC" has a review of ten system cases in the $130 - $300
range, at least on of which has grommetted holes for water cooling tubes.
Convertible 19" rack mount server cases are very deep, leaving room for
placing the entire water cooling system within the case (that

When I move from air to water I'll a mix of components, most of which
aren't meant for CPU cooling. The only part I am dissatisfied with is the
pump. I have a Thermaltake water cooling system, I consider the radiator
far too small and the pump inadequate. I have three CPU water blocks
ranging from crude (drilled and tapped copper) to OK. I have two aquarium
pumps with much greater flow, but I don't like that the aquarium pumps are
120 VAC (but still smaller than a fist.) Now that CPU power consumption
has dropped I'll consider using two air cooled Peltier arrays on either
side of the drilled/tapped copper water block with the cooled water pumped
through the CPU water block.

There is a very interesting connection system, 'Luer Lock'. The
connectors are used for liquid transfer (intravenous drips and syringe
needles for example.) A great variety is available; adaptors for plastic
tubing, valves, tees four-way connectors, manifolds, .... The 'lock' is
very positive and fluid tight, yet easy to engage/disengage.
Unfortunately the internal diameter for fluid flow is only ~ 1/8 inch.
That may require multiple tubes and/or higher pressures. At any rate I
have dozens of these, some pretty exotic.

Phil Weldon


"Ed Medlin" wrote in message
. net...
I seem to have 'buck fever', I can't pull the trigger B^(

I've been prepping the case (Enlight server case, nine 5" bays and 1
3.5" bay in the front panel, ~ 8.75" wide X 17.5" high X 25" deep),
checking component spacing, dressing cables, taking photos, finding
technical questions in the motherboard documentation. And finishing my
taxes.

Yep.....That is what I am in the middle of too. I sure as hell wish I had
started earlier (say that every year).

The front panel header for indicator LEDs and power switches has a
different connection for the Power LED. There are two side-by-side
pins, one is for a Power LED and the other is for a standby LED; the
second terminal for each LED must be grounded. My case has plenty of
LED indicators in the front panel (seven) but of course the Power LED
connector from the front panel is a three pin plug with pin 1 and pin 3
connected, one being ground.

With an SLI capable motherboard, when only one graphics board is
installed it must be in the left most PCI-Ex X16 slot. In the case of
the EVGA 680i motherboard this slot has one PCI slot between it and the
left edge of the motherboard. The fan on the EVGA 8800 GTS is then only
about an inch from the case bottom. I don't know the direction of the
air flow, but it seems that a new hole in the case bottom will be in
order.

Yea. They put out about as much heat as the C2D probably.

The present case fan complement is two 80 mm fans and one 120 mm fan.

One last observation; the ~ 150 page manual doesn't get around to the
connector and BIOS section until the halfway point. The first half is
all about the nVidia Windows software functions for over clocking.
There are nearly two dozen settable parameters for memory alone!

Enjoy.

Phil Weldon

With that amount of OC'ing settings I am going to take a very hard look
at them. The price is comparable to the Asus offerings I have seen. Asus
has been my choice in MBs over the years, but EVGA has made some good
inroads. I haven't decided on a case yet. My old Lian Li is going to
remain housing my current I630 3.0g @ 3.6 system. It has lived through
probably 5 internal systems and it is several years old. I have been
looking at some cases that have water cooling already built into them. Do
you have any suggestions on a water cooling system or ready-to-go cases?
My old water cooling system is in a drawer and all over the place. I need
to get new tubing and probably add at least 2-3 blocks so it is probably
better, and even maybe cheaper to just start anew. I even found a couple
of Peltiers in there...:-). I doubt if I will use them, but it is an
option if I try and get crazy.......:-). I can't find any markings on
them, so I don't have any idea on their wattage or if they even match. I
do have an auxiliary PSU that I used with Peltiers in the past that fits
into a PCI slot that uses external power that I used with Peltiers in the
past. It even has a thermistor and will control fans' speed and will run
2-3 case fans too. It is a neat little item that Thermaltake made some
5-6 yrs ago for a short time.

Ed