H2O VGA but what about RAM???

Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy KnobPflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
edited September 2003 in Hardware
I know the RAM on video cards gets fairly hot and I am thinking about going H2O for CPU, NB and VGA in a little while but am concerned about the RAM on the vid card. I am planning on doing some serious O/C on a 9800 Pro and would like some input for keeping the memory cool while cooling the core with water.

Comments

  • WuGgaRoOWuGgaRoO Not in the shower Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    u could pull a leo and just buy better passive heatsinks and keep it like that...he has his northbridge AND vid card cooled pasively without a problem...look for the post...or just pm him for advice since he did sumthing similiar to what ur trying to do

    however...i would just buy some heatsinks....like the zalman northbridge cooler...then modify them to fit the ram chips...im sure u can squeeze two ram chip heatsinks out of that one bad boy...then just use the epoxy that comes with it to seal the deal...thats what i would do if u wanted to extreme overclock
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    WuGgaRoO

    That is a great idea and I did think of it a few times whike reading Leo's exploits. But I want to go water for certain as I intend to keep overclocking and when it gets hot I have to back off. like right now my A/C is on the fritz and it is 93F inside the house (this is September). Passive wouldn't get me very far in this environment. I am definitely going to go H2O on the CPU, NB and VGA core but I am just wondering about the memory on my video card. I am also going chilled water with a full sized refrigerater in the next room.
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited September 2003
    Put your computer inside a very strong/thick plastic bag so the the edges of the motherboard, videocard, etc. does not tear the plastic. Vaccuum seal the bag. Getting power to the motherboard and using the video card, NIC, keyboard and mouse will be tricky, but you can devise a way to maintain the seal. Then, insert the system into your freezer and turn the freezer to its coldest setting.

    Overclock like mad.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Waterblocks for VGA memory have to be custom made, as they don't exist in a prefab retail channel to my knowledge. I got a price quoted of atleast $100 to have milled/channeled copper blocks done for a Radeon 9700 Pro. That was $100 PER block, and you need 2 for a 9700P.

    Ram on video cards doesn't actually get that hot (Which is why they often don't sink them). Copper sinks from a vendor would work well. As for 93*F, be lucky it's only 93*F. I ran a computer the entire summer in a 101*F room, overclocked 700MHz. That was quite a rush.

    All on air cooling too.


    As for vaccuum sealing the bag, bad idea. It isn't a true vaccuum seal and there still will be moisture, as well as no method to expell heat from the plastic. Plastic is one of the worst insulation methods. Bad bad bad idea.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited September 2003
    use a fan to blow air across the card, if nothing else. That ought to keep the ram pretty near room temperature.

    Here's an idea... why not pelt everything? protecting it from condensation may be a hell of a job, but I've been thinking about it lately... My idea involvs something like this:
    <ul>
    <li>8x Melcor CP 1.0-31-05L (or equivalent) peltier elements for bga video RAM (1 per RAM chip)
    <ul>
    <li>15x15x3.2mm
    <li>3.75V/3.9A/8.2W
    <li>67*C Delta T max.
    </ul>
    <li>2x Melcor UT15-12-40-F2 or (equivalent) peltier element for GPU (1 chipset, 1 GPU)
    <ul>
    <li>40x44x2.8mm
    <li>14.4V/14.6A/126W
    <li>69*C Delta T max.
    </ul>
    <li>1x DangerDen 226w Pelt (CPU)
    <ul>
    <li>Size = 50mm X 50mm X 3.10mm
    <li>15.2V/24A/226.1W
    <li>67*C Delta T max
    </ul>
    </ul>
    Total power dissipation: 902.8w max, not including component heat output.

    How would you go about cooling that?

    Well, for starters, how about making your own water blocks? You could take say, an Alpha PAL8045 (which would be perfect, since it's anodized...) heatsink and solder/weld/braze a shroud around it, and turn it into a water block. You could do the same thing with something smaller for the northbridge, and build a custom thing (or adapt something) for the video card... Instead of using one of the dinky pumps most people use, get an Iwaki-Walchem WMD-100RLT (35GPM), and run separate circuits for each component... Use a small aluminum car radiator and some Comair-Rotron 172mm fans, and you'll be set. I'd imagine everything would run well below freezing, and you'd have a (very effective) space heater as well... :D
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Thrax,

    Thanks! I will probably start looking around for some nice ramsinks then. When I go water I will also end up epoxying my Zallman NB HS to my SB.

