Cooling Enjoying outdoors watercooling and sub-zero air temperatures

Hm, that is a good idea. I was hoping to incorporate som sort of level indication as well, but this could very well be the next best thing. Thanks.

 

so apart from noise from your PSU and HDD's your machine is basically totally silent, envy you so much!

 

Yes it is, but not as totally silent as you might think. My OS drive is a Velociraptor...
Still, it's as close to silent as it can get at the moment, and I hope to get it even more silent whenever I find the time to finish my case. Hopefully before the twins arrive. We'll see.

 

Finally I got the correct waterblock for my GTX285, and today I mounted it to the card.



GPU-Z reports excellent GPU temperatures of 15.3C on idle and factory settings. And I am enjoying the silence only broken by the hum of the HDDs (six of them. Two WD 1Tb, one WD 500Gb, two WD 200Gb and one 300Gb Velociraptor). So yeah, not entirely silent, but better - and I hope to remedy this further as soon as I find time to work (and hopefully complete) my case project currently in hiatus.

So the question now is; do I spend the next three hours tweaking the GTX, or do I spend the next three hours playing Dragon Age. Hmmm. What to choose, what to choose.

 

Spend the next six hours doing both?

Great temps you are getting there!

 

Ah, now there's an idea.
It's only 00:13 yet, so plenty of time - and the missus was cranky and tired, so she's gone off to bed. Time for the "cat" to play I say.

Oh yes, I'm quite happy with it. Coolant temp in the tank is just 10C, but I hit 6C in the tank a week ago when we had negative Cs for a few days. I expect great temps if the winter hits us properly. CPU temp is reported as 14C at idle currently.

 

Great temps! Time for a voltmod, I would say.

Have you got any problems with condensation?

Re: HDD noise, this is blocked quite well by those silencing foam kits in my experience.

 

Absolutely!
However, I will see how far I can get without resorting to soldering on variable resistors and whatnot. I got the 285 up to 715 on core and 1350 on mem last night before succumbing to the desire to play Dragon Age. I might have another go at it tonight though.

No problems with condensation as far as I can tell, and I check for this regularly.

Unfortunately for me, at this moment all the drives sit in a skeleton case - it's just the frame from an old case I bought back in '97 holding all my hardware at the moment. My scratch build will obviously feature an enclosed HDD rack amongst other things, but the house and preparing for the arrival of the twins take priority these days. Hopefully though, I will find time to work on it again soon.

 

Seems like I can push a little harder ... possibly, though I ran into stability issues at 1350 on memclock on the 285. Not sure why, but I'll give it another go as well. Giving my CPU a push now though, and I'm quite certain I should be able to reach 4.0Ghz without any problems. Taking it nice and easy though.

Oh, and by the way; the cooling system is still fully passive as I have not yet found the time to install the radiator outside. Not entirely sure how accurate these temperature readings are, but they do give an idea at least. Water temperature in the tank is reliably reported as 7.9C at the moment, and the pipes are freezing cold to the touch. Still no signs of condensation - lucky me.

 

It now runs stable - after a 45 min stress test - at 3.8Ghz and 1.375V. The push towards 4Ghz is ahead.

 

I am seriously impressed at your ingenuity and at the lack of condensation

 

Thank you.

Unfortunately I was unable to go further than 3.8Ghz yesterday as household requirements were made known to me. However, I have been stressing the CPU through the night, and this afternoon I will see about breaking the 4.0Ghz barrier. I will probably have to turn up the heat a bit more, but I hope to be able to reach 4.0 with not much more than 1.4V - 1.45V. We'll see.

And as soon as it will run 4.0Ghz stable, I will give the 285 another go. Enjoying myself immensely.

 

Still haven't breached 4Ghz, but getting great temps!