How much radiation is enough?

Sklug · Post by **Sklug** » Tue May 11, 2004 9:00 pm

Greetings, been lurking for a few months, but firth posting.

I'm getting ready to take the big leap into this wet and wacky world. I have a few questions though.

I am interested in cooling (as silently as possible) an Athlon 64 3400+ system. These guys have a max thermal design power of 89Watts, but really don't go much over 60 usually. In any case. I will also likely have one of the newer graphics boards (ATI X800 Pro or nVidia 6800). I don't intend to cool anything else with water.

I want to setup a system that will all fit inside the case. I'm thinking about potentially an Antec Sonata or Super Lanboy case, as both have 120mm fan ports in both front and back. However, how much radiation am I going to need to cool this system? Will a single heater core like this one:

http://www.dangerden.com/mall/Radiators/heatercore.asp

Be able to keep up with the heat? I was thinking that if not, I could get two of them, and place one at the front with air sucking in, and one at the back with air pushing out. Would seem to be a tidy way of doing it with the two 120mm fan ports on those cases. I'd love to get away with just one heatercore, but if I needed 2, would that configuration work?

Thanks for your input. Very fascinating stuff on this board. It's become one of my favorites.

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Tue May 11, 2004 9:51 pm

welcome to SPCR!

to answer your question, a single 120mm heatercore would be pushing it, especially with a hot cpu and hot gpu. 2x 120mm heatercores or a single 2x120mm heatercore would be better.

the 2x 120mm heatercores sounds like a neat idea but in reality it adds a lot of restriction to your loop which you can obviously do without. devnull from the OCAU forums, as well as several other people, have had success mounting a camry chassis sv21 (a.k.a. "BA") heatercore in the top 5 1/4" drive bay, with an exhaust hole cut into the top front of the case. he did his in an antec super lanboy:

Sklug · Post by **Sklug** » Wed May 12, 2004 7:56 am

Ok, about these heatercores. Is there someplace online where you can just buy them? I'm interested in the "putting it together" part of this project, but not really the "hunt down the parts and mod the case" part of the project. I included the dangerden link because it was the only place I've seen that actually sells the heatercores with shroud, etc. I'm lucky to get time to work on the computer much less time to run around Toyota repair shops to find heater cores.

Long live online shopping!

Thanks.

Dhurdahl · Post by **Dhurdahl** » Wed May 12, 2004 11:03 am

Just for info...

Yeah a single 120mm rad would be enough... The real question is how high temps you want at what temp and how loud! .)

Im running a 120mm with a XP@2400 + GF5950U and at idle its quieter then my pan 120mm modded Foltron. (But yeah Im pushing the temps at idle at 55C)

For silence your much better off with a dual thats pretty sure.

Sklug · Post by **Sklug** » Wed May 12, 2004 12:08 pm

Well, my goal would be that the hard drive would mostly be the only audible thing in the system. And I'd expect the CPU temp to be below 60C at load. And the cooler the better obviously.

Do you think that your single 120mm radiator is the limiting factor on your temperatures? Or is it the flow rate, or tubing size, or that it is/isn't a heater core as opposed to a commercial radiator?

Dhurdahl · Post by **Dhurdahl** » Wed May 12, 2004 12:48 pm

Well... say like this... at full blast on the fan I get around 45ish load temp..
BUT thats so loud I almost fall off my chain

Aka... Ive adjusted the fan so I hold that temp (55C) and Im using SpeedFan to raise fan speed if needed due to load.
(Same temp on the CPU on both idle and load, just a couple of C peek before the fan rews up abit then it drops again)

Yeah a bigger rad would help since I could dampen the fan even more and still cool as much.

Im using a std Asetek WaterChill KT12-L20 kit, Well except the fan that is.. (can remember the make of it atm...)

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Wed May 12, 2004 1:50 pm

Sklug wrote:Ok, about these heatercores. Is there someplace online where you can just buy them?

i just go to my radiator repairman's shop and flip through the heatercore catalogue, pick one and he orders it in for me.

Sklug · Post by **Sklug** » Wed May 12, 2004 2:08 pm

Hehe, that's excatly my point though Chylld. I don't have a radiator repair shop, and have never even heard of such a thing. My car hasn't needed anything buy oil changes for the last 8 years. In other words, that's not a normal resource I'd have handy. I'd have to go through the yellow pages and pick one at random, and then deal with them when they point and laugh at me when I tell them what I'm doing.

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Wed May 12, 2004 2:11 pm

hehe well i was in a similar situation to you, i just flipped through the yellow pages (aussie name for 'business directory') and found a few, and visited them all to see which one was the best. settled for one that's 15mins drive from my place.

you'd be surprised whether or not they laugh at you - the first time i walked into that one, our exchange was as follows:

me: "Hi! I'm looking for a heatercore."
radiator dude: "Hey, how ya goin'. What car is it for?"
me: "Ummm.. it's not for a car, it's for a project I'm doing..."
radiator dude: "Oh... you're cooling your computer, are you?"

afrost · Post by **afrost** » Wed May 12, 2004 2:12 pm

oops

.....don't mind me

1911user · Post by **1911user** » Wed May 12, 2004 10:12 pm

Rig#1 is similar to what you are describing. Both cpu and gpu are watercooled. The radiator is a basic chevette heatercore with a single 120x38mm fan and a shroud made from a plastic storage dish (rubbermaid brand). My cpu die temps rarely go over 50C playing Far Cry which will use up all gpu and cpu resources. Doing windows (2D) tasks with the CPU at 100% load, cpu die temps are in the upper 40's. It would idle in the low-mid 40's if given the chance.

Here's a couple of pics of rig#1. The current shroud is a 2 inches deep and covers a little more of the heatercore surface. The one in the pic is about 1.5 inches deep, but everything else is the same. I strongly suspect a larger heatercore would help temps, but I don't have the room inside the case. The case is an antec slk3700amb.

Sklug · Post by **Sklug** » Thu May 13, 2004 7:49 am

Great pics! Thanks!

bchung · Post by **bchung** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 6:20 am

Sklug wrote:Ok, about these heatercores. Is there someplace online where you can just buy them? I'm interested in the "putting it together" part of this project, but not really the "hunt down the parts and mod the case" part of the project. I included the dangerden link because it was the only place I've seen that actually sells the heatercores with shroud, etc. I'm lucky to get time to work on the computer much less time to run around Toyota repair shops to find heater cores.

Long live online shopping!

Thanks.

I always found rockauto.com to be perfectly reasonable. There is probably a 5% off coupon floating around at Fatwallet "Hot Deals" forum.

Hope that helps.

Gooserider · Post by **Gooserider** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 6:03 pm

Leakycar.com used to be a good place to get rads online I've heard (never did business with them but their site looked good), however I've heard they may have chenged lately - don't know.

However your local autoshop is also a good place to check out. Best thing to do if you can is figure out exactly what model of core you want by brand / part number then call different autoparts and rad repair shops for the best price.

Also if there are several possibilities, get prices on several of them, often there can be significant differences in cost between seemingly identical sized cores, probably depending on how popular they are. At least in the US, I've also heard that domestic car cores are cheaper than foreign ones.

Gooserider