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

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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.

Look for this wicked system to show up at our Burnaby store. It was built by yours truly as a show piece to demonstrate the kind of wicked gaming PC you can build with all parts from NCIX.com.

With the Mountain Mods H2G0 case it only took about 2 hours to do this build. Here are some shots of the hardware used.

One of the first steps for me is always to install the CPU block and mount the radiator. I used a Danger Den MC-TDX for this build on account of the flashy look of the block. For the radiator I took a far more practical approach and went with a Thermochill PA120.2. This thing is a monster performer and the H2G0 is designed to be used with it, so the spacing is just right. At least it’s supposed to be just right. Even using 3/8″ barbs, there was HARDLY enough room to fit the tubing through the pre-cut holes

I opted to use a full cover EK nickel plated water block on the 3870 graphics card. Here you can see the card with the stock cooler stripped off and the second picture shows the EK block installed in the system.

Hard drive installation was pretty straightforward if you’ve worked in a Mountain Mods case, but the optical drive was kinda challenging. The pictures below show the hard drive installed in the bottom, rear 120mm fan mount, as well as a couple views of how the 5.25″ devices get installed. You must have at least one full size 5.25″ device (such as an optical drive) installed in order for this system to work.

Here are a couple shots showing cable management in the bottom. The modular Corsair power supply really makes cable management a snap. I only have 3 modular cables plugged into it. One for SATA, one for molex, and one for PCIe.

And here are the shots showing the system completed with the lights all aglow. So sexy. Be sure to check it out in the Burnaby store if you’re down there. If you’re interested in building a system like this for yourself, send an email to PC@ncix.com and we’ll get you set up.

Thanks for reading

These suckers are HUGE! I was actually the original builder of this PC, so when I got a call from the owner that it needed work my first thought was “Oh great… A failed GPU or something that will take forever to remove”. Actually it was even better than that. He wanted an upgrade.

So we threw a new 790i FTW, 4GB of DDR3, and 3 GTX 280 SuperClocked cards into his rig. Here’s some glam shots that I took while I was working on it. The whole thing took more than 6 hours.

Here’s a gallery with some great shots of this system including a night shot. It doesn’t include the actual “final” picture with all the tip ties cut short and the panels closed up, but it gives you a pretty good idea

I’ve got this thing on RFD and the guy wants to see some pictures. I guess I’ll call it a modding/water cooling post. I basically really wanted to do a mATX water cooled build, so I had an E6850, P5E-VM HDMI, and Radeon 3870 in here with an MCP350 pump, Enzotech (never again) chipset block, D-TEK FuZion GFX GPU block, Swiftech MCRES-MICRO, MCR320, and Primochill 3/8″ ID 5/8″ OD tubing.

It was a very nice little build and ended up not even taking up any extra bays so the expansion capabilities of the case were not impacted.

The user Schnoops over at www.overclock.net put together a fantastic reservoir side panel for the Antec Nine Hundred (900) case. It reminds me of the old aquarium side panel that Lian Li came out with years ago.

You can check out the original thread here. Very cool work

Viper John has a new product out that could very well revolutionize the way we plumb our PC water cooling. It’s called a Viper Tight Bend. It sounds kinda dirty, and when I explain what it is, it may seem a little pointless, but let me tell you that it’s NOT.

A VTB is basically a chunk of tubing that is pre-bent to a 1.25″ bend radius in a “U” shape. What does this mean? It means that you can make turns that were previously impossible without kinking your tubing or using coils. It also means that if you are making that tight turn to something sensitive like a chipset block, you don’t have to worry about the coils and tubing putting pressure on the barbs and/or block which can cause leaks or damage to the fragile chips underneath.

This picture demonstrates how effectively a VTB thrashes the regular bend radius of Tygon R-3603.

Well I’ve finished the first of the two Corsair Dream Machines. Here’s a picture of the case I received from Danger Den last Friday with only the radiator mounted in it:

Here’s some progress on installing the 9800GX2 water blocks, which Danger Den was also kind enough to sponsor us with:

Here’s an “in progress” shot that I took on my test bench:

And now finally here are some pretty good pictures that our photo guy took of the system. These are all pre-photoshop, but it gives you some idea what a nice system this is: