Nicoman wrote:FI have obviously a bit too high speed on some of the fans, but what is an acceptable temperature for an AMD Opteron if I install fanmates? 50 Celsius?
Depends of the CPU, but you should be safe all the way until 65 Celsius, if not more.
Nicoman wrote:In terms of water cooling, what would happen if I put for instance Koolance coolers on the CPUs and the GPU and swapped the two big ones in the case to something like Yate Loon? Would it be a dramatic difference you think, or would the pump and rad fans etc for that many cooling points create a similar level of noise? Is there such a thing as a quiet internal pump/radiator? noobtard, your post was completely hieroglyphic to me until I started googling. Now it seems very interesting. I'll read up on this a bit. Any other suggestions, perhaps more of a kit with the pieces I need?
Ok, here comes my take.
My guesstimate is that whether you go with air or water you will need fair amount of money and time to make your system tolerably quiet and neither route counts out gradual enhancements. The power density here is so high that quiet air cooling would have to struggle to keep it cool, which increases the amount of effort, trial and error and cost.
The water cooling as such is more complicated, but as the quiet air cooling is close to it's limits here and water cooling is nowhere near its limits, that balances the cost and effort to close enough so that I'd call it a tie.
And yes, the advantage for water cooling is that it has a lot of potential even after removing all that heat. Here you can explore some of the issues you might encounter when air cooling a powerful rig:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article672-page1.html
Another possible advantage of water cooling is that you can counter some peaks with it. First, water has very high thermal capacity so small peaks just disappear and then as the cooling is centralized, you can specify the cooling for a little less worst case, as it is next to impossible to have *all* the parts peak at the same time and remain there for any longer period of time.
This is especially true when you run Cool'n'Quiet. It underclocks CPU(s) when they are under low use, so they produce even less heat when idle. And with 8 cores, most of them are idle most of the time your machine is on.
Your idea of starting with the CPUs and the GPU is a good one. In the bottom of this post is my take for the parts.
Nicoman wrote:Given that I'm stuck with the PSU, is there any way to cool an existing PSU? I tend to remember good advice somewhere that water cooling and PSU doesn't belong together.
Why are you stuck with it? It is possible to get a water-cooled PSU, but their prices are really high and capacities quite low. Instead I'd pick a new PSU, like some of the Seasonic 600/650/700W models. Many of them were recently reviewed on this very site:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article656-page1.html
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article676-page1.html
Tagan is known to be one of the most noisy PSUs and then you do not need 900W of power. Lets count the worst case:
CPUs: 4*95W = 380W
GPU: 120W
Hard drives: 2*12W, 1*11W = 35W
Total: 535W
Even if you count the motherboard and the rest of the periphepals, you are well within limits of a 600W PSU. Just make sure to pick one that can truly deliver it, not just for a peak..
And remember that it is very hard to get your system draw even that amount of power, even more difficult for any longer period of time. This means most of the time your system will draw like ~150-250W worth from the wall.
Hard drives are easy ones, just suspend them:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article8-page2.html
Nicoman wrote:A Zalman fanmate connected to a 12V transformer sounds reasonable but how do I see the speed?
Fanmate has a knob that you use to adjust the speed. Other than that, you can also run some fancier controllers, like thermally controlled mCubed T-Balancer series:
http://www.t-balancer.com/english/bng.htm
I'd try connecting the fans so that when the speed changes, all of them change speed. This is to counter bad interaction between them.
You can also just make them run at 5/7V, here is how:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article63-page1.html
And then to my take on the parts:
-4*EKWaterBlocks CPU block and 1*GPU block
http://ekwaterblocks.com/shop/product_i ... cts_id=128
Another option for the blocks might be Swiftech Apogee and its GPU variant.
