Cooling Dual Opteron Water Cooling

Hi all

I've got a Dual Opteron 244 machine, based on the Asus K8N-DL motherboard. I'm looking to ge thtis machine as quiet as possible, and I've always wanted to have a go with watercooling, so i thought i'd take the plunge

I've got a few questions first, that I'd be very grateful if some more experienced people could answer

Firstly, as you can see from this picture of the motherboard, the chipset fan is directly under the back of the graphics card. I guess I've got about 1.5cm of height to play with, so i was wondering if anyone know of some uber slimline chipset blocks.

Aside from the chipset block, I'm going to need to cool the 2 CPUs but not the graphics (It's passive). I'm looking at the Zalman ZM-WB3 waterblocks (i'm a big fan of zalman stuff) a Hydor L30 and a 120mm radiator. My immediate concerns are whether the Hydor will have enough power for 3 blocks and whether the 120mm rad will be able to cool it all.
AFAICT, the Opterons put out ~90W of heat, so < 200W total, and the radiator can get rid off 440W of heat (see here), but will this be with a really powerful fan, or will I be able to use one of the nice quiet Akasa amber series fans?

Lastly, I believe the Hydor can be sunk in the res. I had an idea of making a res with the Hydor in it, then putting padding all around the res to block out as much sound from the pump as possible. I thought this would be better than soundproofing the pump itself, as it may overheat.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome!


cheers

 

Well Nexxo has been watercooling dual Opterons for quite some time on a single Black Ice Extreme which is definitely worth a read through

Project Metaversa

...and i've literally just finished a dual Opteron set-up though went for a double Black Ice as its was cooling Sli cards also but considering the both CPU's are at around 29 - 30degrees i'd say you would have no trouble using a single.

Project Dualmaster

I've never been a big fan of Hydor pumps so i'll let others comment on that

Maybe some pictures would be good also

 

I have watercooled a dual xeon system. After about a month, my pump failed, and rather than deal with the work of rebuilding the watercooling loop, went back to air cooling. However don't let that put you off - I think I just had a bad pump. It was the Dangerden DDC, which I had read as being very quiet and tiny - and it was. Until it failed. My advice - don't use this pump.

Anyway, Eheim pumps seem to be used a lot, so they must work well. They're quite big though - you need to think about how you are going to fit a watercooling system in your case. Another alternative is the Dangerden D4.

My advice would be go for 1/2" ID parts. I used 3/8", and it was quite hard finding parts for this kind of setup. Most of the popular parts are 1/2".

I cooled dual overclocked xeons with just 1 thermochill 120.1, so a single rad should be fine. However, you might want to go for a 120.2, or even the PA160, just for better performance and piece of mind. If you want to cool a graphics card as well, you will need something bigger thatn a single 120mm rad.

I don't know anything about those zalman waterblocks. I used swiftech 6000 waterblocks (3/8" - the 1/2" versions are the 6002). You can buy different mountings for these so they can potentially fit on nearly any socket without buying a whole new waterblock.

 

I had a hydor inside a res for a while. If you have it sitting on a bit of foam inside the res it is very quiet and yes submerging the pump is good for it's reliability.

Afaik, the Eheim pumps are submersible too.

 

You got 30C for dual cores and SLI 6800 Ultras on a BIX2? Useful to know that. Those rads are pretty capable, aren't they?

 

Yeah according to Vadim the Dual Cores are 90n ones so should be quite cool anyway so would image without the 2 Ultras it may be a bit cooler

I wasn't expecting them to run that cool TBH

 

Dual Core Opterons put out 110 Watts --not that much more than a single core's 85 Watts. Still, SLI adds quite a bit with 2 x 78 Watts. So you're looking at 376 Watts.

 

Thanks for the info! Good to know my ideas aren't completely stupid

 

that's a nice mobo btw, (odd question, can you get anything to work in the PCI slots? we've been having problems at work with every card we've tried...*grumble* someone should have approved the boards before we started selling them *grumble*)

 

I'm using the DDC with no problems so far. Maybe you just got a bad pump? My Eheim 1046 (Innovatek HPPS) has been working with no problems for over 2 years now, so I'd say their build quality is excellent, and I've rarely heard reports of them failing or breaking on their own.

 

the extra power plug (on pcie anyways) for three measly watts? where'd you get that info? and is that based on GT or Ultra?

I've read a couple things about DDCs having problems with their controller or something, and that if you hit them they'll start back up. I wouldn't want to take that chance personally.

 

We were discussing the Ultras. Power consumption is as follows:

GeForce 6800 Ultra: 3.3V x 0.5A + 5V x 4.5A + 12V x 4.5A = 78.2 Watts
Geforce 6800 GT: 3.3V x 0.5A + 5V x 4.0A + 12V x 3.0A = 57.9 Watts

Both are estimates based on data supplied by nVidea.