The HR-05 looks interesting. At first glance, it looks like the fins can be wedged in there, although they might not fit. Also, there is no documentation on how this HS is attached to the MB.

Has anyone bought one of these? What attachment hardware comes with it?

Yes, the shiny one beside the back panel connectors. It gets too hot to touch, but not so hot as to raise a blister. Yes, the downwash from the Intel cooler makes this heatsink quite effective.

1) Two reasons: I'm not the only user, and I didn't want to post embarrassing benchmark numbers
The VRM that is overheating is the Vcore VRM; the X800 has its own on-card VRM which is completely separate.

2) I didn't really consider watercooling, since cooling the CPU with a Ninja and a 5V fan works well.

Yeah here's a thread that someone made about the HR-05. They also posted pictures of it installed with the Scythe Ninja. http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=29508

here's the picture. http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-1/1136937/hr05_1.jpg

just to let you know, you got 'OCP

http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=M ... V3cywsLDE=



oh yes, nice job

didn't take the time to read thru all the posts, but why don't you cut out the fan grills?

OMG, Professor Chris Thomson??!!

The person who wrote the compiler for Algol 68, one of the most difficult to implemented for language? The person who is a pioneer for massively parallel computing using thousands of linked Motorola 68000 CPUs? The person who I took a compiler class at Univ. of Alberta circa 1984? That Chris Thomson?

If is a small world, Chris! Thank you for the article, and thank you for teaching me everything I know about compilers, which turned out to be very useful throughout my working career in BNR, Nortel, and Calix.

- A former student

The very one. Thanks for your kind words.

great and informative article.

thanks.

Thanks.

Yes, it's true, at least for the P5LD2 motherboard. This is because NCQ is enabled only when AHCI is, and if you turn on RAID, AHCI is turned off. I'm not sure whether this is a BIOS thing, or due to the ICH7R hardware.

Here's a link describing NCQ as being part of AHCI:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/cs-012305.htm

I think you've misunderstood what I was getting at there. I meant that in a typical setup (ie with the case side on) the heat from that passive sink on top of the x800 would be pulled out through the rear fan, raising the ambient temperature around the VRMs. If the PC is used for gaming though then the only alternative is removing the heat another way, either Arctic Silencer or W/C. Which brings us nicely to.......


I guess we have a different opinion of what works well from a system point of view. I see a lot of work and a high-end case with the side off. You see a fun challenge and hear almost nothing. It works for you so, like I think I said before, thats a success. However, the main problem you seem to have had is keeping the motherboard temperature down. With water cooling you would have been able to move the CPU and GPU heat to radiators away from the motherboard. This would keep the general motherboard cooler and possibly allow you to place a fan over the VRM heatsink (without a hefty Ninja in the way). The end result would be that you could reach higher speeds for a similar noise level.
Thats not to say water cooling would definitely be better, I was just curious as to whether you'd considered it at all.

The installation guide is on the thermalright website. It uses pushpins, or you can use some kind of clip.

Along this whole line of thinking, I agree, with additional observations:

1) Tone is really subjective in a text medium. I read the many comments as appropriate because in a forum, why keep repeating what someone else has said, especially something as content-free as praise? Criticism is at the heart of critical thinking - including criticism of the criticism. (Then again, if you've spent untold hours fine-tuning this system, criticism might feel more stinging than was intended.) It is also appropriate for Chris to swat down ideas that he's already addressed or considered, as he explains why they weren't right for him.

2) All should approach the article and the comments as learning opportunities and extract the good, rather than assuming the badness of unknowable intent and reacting negatively. Everyone can learn from Chris's exacting methodology (including the importance of testing counterintuitive combinations and planning and documenting test runs), for example, while Chris can learn from suggestions for future modifications or upgrades.

Finally, Chris, let us know what happens with adding a heatsink on top of the VRM heatsink! The whole time I read the article and the discussion, I was dying to suggest this. Whether you use heatpipes, plain copper, watercooling, or another heatsink, I kept wondering why you didn't move the heat source to the airflow, rather than worrying about moving the airflow to the heat source.

I just finished moving my pentium D 830 system from a crappy kingwin to the p180. I also switched from the stock cooler to the thermalrigh SI-120. It's great. My idle temps before were around 55-60, and now it is 38. I have 3 nexus fans in the case running at 12v. I have a lot of work right now but when i get around to it i can probably undervolt th fans and it will be a lot quieter. The air that the SI-120 is blowing down onto the motherboard is not too hot.

I didn't respond right away, but your comment sent me down a radical path that I'm just about done documenting. Thanks.


Yep. Seal off that back inlet, then duct the video card heat out of the box any way you can. Worked for me.

Chris,

First, thanks for the excellent article. Your attention to detail is terrific and is definitely worthy of a prominent posting in the DIY section.