-2*Thermalright HR-05 for chipsets
http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main ... t_hr05.htm
-Seasonic 600/650/700W hi-efficiency PSU
-2*Laing DDC/Swiftech MCP350 pump (the original 10W model with acrylic top, others are noisier
-dual-ddc acrylic cover to connect the pumps in series
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... s_id=20552
-radiator accepting 3*120mm fans or two 2*120mm fan radiators
Reasoning:
As noise is the primary concern, we do not need the last fraction of the cooling power, if it comes with high cost on either noise or water flow restriction. Thus I picked pretty regular (but inexpensive and high-quality)
waterblocks that should provide low flow resistance and adequate cooling.
Laing DDC was chosen as the
pump as I know it to be quiet (the 10W model, with acrylic top) and as it has high pressure head, especially when connected in series with the dual-top. The dual-top also adds some redundancy, giving you time to save your work and shut down the machine before it overheats, should another of the pumps fail.
For
chipsets I selected Thermalright heatpipe coolers, as they are the most powerful passive chipset coolers I know of. As water should take heat out of the case, the heat sources within the case are chipsets, hard drives, voltage regulators and memories, and they should stay cool with pretty minimal air flow.
Tubing is then an issue for debate, and I except it has to be tried out to be sure about what solution works. I'd start by connecting the CPU blocks series-parallel in 2+2 combination and then running all the water through the GPU block. This way you could lower the CPU block restriction, and in effect the pumps would have to push through just less than 2*CPU block restriction (as there is double the amount of space to move through) and GPU block, which should be well within limits of the dual-DDC.
Parallel blocks naturally mean less effective cooling, but as said, you are not after the very last degree or two, and almost any flow (with properly cooled water) should be enough.
Here you can see how some common waterblock react to the flow:
http://www.systemcooling.com/images/rev ... e25big.gif
http://www.systemcooling.com/swiftech_apogee-09.html
As you can see, halfing the flow often means less than a degree of Celsius in the CPU temperature. On the previous page of the same article you can also see that lowering the flow reduces the needed pressure a lot. In other words: it should not be any problem to run the blocks in parallel, as few degrees are pretty irrelevant in this case.
And as your chassis has PSU on the floor, natural place for
the radiator(s) is the top. When the big heatsinks are replaced by smallish waterblocks, it should have lot of space to fill and breath. I'd have fans suck air through the radiator and then to outside, but this is also a question where there is no certain answers about what is the best configuration.
This kind of configuration would enable you to replace the small and whining fans with like 4 120mm fans running below 1000rpm. And as you might know, usually the bigger fans move more air for the same amount *perceived* noise, as the noise falls to frequencies that are harder for human to hear. Some of the benefits are also purely physical, so bigger fans also cause somewhat lower absolute noise, but here is enough to know that bigger is better, to some extend.
With 3 120mm fans drawing air out from the case, you might not even need a case fan, but it's up to you to experiment. Basicly by blocking/widening openings in the case and possibly making some air guides you are able to control where the cool air enters the case (as there is negative pressure do to radiator fans) and thus make sure all the components are adequately cooled.
Another option is to take the radiator out of the room to somewhere where the radiator fans cannot be heard so easily.
For fans, take a look at fans&control section in these forums. You want to have your fans heavily undervolted, so in normal operation they run below 1000rpm. And if that is not enough to cool your machine, usually noise-wise is better to add more low-speed fans than to have the existing ones run faster. I personally like Silverstone FM-121 fans, as their motor noise is almost non-existent and they can move a lot of air if needed, but good 120mm fans are sold also by Nexus, GlobalWin/Liebermann, Yate Loon, Adda, AcoustiFan, PAPST and Thermaltake.
And rule of thumb is that as long as the machine is stable, the temps are ok. PSU shuts down if it overheats, and you can set the CPUs to do the same from BIOS.
Naturally you can also cool chipsets, PSU, memories and hard drives with water, but often it's not necessary.
). Unless you disable all safety features you can't fry anything.
), but I don't know how much heat an Opteron 870 dumps into a watercooling loop.
) processors and a GPU.
