Water cooling dual Athlon MP 2000+ step by step

howdy,
first a little about me, i'm a 43 year old mechanical engineer/iron worker (it's a long story) that has been a PC junkie since 1981, my first box was a PC Clone Zenieth Z80 4.77 mhz
OK from the begining
about 4 monthe ago i handed my AMD Athlon 750 over to my kids and assembled a new box

• 
  ASUS A7M266-D mother board
  Dual AMD Athlon MP 2000+ proc's
  2@ 512mb DDR ECC ram
  eVGA - nVidia GeFroce4 ti 4200 128 mb
  Iceberg Aluminum side window case
  Win 2Kpro
  SuSE Linux kernel 2.4.10??
  and your basic other stuff

the system was a screamer, when it ran but was VERY unstable. ASUS PC Probe reported proc temps at idle around 60C and under full load in the low 70's (with the stock AMD fan/sink)
so i installed Thermaltake Volcano 6Cu+ heatsinks with 7000rpm fans. now the temps are mid 40's idling and mid 50's under load.
So you may ask what's wrong with that.
NOISE each CPU fan produces 39dBA, along with the 3 case fans and 2 power supply fans and the desk fan blowing on the case.
being impressed with the performance of the Thermaltake fans i inquired about Thermaltake AquarisII Liquid Cooling System and the response was.

i posted here and got a link to Swiftech and Emailed them my question. i recieved a response in 2 hours.
SO today i ordered this system
http://forums.rojakpot.com/viewtopic.php?t=71&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
Swiftech says they will ship it within 2 weeks so as soon as i get it i will install it.
i will start attaching photos as soon as i begin the installation.

M.R.

 

howdy,
while i sit and impatiently wait for my water cooling kit to arrive i am doing some research into water cooling.
this is a summary of what i have read.

• 
  1. use distiled water, it's less conductive.
  2. leak test the entire system for several hours before installing.
  3. color the water to help monitor flow.
  4. use anti corrosives to help stop corrosion created by dissimilar metals in the system.
  5. use something to stop algea and other living organisims from growing and pluging the waterblock/radiator.
  6. push the air through the radiator instead of pulling it - i'm not too sure about this one.

i'm a bit concerned about system failure, not so much leaking but pump failure.
my Asus MB uses Award BIOS which has a throttle down feature to slow/stop the proccesor/s if it (they?) reach 85c.
that seems a bit high to me and at this point i cant determine if that is only CPU0 or if it is reading both processor temps.
i looked into "Shut down now" but thus far i can not successfuly d/l it. i'm interested in SDN because it looks like it will interface with MBM5 pretty easily. if you have any sugestions for other utilities that can perform an emergency shut down immediately when the procs get to a certain temp i will look into them. and dual processor support would be nice as well.

i have read many reviews but i have been unable to find any that have covered dual proccesors. since this will be totally unscientific and performed by a water cooling newbie it probably wont make the big time but should be a lot of fun in the making.

Oh and one more question. i'm thinking about adding a GPU water block into this deal for my GeForce 4. they are pretty inexpensive and (pretty easy to install), in the interest of controling noise it may help, i have not been able to find any info on connecting 3 water blocks into one cooling system if anyone knows of a good tut on this subject let me know.

thanks
M.R.

 

howdy,
WOHOO i got the shipping confirmation today, the Swiftech kit will be in my hands Tuesday Dec. 31.

M.R.

 

howdy,
:itld is jumping up and down!!:

I GOT IT I GOT IT.

i recieved the package this morning and since i own my own business i just gave myself the rest of the day off to go water cooled.

so the next time i post it will be from a water cooled box, that is as long as everythin goes well.

i cant figure out how to post pictures but i have taken some, let me apologize in advance for the poor quality of the pictures my 2.1 mega pixel camera got launch out of a second storie window by my adorable 2 year old so i'm stuck with a little Radio Shack Flatphoto digital camera (640x480 poor quality).
so if you would either PM or post how to attach pictures i will post them.

WEEHEE here we go.

M.R.

 

You will need to host the pictures first and then use the tag. Here are some examples to do just that!

[code:1:6f32a798bb][img]http://www.phpbb.com/images/phplogo.gif

As noted in the URL section above you can wrap an image in a tag if you wish, eg.


[/code:1:6f32a798bb]

I would love to see how you water cool your duallie 8) Good luck!

 

howdy,
Well that was a miserable failure.
fried one proc, and now i cant even get to post.
not to mention made the place smell bad.
i'll look at it a bit closer and see what i did wrong and try to get this box back up.

M.R.

 

howdy,
as near as i can tell, one of the blocks was not making contact with the entire area of the chip (that one is cooked)
as far as the other proc it dosent appear to be fried, and the block appeared to have seated correctly, but still no response - black screen, no post, no beep .
i have taken the other components and installed them on my other mb and they seem to work just fine.
what are the possibilities of ruining the mb when the proc went away.
i'm trying o decide rather to just get a new proc, plug it mb and see but if the mb is bad i'm afraid i'll kill another AMD.

M.R.

 

howdy,
Damn that's not good. Now i'll have to wait until next week to get another MB and proc.
i think the block slipped while i was messing around in the box and then i didn't check it before i started it up. it was on for a total of about 45 seconds before i got nervous and shut it down then that awful smell follwed by that awful feeling in the bottom of my gut.
Hey but not to worry fried chips are fried chips, i'll chock this one up to experience and try again, hell 2 proc's and an mb arent goint to kick my ars

M.R.

 

howdy,
Just a word regarding the Swiftech stuff:
Asolute top quality, the installation was slick and easy, (my problem was caused by my own in attention not) the mounts are wonderful and work great wheninstalled correctely (i must have missed the socket lugs) i will be able to hide the entire setup inside of a tower, with the exception of the holes for the 2 120mm fans. the instructions were excellent.
at this point all i can say is
take one last look into the box before powering up had i done this i would not be crying in my beer right now.

this adventure is not over, next week i'll get another identical mb and another pair of proc and install them in this case and it will work because now i know at least a couple of things to look out for.

M.R.

 

howdy,
Update to the water cooling adventure. The mother board, DDR ram modules, PS and all of the other stuff on the MB survived. so all i will have to replace is 2ea AMD Athlon MP 2000+ proc's. so for around $350.00 i will be able to get back up.
this time i will be much much more methodical about set up and triple check everthing before i power up.
BTW

i saw a Koolance case with a P4 2.0Gb on an MSI mb today, using the 3dMark test it reached 10113 but the cool part was it only got up to 24c underload.

M.R.

 

howdy,
one of the procs was obviously fried the other had no signs of overheating and i believe the water block was seated correctly on that one. we discussed RMA but my supplier said without the box, original fan and heatsink we would never get AMD to buy in. thats OK by me i trashed them i can buy new ones.

M.R.

 

OMG. Processors are not cheap you know. But I guess you can afford it.


Be careful next time!