Help me move my watercooling setup...

[far2wired]

Be gentle its my first post...

I've had a water cooled system for 5 years now and its been through some transformations. Currently running an AMD X2 4400 at 2.8GHZ 20C idle 30C full load. I only have the CPU water cooled used to have the video cooled but since the water block buckled a 6800 Ultra card I havent used one since!

Its now looking somewhat cobbled together and I rarely (if ever) have all the side panels on. I had to heavily modify the case to get all the kit in and I now feel I'm pretty good with a Dremmel. I'll post pics once I've got a healthy post count!

My cooling loop is 1/2" ID (some reinfoced tubes) -
Swiftech MCP655 ->
76 Chevrolette Heater core (has 2x 120mm fan both sucking into case ->
Swiftech Storm CPU block ->
Danger Den reservoir -> back down to pump.

Starting from the front top working down -

Zalman fan controller
Danger Den 5 1/4" Water reservoir
DVD drive
Akasa multi format card reader
120mm fan

See sig for innards.

Since its been 2 years since my last upgrade I've been doing some research and it looks like I've missed out on this Core2 Intel stuff. Heres what I've come up with for the upgrade and reasons why.

• CPU Q6600 SLACR G0 stepping - apparently at 95W it overclocks a charm... nuff said...
• PSU Gigabyte ODIN GT 800W - found a site that on a base build machine recorded usage of over 600W when overcloking the Q6600 up into the late 3.x's... Besides the software monitoring looks cool!
• Memory OCZ 2x1GB PC2-9200C5 1150Mhz Reaper HPC - I'm open to suggestions?
• Mainboard - DFI LP UT P35 T2R - currently have DFI board, cant fault it. But I'm open to suggestions?
• Graphics - Single BFG 8800GTS OC 512MB (G92)
• Case - ????????? Needs space to hold all my watercooling kit but cannot be taller than 60cm otherwise it wont fit underneath my desk!

Its apparent from the amount of kit which in some cases specifically targetted at overclockers (certainly not the case 2 years ago!) that it is really difficult to make an informed discision, hence this post. I read tons of reviews and my short list is as above. Open to any suggestions. Only remit is that I have to be able to play games and video editting...

Any advice much appreciated.

[shaithis]

I'd stay away from DFI, they have gone downhill the last couple of years.

Gigabyte PSU? Hmm, no idea how good they are, I'd stick with the established brands: Seasonic, Tagan and even Corsair.

Case is a very personal choice, plus you need room to fit your WC setup in.

The one thing I would say is that if you game, you will get a lot more from water-cooling your gfx card then you will your CPU.

My 8800GTX is heavily overclocked and runs at 42c under full-load, less then half the temperature it would be air-cooled. A number of manufacturers do 8800 cards with factory-fitted water coolers, although you may need to upgrade your WC setup to run both a quad and a g9x.

[danroyle]

that dfi motherboard is a beauty for overclocking search for posts by GILGAMESH AND PM HIM he has that dfi and a q6600

case wise alot of people go for antec p180/182

memory wise how long y6ou loking to keep it for alot of people now are heading towards 4gbs of ram

[far2wired]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm not 100% about the PSU, just seemed different... I was trying to go after a 80plus certified, modular if possible.

I might just have to dabble back into a GPU water block. Technoligaly has hopefully moved forward!

I'll give gilgamesh a PM and see how the DFI is, though I have heard good things about the Abit IP35 Pro you have.

I was sticking with 2GB but now you mention it, 4GB would be a bit more future proof. Is it best in terms of timings etc to go with 4x1GB or 2x2GB? As this is an upgrage I'm coming from old DDR which at the time 2GB was pushing the boat out! Oh, times have changed...

So much choice, what to go for...

[shaithis]

2 x 2gb. It is now roughly the same price for 4x1 or 2x2. So save 2 slots in case you need them later.

The Abit IP35Pro is an excellent board, very easy to overclock and reaches some impressive FSBs.

[far2wired]

More reviews I read about the Abit I'm really tempted to swap to it from the DFI. Particularly if DFI have gone down hill recently. I dont get it, stock of DFI is so limited, only place I can find is eBuyer...

Anways looks like the Abit is the one, many moons ago I had an NF7-S actually being the first board I water cooled. What a board that was . I remember cutting up a Zalman Northbridge heatsink to glue onto the power mosfets to keep the temps down. Those were the days...

[iranu]

I remember cutting up a Zalman Northbridge heatsink to glue onto the power mosfets to keep the temps down. Those were the days...

This is what I do for all the hotspots on my motherboard whether they need it or not. Currently using bits of the dirty great big copper lump that used to be my X1800XT cooler

[daza]

I'd stay away from DFI, they have gone downhill the last couple of years.

Slap

Ive got the same DFI board as he wants to get and my god is it a demon, and cool under load currently sat at 450x8 with a quad, its honestly one of the best boards Ive seen in a long time.

[Madafwo]

Case wise I would say it is personal choice. Antec P182 is a beauty and can fit a triple 120mm fan rad in the top with some modifications, it looks superb and is all internal so a 2 x 120mm Rad (or heatercore in your case) would be fine, although for looks it might be worth going for a specialist rad. Although I see it needs to be under 60cm so it might not be suitable. In the case I would suggest an Akasa Eclipse, beautiful case, loads of room and quite short in terms of case design.

