The setup is (basically) complete!

So my new monitor arrived the other day, and damn, it's big, and it's sharp. So besides putting the motherboard in a case (who does that anymore?), the system is all set up and the editing of 10,000 photos from a year of travelling, and another 10,000 from a few months of owning a 7D can begin.


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System Setup:


Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3, AMD PhenomII X6 1055T, Corsair 2x2GB 1600C9, nVidia GT440 1GB, OCZ 60GB Vertex2 SSD on /. , 1TB 7200RPM /home/ drive, Silverstone 500W PSU, Samsung DVDRW drive, and an extra Noctua 12cm fan.


So, i present to you all, my computer, in all its glory amongst its new friend my sound system, in the ex-garage at my parents' house (sucks that i'll just have to relocate it in a few months when i buy my own house, hope it has a room big enough)


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If anyone's wondering about the home-made watercooling, a few years ago for my previous system I bought a nice Noctua heat-pipe cooled 12cm-fan CPU heatsink. But it didn't fit in my case by about 1cm. Presuming that 'heatpipe' just meant solid copper, I cut the ends off, and basically cocked it up. So i ripped off a few fins from the top, clamped some automotive hose on, bought a fountain-pump and a 1L food-container, and it cooled nicely. With this system, I updated it with the T-pieces, wider (10mm) hose, and soon i'll (have to) replace the distilled water with proper radiator fluid before it starts rusting. It may or may not work as well as the original heatpipe-cooler, but it keeps everything under 70C running CPUBurn on 4 of the 6 cores, and is practically silent, so good enough for me.


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and for any audio nuts out here too, the sound system I built myself, the 8" 3-way monitors are 35L boxes i built in high-school, take 120W at 8ohms. The subs are dual 10", 120L boxes of 1" MDF, they weigh 44kg each and take 320W at 4ohms, they also have a piezo horn so they can double as a bass-guitar drivers or a PA system. There's an amp to drive either set you can just see under the TV, delivers 120/8 or 180/4, built it myself to drive the monitors, there's another 320/4ohm amp half constructed to drive the subs i'll finish one day then i can crank all 1000W at once (as long as the windows and the fishtank don't explode). The tube turn-table pre-amp on top of the TV i also designed and built myself, tubes for the signal path and solid-state current feeds.


And yes, I was listening to Maggot Brain on vinyl while taking the photos if anyone else noticed...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dr Croubie

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If anyone's wondering about the home-made watercooling, a few years ago for my previous system I bought a nice Noctua heat-pipe cooled 12cm-fan CPU heatsink. But it didn't fit in my case by about 1cm. Presuming that 'heatpipe' just meant solid copper, I cut the ends off, and basically cocked it up. So i ripped off a few fins from the top, clamped some automotive hose on, bought a fountain-pump and a 1L food-container, and it cooled nicely. With this system, I updated it with the T-pieces, wider (10mm) hose, and soon i'll (have to) replace the distilled water with proper radiator fluid before it starts rusting. It may or may not work as well as the original heatpipe-cooler, but it keeps everything under 70C running CPUBurn on 4 of the 6 cores, and is practically silent, so good enough for me.

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Impressive:


I think the next time there is an Apple vs PC debate, which always leads to the superiority of building your own computer, we need to link your home built set up. When will Mac catch up and start water cooling theirs?

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

When will Mac catch up and start water cooling theirs?

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Apple used liquid cooling on the last generation of G5s some years ago. With modern processors and their lower wattage consumption intercoolers aren't really needed. Obviously they won't hurt, well until they leak that is.

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

I think the next time there is an Apple vs PC debate, which always leads to the superiority of building your own computer, we need to link your home built set up. When will Mac catch up and start water colling theirs?

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Sorry, but you're behind the times. Apple made liquid-cooled computers sometime way back in the last decade, but modern technology makes that unnecessary. [:P]


They didn't usewater, though, but something more like antifreeze, which has a higher thermal transfer coefficient than water.


Here you can see inside a PowerMac G5 with the case and some internal covers removed - fans, radiator, and piping, all packed up neatly inside the case instead of out on the desk for all the world to see...


http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6003/...a262287abe.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neuroanatomist

Sorry, but you're behind the times. Apple made liquid-cooled computers sometime way back in the last decade, but modern technology makes that unnecessary. [img]/emoticons/emotion-4.gif[/img]

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I must be. But still, where is the thermometer on the mac to monitor the water/coolant temperature. I wonder home many of the units would get shorted out when you try and add water.


I do like Dr's idea though, why buy a case? Just save the money.

After seeing that, I think you should change your name from Dr. Croubie to "Mad Scientist Croubie" [:P]


Seriously crazy set up.....

Now *that

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Originally Posted by Daniel Browning

They do. It uses "iWater", which is like regular water except twice as expensive and it comes in a baby bottle. They also use it to make the Kool-Aid. I'm sure it's better for you than Microsoft Water Pro 2011 Starter Edition, which is actually industrial sewage masked by thick sugar syrup. Personally, I prefer GNU/Water 3.0, which provides the ultimate in purified dihydrogen monoxide (a very dangerous chemical; look it up), the only downside is that you have to spend weeks building the contraption from scratch with the free blueprints.

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Hmm....I may stick with tap water.


[View:http://www.iwater.org/]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daniel Browning

Aside from the obvious (protection, portability), there can be several reasons. For me, it's mostly a matter of noise. I buy sound-dampening cases (Antec) that go a long ways to lower the decibels of my water cooler fan and raid array. Lower noise helps my sanity as well as audio/video post-production.


Another issue is cooling: in a still room, the convection alone (and/or turbulence from nearby component-specific fans) may not provide sufficient cooling for components that lack their own cooling fan. In a case, the power supply fan and case fans generally ensure sufficient air flow and turbulence over such parts (e.g. south bridge, video card, hard drives, etc.).

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Back in the day (1985 to be exact), I had a business acquaintance that had a rental shop for construction equipment. He spent piles of cash for a computer for his little shop and had to build a special room for the computerto keep it air cooled. With Dr's method he could keep the garage at a chilly 68 degrees and be ok I think, plus being surrounded by computer equipment your room becomes the computer box.


I really like his system, but last week itwas 110-112 degrees where I live, I am not sure I could afford the air conditioning in my uninsulated garage to build a system like his.

Daniel, take another look at those speakers - somehow, I don

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neuroanatomist

Daniel, take another look at those speakers - somehow, I don't think a little fan noise would be an issue.

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That's for sure. You know that TV Dr Crubie has was a LED flat-panel when he bought it, but then he turned up his sound system so loud that the TV was blasted back into the 80's.

Dr, I love your new setup but if you are serious about cooling shouldn

Ha, no iWater, just Ethylene Glycol.


In my last job i
(re)designed a watercooler for a 50/100kW electric car charger. DC
converters put out 4/8kW of heat (1/2 modules). We installed them in
places like Norway and central Germany, so had to use Ethylene Glycol at
up to 40% (freeze point ~ -30C or so). But its thermal transfer ability
is less than pure water (maybe 5% or so), so when we installed them in
warmer places (like Istanbul, or the test setup in the office i'll
attach a pic below) we only used 10% Glycol to get the heat transfer
more efficient.


But we didn't use any fancy coolant stuff, we just
went to the hardware shop and bough 20 bottles of no-name brand car
radiator fluid. If it's good enough for a 100kW that probably costs more than $1/W, it's fine for me [;)]


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As for the box, I might resurrect the box I originaly
bought for my Pentium2, it's still in one (near enough) piece. But like I
said, the side panel of the case doesn't fit on properly, especially
with the water tubes, so no proper air movement. Found a pic of my last setup (shortly before demolition), with the greenish glycol coolant i had to throw out last time. You can also see the relay i put in line with the 240V for the pump, to two wires plugged into a fan-header on the motherboard, so the pump switches on when the PC starts.


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I hate to think
what it's going to be like in summer, we get up to 47C here in Adelaide
too in summer. And my garage has no cooling, it was designed as a
garage, single brick walls, half insulated tiled roof, west-facing
windows, and a fan. I hope i've bought my new house by then. Damn, the
monitor puts out some heat too, 120W on normal brightness, i can feel it on
my face within 1' away... yeouch