July 06, 2019
Losing my cool
Seems to be my month for computer problems. First an ancient hard drive on the equally ancient Mac, and now my hybrid cooling system on my PC is down. I kinda knew something was coming, it was running slightly hot, but it went down fast. And of course, I never bothered to get the parts I wanted to redo the things left from the original canned system. Fortunately I have Etna, and ordered them from Amazon, but it's gonna be a few days without access to Himawari.
I was playing WoWS when I overheated and shut down. I tried changing out the water, but I realized it wasn't pumping, even though the pump worked. I drained the system and took parts apart, and I couldn't blow through it. I even tried my vacuum pump, and it actually held a vacuum for a few seconds, so it definitely wasn't flowing water. I mean, it could move SOME water, but my pump wasn't up to it. So I've got a new radiator and CPU block on order, and they use full sized tubing, as opposed to the skinny Antec original, so it should cool a lot better, but I'll have to do something else for the automatic fan speed control (I think the motherboard can do it) and I won't have color-coded LEDs telling me the water temperature.
7/13/19 Update! Done! I did have a few minor obstacles. The radiator was tapped to 4-40 (I think) before being painted, so I had to buy a new tap in order to clean out the holes and make damned sure they were 4-40. I also had to buy various lengths of 4-40 screws to hold the fans on it.
The biggest issue was soldering up a Y- cable to drive both fans. I started with the Y-cable that came from the Antec CPU block, but that was soldered to the control board. However I dug through a junk box and found the original air/fan heat sink that came with the processor and snipped off the connector and soldered the wires together. (I'd've preferred to crimp the connectors, but I didn't have any of the right kind of terminals.)
I also knocked out that wooden box thing to put the reservoir at the highest point, and the pump under it. Swung by Grainger for a fat tube of heat transfer grease ($4.50, more than I will ever need, and cheaper per gram than the tiny syringes you can get at Fry's).
While I was at it, I tore apart the Antec system to see if I could figure where the blockage was. Simply enough, it was the CPU block. It was made with paper-thin fins of copper spaced about a paper's thickness apart, and the enclosure forced the flow only though those fins. That was the source of all the resistance (so I saved the radiator to rest in a junk box for who knows what project in the future).
Once I decided how it was all going to go together, I ran all new tubing, filled it with water (less than I thought it would take), and fired it up. There was only a small drip at the CPU block that went away with a little tightening, and when I powered it up, WHOA! That poor pump that had been laboring against that restriction cut loose like nobody's business. The flow is amazing.
7/13/19 Update! Done! I did have a few minor obstacles. The radiator was tapped to 4-40 (I think) before being painted, so I had to buy a new tap in order to clean out the holes and make damned sure they were 4-40. I also had to buy various lengths of 4-40 screws to hold the fans on it.
The biggest issue was soldering up a Y- cable to drive both fans. I started with the Y-cable that came from the Antec CPU block, but that was soldered to the control board. However I dug through a junk box and found the original air/fan heat sink that came with the processor and snipped off the connector and soldered the wires together. (I'd've preferred to crimp the connectors, but I didn't have any of the right kind of terminals.)
I also knocked out that wooden box thing to put the reservoir at the highest point, and the pump under it. Swung by Grainger for a fat tube of heat transfer grease ($4.50, more than I will ever need, and cheaper per gram than the tiny syringes you can get at Fry's).
While I was at it, I tore apart the Antec system to see if I could figure where the blockage was. Simply enough, it was the CPU block. It was made with paper-thin fins of copper spaced about a paper's thickness apart, and the enclosure forced the flow only though those fins. That was the source of all the resistance (so I saved the radiator to rest in a junk box for who knows what project in the future).
Once I decided how it was all going to go together, I ran all new tubing, filled it with water (less than I thought it would take), and fired it up. There was only a small drip at the CPU block that went away with a little tightening, and when I powered it up, WHOA! That poor pump that had been laboring against that restriction cut loose like nobody's business. The flow is amazing.
The fans also ran at top speed since the CPU Fan connector was set to 100% when the speed was moderated by the Antec CPU Block. Fortunately, the BIOS has a setting to moderate the fan based on a target CPU temp. Unfortunately, the BIOS setting won't go below 50%, which is still too loud and too fast. Fortunately, one of the utilities, MSI Control Center, will let you set cooling rules as low as 20%. Unfortunately you have to run it and reload the profile every time you reboot. Ah well, it's still way quiet, and a lot cooler. Running at 41 °C as I type this.
Posted by: Mauser at
09:46 PM
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1
Good thing I don't need or want the performance gains that come with liquid cooling.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at July 09, 2019 07:56 PM (LZ7Bg)
2
My primary goal with it was noise reduction, which can be significant. I wanted that because I watch a lot of video on that machine. Also lower heat can lead to longevity. And maybe once I'm free of the last vestiges of the Antec cooler, things will stabilize.
I will have fun completely disassembling those components to figure out where the blockage was.
I will have fun completely disassembling those components to figure out where the blockage was.
Posted by: Mauser at July 10, 2019 07:24 PM (Ix1l6)
3
Scheduled for Friday delivery! Good, I don't want to miss two weekends of Warships in a row!
Posted by: Mauser at July 11, 2019 06:07 PM (Ix1l6)
4
Man, I was so happy to leave liquid cooled computers in the 1980s.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at July 18, 2019 01:19 PM (LZ7Bg)
5
At this point, it idles at 39C with the fans ticking over at about 1000 rpm. So quiet. And if I load it up the temp goes up and back down in seconds. Even running World of Warships it averages only 44C. That pump is a champ, especially now that it's free of the restrictions from that old system.
Posted by: Mauser at July 20, 2019 09:04 AM (Ix1l6)
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