….. With some modifications. Here is a picture of the RAM Freezer 4 on top of a Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME motherboard with all of the DIMM slots populated.

As you can see, if you are running 3 modules in tri-channel, the RAM Freezer 4 is just wide enough to be able to get RAM spreaders on both sides, but you will need to remove the material in the middle of the RAM Freezer 4 in order to get a RAM spreader on the middle module. Overall with a Dremel the mod should not be very complicated and should not affect the structural integrity of the RAM Freezer.

Well here’s my real upcoming Nehalem build. My last post about it was a bit of a joke. I’m not really good at taking night shots so this one is a little bit overexposed, which is most evident in the tubing. I’m very happy with the results of this setup though. Looking forward to getting a CPU to pop in there.

The ES 965 I’ve been playing with had to go back to the person who owns it.

My APOGEE GTZ i7 hold down arrived today, and looking at it got me thinking, “Do I really NEED this thing?”

It looks like with some bolts, nuts, springs, and washers, it may be possible to mount your LGA775 block on LGA1366. This picture is a Swiftech APOGEE with the stock hold down from like 2 years ago using a bolt-thru mounting kit from the D-TEK FuZion V1 (any bolts and nuts would work I think).

The second pictures is me holding up my board by the CPU block… I think it’s secure enough to get some serious mounting pressure at least as a short-term solution.

PS I haven’t tested it because my FuZion V1 is in my system right now, but I believe it would also work on the FuZion V1 with the classic hold down plate.

My quest for a suitable X58 platform began with the requirement for SLI compatibility. All of the high end X58 boards I’ve seen so far have that checkbox filled. The next big requirement was slot layout. Currently I’m using two dual slot water cooled graphics cards (no desire to go full cover at this time), a PCI sound card (that can go as I’m only using it for mic in with an optical connection to my Onkyo TX-SR605), a PCIe 1x Intel gigabit NIC, and I’d really like to upgrade to a PCIe 8x RAID card in the near future.

Gigabyte really FUBARed the slot layout of the EX58-EXTREME with that weird heatsink that attaches to the northbridge… It blocks the top PCIe 1x and the PCIe 4x slot… But at least you can remove it. Boards like the Foxconn Blood Rage and the ASUS P6T, although appealing, simply won’t accommodate my expansion needs. The P6T Deluxe layout I just don’t understand… Why put the two bottom PCIe 16x slots next to each other?

The Gigabyte board has everything I need: Dual PCIe 16x physical with another that is electrically only 8x for a RAID card (3Ware tech I was talking to today says a lot of consumer boards will not properly work with an 8x card in a 16x electrical slot…). It also has a very robust cooling solution. Above you can see the naked board as well as a shot of how it’s attached to the board from the underside.

Here you can see the integrated water cooling solution with 3/8″ ID 5/8″ OD Primochill tubing on it. It fits great and these barbs are surprisingly good quality for an integrated affair. Gigabyte recommends 1/2″ OD tubing though and you can see the reason for it. With the Extreme Heatpipe dealie installed, 5/8″ OD tubing is a tight fit.

I was a little disappointed with the overall fit and finish of the water cooling solution. It does appear to be ALL copper (kudos to Gigabyte), and the base appears very flat and shiny, but the finish on the actual northbridge heatpipe assembly is VERY rough and not flat at all. I can’t imagine it will make very good contact, especially without thermal compound over the whole thing. That said, it’s good enough for my purposes and I’m not looking to set any world records.

They’ve landed! It’s been a long time coming, but these products really represent a tremendous value.

My original hesitation to bring in XSPC came about because of the reports I was hearing about some of their blocks leaking. That coupled with the low price made me think “cheap crap” and I don’t want to take a risk like that with my customers…

They’ve worked hard to turn that around though. They’re using a more expensive delrin substitute for their traditional plexi tops, and the machining on the base of the blocks looks more than adequate.

You can check out the range of XSPC products we’ve picked up at the XSPC store. I’m hoping to get images and product descriptions updated ASAP.

Well it finally arrived. First the German shipping company got confused about where it was supposed to go, then it got held up in customs, then Canada Post sent it to the wrong place….

But it’s finally here. We’ve only got a few, so if you want one of these, better move fast!