In terms of component choice I would make a couple of changes. I would stick with Tagan, Seasonic/Corsair or Enermax PSU's, 3 top choices that you will hear very good things about.

The DFI board, I have liked them however they are very intense in terms of options so if you like spending 4 hours tweaking BIOS settings then it's the board for you, if not then something along the lines of the Abit IP35 or Asus P5K-E might be more suited to your needs, both superb boards.

With the memory do you really need stuff that can hit an FSB of over 500? Your board probably wont hit that, stick with some DDR800 and get that to clock to DDR1000, your chip or board will flake out before the memory does.

[Webby]

On the memory side at 800MHz DDR (so 400MHz FSB) the Q6600 will be running at 3.6GHz I know they overclock well but going much beyond that would be pushing it! And the RAM would most probably cope easily upto DDR 900 so that would be over 4GHz.

PSU wise I would go for a Corsair HX620 which should easily cope with what your aiming for, its modular and has a 5 year warranty.

Water cooling loop wise you can get a lot of full cover card blocks now which spread the stress of the block over the whole card and should give you better performnce with GPU, memory and voltage regulators all actively cooled.

Case wise people have already mentioned the P182 which should have ample room for your water cooling kit, another possibility could be the Silverstone TJ-06 this has a lot of room available for water cooling and with the motherboard mounted upside down the is space between the motherboard and PSU you can utilise for the Rad and Pump although you may need to mount your hard drives else where.

[Pob255]

Cannot help on the waer cooling side, however I agree with Madafwo on the memory, the q6600 has a fairly low fsb to start with so you don't really need to go over pc6400

On the DFI motherboards, they had slipped quite a bit with there eairly 775 borads but that one looks like a stonker bit expensive but very nice.

You shouldn't need to go as high as 800w even with overclocking, very rearly do we see anything actually going over 600w of draw from the wall socket and it's rare to see a single graphics card pc go over 500w

one of the graphics cards with water cooling block pre fitted might be a good idea, as at least you don't void the warranty buy fitting one.
the EVGA range is called "Black pearl"
BFG's are just called "water cooled edition"
both have 10year warranty, although I don't know what changes you'd have to make to your watercooling to fit them.

the antec p182 is only 52cm tall
the Akasa Eclipse-62 is short but wider than most
the Coolermaster RC-1000 Cosmos has gained a few fans. (not sure for water cooling)
Sorry I cannot be much help here but I've never tried to fit water cooling into a case.

EDIT: Ok I've just been looking at the anandtech review of this board, wow that's scary hard core oc'ing stuff, you might need better ram than pc6400 if you really push it.

Our experience shows that 440-450FSB on this board is a good reference/starting point, as all chipsets should be capable of attaining this level of FSB with current G0 stepping CPUs, using a "relatively minor" (minor in terms of GTL tuning) amount of tweaking.

also looks like a rearrly beefy and very stable PSU is wanted for some extreem OCing
So I think the question is how far do you want to push it? if you're happy a t 3-3.4ghz then a simpler cheaper motherboard would be good
if you want to push 4ghz then this is the board for you, but you'll also want to spend more on ram and psu.

[Clunk]

4236Mhz on air.

Quick review here.

It's not for the impatient or the faint of heart. Pretty much for the hardcore enthusiast really.

[daza]

It's not for the impatient or the faint of heart. Pretty much for the hardcore enthusiast really.

I wouldnt say that, had it stable at 450x8 on my quad in a couple of days.

Once you know what your doing its a joy and I wouldnt touch another baord at all think I might stick with DFI for the futre.

[Clunk]

Don't get me wrong, it was very likeable, it's just that coming from say Asus or Abit, to the DFI's BIOS, a lot of people will be wondering what most of the settings are for.

[daza]

Yeh I can understand that coming from an abit board I was a tad nervous aswell, but after reading a few reviews (yours included) and reading the guide over at AnandTech: DFI UT P35-T2R: Tweakers Rejoice! it was a piece of cake tbh.

[far2wired]

Well, squeezing every mm of space the Silverstone TJ07 looks a winner! Over at T Break 2 radiators fitted!!! (I'd post the link but I appear to still be a low life < 5 posts...).

I cant confess to know all the options of the DFI board but there is nothing more frustating than trying to get that last bit out of your overclock and not finding the option you need in the BIOS...

I've had the DFI LP UT NF4 for 3 (human) years which going by IT years thats probably about 10 years . I cant fault the board I love it, I've owned an Asus, I've owned an Abit, of the three it has all the bells and whistles, unfortunately you pay for it with price and lack of availabilty...

From the Anandtech review of the P35 T2R -
"Our recommendations in terms of RAM are that you choose a good kit that can run at least DDR2-1066 @ CAS5. (2GB or 4GB of OCZ CAS5 PC9200 RAM has proven very successful with the 913 BIOS."
with that in mind and previous comments I've been looking at 800MHZ memory and found the following -
4GB (2x2GB) OCZ PC2-6400C4 OCZ2RPR800C44GK 800MHZ
and just overclock its nuts off. It looks like Micron D9GMH based which the Anandtech review said was favored by P35 chipset. But its CAS4! I have suffered in the past with memory limiting the overclock and I really want to avoid that (naturally). Anything better out there to consider?

@daza welcome to the DFI fold!