Second, I would like to know which specific applications you use, or intended to use, when designing the PC around the Intel CPU. I have no doubt given the quality of your article it was well thought out and reasoned; I am just curious as to which apps you want to use for your video transcoding work, and which benchmarks / reviews are applicable in determining your choice of Intel over AMD for this PC. Reading through the discussion forum on your article I can't see this info previously divulged (although I can see a lot of assumptions out there that make people decree you should have used an AMD CPU).

Third, I saw a post earlier on the NCQ with RAID point which I was also interested in (ie that using NCQ is superior to using RAID 0 in hardware) and I was wondering whether NCQ can still be used when running RAID 0 using onboard HW (as I am) and SATA 2 HDD's, as I would have thought they could be run together for improved performance rather than having to choose one over the other.

Finally, I think you did a great job in actually cooling the PC given the components you chose, and doing so fairly quietly, despite the inevitable problems that crop up along the way. Bravo!

p.s. Wouldn't a compiling expert ex-professor be using customised linux kernels and roll-your-own linux apps running on an x86 architecture?

Mostly video AVI/MPEG2 recoding and audio MP3/CDA with Screenblast, Cinema Craft, TMPGEnc, DVD-lab and Nero. The choice of CPU was driven mostly by prejudice, not benchmarks, although there are conflicting sets of benchmarks for these applications. AMD f***d me and the companies I worked for too many times over the last 20 years for me to personally buy stuff from them.

With my motherboard and BIOS you have to choose either AHCI or RAID. If you don't choose AHCI, you don't get NCQ. YMMV.

I get enough of that stuff at the office...

I'm not sure if this was brought up before; I did a quick text search for "tv card" on the three pages of this thread and didn't find anything.

In the final picture, the TV tuner is in the PCI slot right below the video card. I was wondering if there is any reason like fiddly operation or IRQ conflicts that's preventing you from moving this card down a slot.

This would allow you to open up a slot backplane below the video card as well, and the surface of the TV tuner would form a bit of a duct that air from the other half of the "motherboard fan" could follow across the other half of the video card heatsink and out the back.

Just a thought.

The TV card was added later. I just shoved it into the top slot for no particular reason. It's true that I could move it, but I don't think that would do anything to the cooling.

The reason is that the X800 card gets almost all of its cooling from the heat pipes. It does have a nice looking radiator on the other (lower) side, but that chunk of metal does nothing useful since it's so badly coupled to the GPU. Its only real function is to provide pressure to the heat pipe base plate.

As for the TV card itself, all its heat is on the underside, and is concentrated on the ATI chip and the metal block that includes the tuner circuits. The ATI chip got a bit hot, which is why I stuck some copper on it.

EDIT ATI, not AIT.

Nice part two!

I forgot I even said that!

I love the white styrene ducts and stuff, I thought I was bad


Great Job!

Just......wow! Looks like it was loads of fun. Good job!

how well does the BGA sinks stick to the VRMS? im thinking about the same mod to my ASUS for they are also naked VRMS

At first they don't stick very well, but after a few hot/cold cycles they are very solid.

Nice read! I think I will try some of the suggestions myself.

About the nexus fans:


While they don't do plain black ones they do have black and white ones:

Very interesting articles. I still think you're crazy trying to silence that system, but that's crazy in a good way!

Thanks for he credits, Chris.

I have discovered the ultimate computer quieting technique. Its even more effective than placing the machine in another room. I am using my notebook poolside in Mexico. there is so much noise around here there is no way to hear a computer, or even myself think for that matter.

Oh yes, Diver has been diving in the azure waters off Cozumel, including a narcosis inducing trip to 127 feet below, and it rocks.

Back to the topic. IMO, the solutions presented here are applicable to rigs other than the power hungry Intel processor in use. When I ducted my Ninja, for example, benefits were seen on all three sensors and with reduced PSU fan speeds. Even an AMD X2 can turn into a hotplate when overclocked sufficiently.

Yep, a Mexican poolside would even silence a deisel generator...

Enjoy your holiday, and hoist a marguerita for me!

Chris, what temperature is your video card when it is idling? I have the x800XL version of the passive Gigabyte card that idles near 50C in my P180. Thanks for writing up your work!


Jason

I am not aware of any way to measure the temperature on this card. It is a GIGABYTE GV-RX80L256V. The heat pipes feel slightly warm at idle.

Chris, I've been using a program called ATITool. It's a small program that temperature monitoring capabilities, as well as over/underclocking and fan control. Our cards don't have fans, but the temperature montoring is useful. It's available at http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

We have the same card. That thing gets REALLY hot when the 3d engine is active. Run the "3D View" feature of ATITool and watch how hot it gets.

Well I had ATITool, but hadn't made much effort to use it effectively. The temperature features are pretty well hidden.

My idle temperature is 50-60 depending on room temperature, and when I turn on 3Dview it rockets to 100+.

This program certainly is more stressful than 3DMark. Based on ATITool, I can't successfully overclock the GPU or GRAM at all. But of course that's based on zero artifacts, which seems rather purist for game playing.