I’ve got a post upcoming about my most recent water cooling adventure, but I thought I’d do a segment on one of the more interesting parts of this build: Making the MCW60 work with D-TEK’s Uni-Sink for the GTX 260 (and 280 if you have more money than I do…)

So here you can see the Uni-Sink in all its glory, along with my ghetto-fabulous method of removing my GPU blocks without actually draining my loop. The third picture is what the whole setup will theoretically look like when I’m done.

From talking to Danny at D-TEK I knew I was going to have to drill out the threaded holes that are set up for the FuZion GFX. The pictures above show me setting up for drilling by using saran wrap to keep the thermal pads from getting covered in aluminum shavings. The third picture shows why that doesn’t work very well… On the second attempt (SLI) I just peeled all the pads off ahead of time. It worked much better.

What I didn’t know is that there’s quite a bit more modification that needs to be done….. There are about 20-25 pins that need to be cut off in order for the MCW60 hold down plate to fit. Back to the dremel and then we’re done.

Haha. That was a good one! The baseplate of the MCW60 is not the same shape as the baseplate of the FuZion GFX… Talk about a round peg and a square hole. I was able to make it fit with a reinforced cutting disc and my dremel, but I really wouldn’t recommend this method…. I made a bit of a mess of things.

Nothing a little bit of nailpolish can’t fix I guess. Rather than leave the bare aluminum showing, I painted the exposed stuff with some black nailpolish. Never leave home without it.

After that I was finally able to mount the Uni-Sinks to the cards. My overheating problems are now a thing of the past (folding away on my GPU as we speak) and it’s nice to not have to worry about little junk falling off the VRMs. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to use safety goggles.

Edit: Yeah… It occurs to me now that this thread is missing temp readings. I’m using GPU-Z to take temps and I’m just kinda eyeballing it because quite frankly I don’t care. I water cool for looks/silence, not for extreme overclocking.

Idle GPU0: GPU-36/GPU-28/PCB-39
Idle GPU1: GPU-36/GPU-28/PCB-34 (this one gets only a little bit more airflow over the uni-sink)
Folding GPU0: GPU-40/GPU-33/PCB-42
Folding GPU1: GPU-42/GPU-33/PCB-37

Read the rest of this entry »

These things are just hot. Bling in PC water cooling has finally arrived in a way that if people could do it they would probably put a water cooled computer on a chain and hang it around their neck.

The price is a little steep (these should be showing up on the site in the next day or so), but if you’re having trouble justifying it to yourself, remember that silver has anti-microbial properties, so you can run pure distilled water in an all copper/silver loop without worrying about any junk growing in it. Water performs better by itself than it does with any aftermarket additives, so this is a huge plus.

The gold ones just look awesome and you know you want them :p

Intel’s first 45nm “Pentium” chip showed up quietly in the last week or two and there doesn’t seem to be much buzz about it, but I decided to take it for a spin to see what kind of overclocking results I could get out of it. I don’t know if the one that I have is exceptional or not, and bear in mind this IS a suicide run, but I think what you’re about to see may shock you.

Will update later with pics of the water cooled test bench as well.

Okay here’s my update with pictures of the test bench. I’m using a Maximus Formula X38 motherboard with OCZ Reaper PC2-8500 C5 RAM modules, a Corsair 750W power supply and a GTX 280 video card.

I’ve also included a photo of the box from the CPU I used. This is a regular retail sample. No cherry picking going on here. this is one cool chip

I am impressed. As many readers will know, I manage water cooling products at NCIX, which includes CoolIT systems. I’ve been following the performance of their past coolers with what I would call “distracted interest” because the technology is really cool, but I felt it wasn’t really there performance-wise.

The Boreas turns that all around. I’m very impressed with the performance of this unit. It can keep a stock Q6600 below ambient at idle, and it can hold a 3.4GHz Q6600 at 40 degrees under full load. I’d be interested to see how it performs with a chipset and a couple graphics cards in the loop, but there’s no doubt in my mind that for a CPU-only loop, the performance is there.

I guess my only concerns are the cost of the unit and the noise level of the unit. The cost is close to a phase change solution, but as long as the noise level is okay (not really covered in depth in the HWC review), then I think that the Boreas would be a better solution for someone like me than a phase change cooler.

Check out the HWC review here.