Aquarious II

[widget2003]

hello all, well i have a XP2400+ cooled by the Thermaltake Aquarious II and i was just wondering what part is limiting the Aquarious because im still getting rather high temps round 50-55C and i thought water cooling was supposed to be better then fans. is it the slow water movement due to weak pump or is it the radiator that isn't so good?? any thoughts would be appreciated thanks

[Bullion]

that watercooling kit is designed primarily for low noise operation. To mske sure that you are getting the most out of the kit ensure that the block is mounted correctly, I played with the mounting system on my kit its is extreemly tight now, truth be told it almost crushes my core, I get temps around 45 load, but my chips is clocked at 2.2volts and runs at 2400mhz (2100tbred b), and has a different radiator and a push pull configuration on fans.

[The Lodge]

From what I've read, that setup gives about the same cooling as a decent air setup. What are your voltages?

[widget2003]

the CPU voltage is stock 1.65V. 2.2V wow thats heaps, i bet that CPU wont last any more then a year or so lol nice work yeah im considering getting a better pump maybe 1200L/hour and a bigger radiator, i dont want or need rather very cold temps just under 50 load would be nice to have so about 7-8 degrees less would be less concerning

[The Lodge]

Those are definitely some high temps. When I had a 2400, the temps were like 39-42 degrees idle. And that was with the stock hsf, voltages and speed.

[Happy Joe]

It's been a while since I ran wet.. but here are some thoughts;
I found that you really need to know what the water temp is at various points to be able to trouble shoot watercooling. A medical thermometor can be a greate help here (they are cheapest in the baby section of places like walmart). you can read the relative temperature of the water going into and out of the water block and radiator by taping the thermometer to the outside of the hose and waiting for it to stabilise while runnig Prime or another program to make it work. A little foam insolation around the bulb and hose doesn't hurt either.
The water coming out of the radiator should be around room tempreature (within 5-10deg, hopefully within 2-3 deg) If it has only cooled a few degrees first try a higher flow fan (fans that blow through the radiator seem to work better than the ones that try to suck air through the radiator).
Remember; you can't get lower than the air temp that you are blowing through the radiator(if your room is 39C you cannot get your water cooler than 39C)(and your processor will probably be arround 45 C, or more).
At your temps the water comming out of the waterblock should be quite a bit warmer than the water going in. If the water comming out is too cool it indicates that you may have a problem with the thermal paste or you could have algae or corrosion issues (or a bubble) inside the waterblock.
Different brands of blocks and radiators have different effeciencies so I can't give you help on exactly what temps you should see.
I used to favor automobile heater cores as radiators.
Hope it helps...
Enjoy!

[widget2003]

oh my, i just found out my case temp and it reads 45C and that cant be cool at all but i have to buy a 120mm fan for the back to exhaust air out the back and there is currently a 80mm fan at the top extracting air out there and now i will convert that to another 120mm fan to get more air out. i will also put 2 80mm fans at the front of the case blowing onto the radiator fan so hopefully all this will help significantly. currently there is a 80mm fan at the top and another 80mm fan blowing on the waterblock on the CPU. so i take it my case temps are the problem here and will convert all my attension to that and see how it all goes and theanx again to your replies

oh and also i went out and bought some distilled water for car radiators and irons and that kinda thing so that will eliminate any future algea build up

[Bullion]

about 14months and counting
i want the chip to go bang so i have an excuse to go for a A64.

[widget2003]

very nice idea indeed i would love to go A64 but then id have to buy a new motherboard and im not doing that till PCI-Xpress and BTX motherboards come into play it's gana be hard to resist but ill try lol

[Someone Stupid]

BTX might not make it in the end. It is only Intel that is pushing for it, most mainboard manufacturers want nothing to do with it. AMD also wants it sunk as it is near impossible to run equal length memory traces with northbridge in the way wihch is how Intel designed the standard and won't budge on. They may be able to force it down makers throats, but I really don't think it is going to come to that yet. It may seem trivial, but a lot of work goes into a motherboard, just the low cost of most parts is what keeps it from being a 300 dollar product on the desktop end.

I don't know if I'd wait for the form factor change, it seems to be on shifty ground and isn't going to give you anything new other than layout. PCI-Express I would only wait for if I had a SCSI array and wanted a 16x connection at this moment. Load times are still HDD dependant and in game pauses only come from a lack of system memory generally as AGP can slide enough over without it stuttering if it's in the aperture, so the new form factor offers nothing new if you know how to cool an ATX case already.

[scottluebke2003]

I got better temps passively cooling my XP1800(333FSB) with a Speeze Falconrock heatsink(no fan).

[widget2003]

yeah i read last night after i posted that the BTX form factor will more likely never happen and i have to say i was kinda loking forward to it to be honest the new cooling design was pretty good as they were talking about the current ATX form factor was never supposted to handle the kind of speeds we see these days well thats what i read somewhere.

[Happy Joe]

One of the primary selling points to BTX is the cooling tunnel, which was designed to allow manufacturers to reduce the cost of oem machines by eliminating extra fans. It has little to no advantag for those of us who build our own. The bigest disavantage to BTX is that it is designed to obsolete all powersupplies and motherboards, and, I believe, video boards. I view this as a marketing ploy to generate sales numbers. It was also pushed by Intel since it gave Intel an advantage over AMD (sales $, not an advantage for us).
As far as speed goes my 2500 runs cool ( less than 50C) at 2.7Ghz in this old enlight case with 5 fans including the powersupply and northbridge (a box is a box i don't see any speed advantage).
Sorry for the rant, but I hope BTX is dead.
Enjoy!