Adabiviak
Space Core
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2004
- Messages
- 4,237
- Reaction score
- 24
So I get my hands on an Asus P5WD2 Premium motherboard thinking that it'll handle my 800MHz DDR2 RAM. Fire muh fuh up and begin installing drivers when I notice my video signal twitching. Maybe the drivers aren't right yet I mistakenly think. To make a long story short, one of the transistors that drives the fan was damaged and now I know exactly what ones screen looks like when the video card has no cooling. Artifacts, you ask? Man, this thing was all over the place! Good thing it was a BFG - one RMA later and I'll have a new card, but it was a tense ten minutes while I was trying to figure out what happened and whether or not BFG would live up to its promise of "lifetime guarantees". Brothers and sisters, BFG is the card for you! Can I get an amen! Best $600 I ever spent.
So I buy a Zalman Reserator 1 to cool this thing. It's the entertainment center (tape player, VCR, DVD player, music player, record player, everything) and sometimes we fall asleep to music and whatnot so it needs to be quiet. Ergo, passive liquid cooling. None of my stuff is overclocked and the Reserator does a good job of keeping things cool. I made a modification though, and I'd like more experienced thoughts on whether or not this will help. First, higher capacity pump installed externally (in the computer case). Second, inside the water chamber, I installed a tube from the intake up to the top of the chamber. At the top, I wrapped it around the inside diameter with the opening on the bottom run of the loop, facing downwards slightly. The idea is to take the hotter water coming in from the computer straight to the top and to create somewhat of a spinning motion in the coolant, in an attempt to allow as much coolant as possible access to the inside surface of the chamber. The rig worked and the coolant is making a little whirlpool in the chamber, but I've never had it set up any other way. Your thoughts on whether or not this'll help?
So the Reserator comes with the sales pitch of being quite silent. It's so quiet that it comes with an in-line flow meter so you can make sure it's running even though you can't hear it. True, it's quiet as hell, but the flow meter, which consists of a plastic rod suspended in the coolant flow that wiggles when the water moves bangs against the plastic viewing window and makes rattling noises. Nice. I'll probably remove it because I can always look in the top of the radiator and know it's working when I see the whirlpool, but what were they thinking? Does anyone else have a similar experience with this?
So I buy a Zalman Reserator 1 to cool this thing. It's the entertainment center (tape player, VCR, DVD player, music player, record player, everything) and sometimes we fall asleep to music and whatnot so it needs to be quiet. Ergo, passive liquid cooling. None of my stuff is overclocked and the Reserator does a good job of keeping things cool. I made a modification though, and I'd like more experienced thoughts on whether or not this will help. First, higher capacity pump installed externally (in the computer case). Second, inside the water chamber, I installed a tube from the intake up to the top of the chamber. At the top, I wrapped it around the inside diameter with the opening on the bottom run of the loop, facing downwards slightly. The idea is to take the hotter water coming in from the computer straight to the top and to create somewhat of a spinning motion in the coolant, in an attempt to allow as much coolant as possible access to the inside surface of the chamber. The rig worked and the coolant is making a little whirlpool in the chamber, but I've never had it set up any other way. Your thoughts on whether or not this'll help?
So the Reserator comes with the sales pitch of being quite silent. It's so quiet that it comes with an in-line flow meter so you can make sure it's running even though you can't hear it. True, it's quiet as hell, but the flow meter, which consists of a plastic rod suspended in the coolant flow that wiggles when the water moves bangs against the plastic viewing window and makes rattling noises. Nice. I'll probably remove it because I can always look in the top of the radiator and know it's working when I see the whirlpool, but what were they thinking? Does anyone else have a similar experience with this?