    What do you think about the full size fridge idea. I was considering 3/4" copper tubing coiled in the bottom of the fridge turned down all the way with the only other use being beer storage.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited September 2003
    The one issue I have with a fridge is that most are designed for a 50% duty cycle, and since you don't know the cooling capacity of a given fridge in btus/watts (I haven't been able to find it anyhow), you don't know whether the fridge will be able to handle it or not. If you get one that's too small, you may kill it very quickly because it'll be on all the time. You can guesstimate cooling capacity based on power consumption, but I don't know how efficient those things are, so I have no idea what an accurate guess would be...
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Larry,

    If you have a bunch of retail cpu heatsinks and a Dremel etc, you can easily make them yourself. However, before you will need sinks on the card, you will have artifacts, and therefore need to do the vmem mod. So what i mean is, if you dont intend to do the vmem, you dont need the sinks.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Geeky

    First I am planning on using a full size fridge like your mom has in the kitchen that everyone keeps opening the door and blah blah blah. Well I don't plan on opening the door near as much, putting in warm pop or beer to "get cold" or put things in the freezer as if it were in a "Normal" situation thus reducing the load put on it in one respect while increasing the load in a constant manner and maintaining a lot of its thermal efficiency.
  • WuGgaRoOWuGgaRoO Not in the shower Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    the fridge idea is a bad idea...ill look it up...but sumone on pimprig.com did it...and it didnt turn out all too well...

    //edit

    btw..i wasnt telling you to fdo eveything passive...i was telling you to JUST do the ram heatsinks as passive...just get bigger heatsinks for it then epoxy it....i think thewre was a bit of a misunderstanding..that u should buy heatsinks simply for the ram...and nothing more
    ///edit
    found the link
    http://wastedbandwidth.org/phatbarn/
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited September 2003
    ;D;D;D
    I was kidding.
    Sorry, I thought that was blindingly obvious.
    Thrax said
    As for vaccuum sealing the bag, bad idea. It isn't a true vaccuum seal and there still will be moisture, as well as no method to expell heat from the plastic. Plastic is one of the worst insulation methods. Bad bad bad idea.
  • SputnikSputnik Worcester, MA
    edited September 2003
    you might want to take a look at what the crazy brits over at bit-tech did with some water cooling to get an idea

    http://bit-tech.net/feature/23/
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited September 2003
    Pity to see that kind of engineering prowess wasted on such a worthless card. ;D;D;D

    It does look great tho...
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Sputnik

    I love that idea! It even looked real cool. Too bad Geeky beat me to the best part though.
    Pity to see that kind of engineering prowess wasted on such a worthless card.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Mackanz said
    Larry,

    If you have a bunch of retail cpu heatsinks and a Dremel etc, you can easily make them yourself. However, before you will need sinks on the card, you will have artifacts, and therefore need to do the vmem mod. So what i mean is, if you dont intend to do the vmem, you dont need the sinks.
    Mac

    Sorry i missed your post in all this. I will probably do the mod after I have the card a little while, which will coincide well with my timing on going to water. I'm just trying not to leave anything to chance.
    WuGgaRoO said
    the fridge idea is a bad idea...ill look it up...but sumone on pimprig.com did it...and it didnt turn out all too well...

    //edit

    btw..i wasnt telling you to fdo eveything passive...i was telling you to JUST do the ram heatsinks as passive...just get bigger heatsinks for it then epoxy it....i think thewre was a bit of a misunderstanding..that u should buy heatsinks simply for the ram...and nothing more
    ///edit
    found the link
    http://wastedbandwidth.org/phatbarn/
    WuGgaRoO

    This guy as well as all the others I have seen do this kind of thing used small refridgeraters around the 6cu.ft. size and I have a 21.5cu.ft. comercial grade with a larger than normal for size compressor. The small ones just don't have enough power to do it compared to a large one. It usually takes a small fridge 3 times as long to get a six pack cold compared to a full size. Another thing I noticed this guy did was to put the pump in the fridge and pumps produce a bit of heat themselves.

    This is the fridge I am thinking of using. It is 6 1/2 ft high and 32" wide.
  • WuGgaRoOWuGgaRoO Not in the shower Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    mt goat...ur a nutcase...in a good way...i hope it works out for u...and i hope the electricity bill isnt crazay
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    WuGgaRoO said
    mt goat...ur a nutcase...in a good way...i hope it works out for u...and i hope the electricity bill isnt crazay
    Maybe I should just use the big chest freezer in the garage instead!!!:eek2::crazy:
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited September 2003
    wouldn't it be easier to just drop ice cubes into the water resevoir?
  • WuGgaRoOWuGgaRoO Not in the shower Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    YES! u should use the chest freezer...but make sure u use antifreezer and alchohol....or the water will freeze...i sugggest makign a solution with vodka and water....or antifreeze and water....so prevent any slushiness or freeziness
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