[Ophidia]

Hi there,

I've just got into water cooling, basically just to see if I could do it.

After much planning and work, I completed water cooling my PC last week and it's been wonderful to have such a quiet PC and lovely cool CPU.

My PC has gone from being really stupidly noisy with ten fans to having a nice quiet hum. I'm not interested in overclocking, more in having silent running- since my PC is high enough spec it walks everything I throw at it right now.

I'm having problems with my asus striker formula ii motherboard, though. The northbridge and southbridge are running really hot and it is really difficult to put in motherboard water cooling because of the stupid combined mosfet/northbridge/southbridge heatpipe design. At the moment, I have kept two 50mm fans on the northbridge and southbridge, but this defeats my silent running idea- and the chipset is still running hotter than I'd like (around 80 degrees on load). I've been searching the web and I've not found anything suitable for watercooling this particular motherboard- just a lot of complaints about how hot it runs.

I had two possible ideas to solve this problem. I was wondering if you could advise me on whether they are 'OMG dumb you'll fry your motherboard', or a good idea, since they're both going to be irreversable.

First of all, and the one I favour, is to cut a chunk out of the heatsink and use thermal adhesive to glue a waterblock in there to sit directly over the northbridge, and essentially turn the entire heatsink into a watercooled system. This has the advantage that it should improve cooling on all motherboard parts in one fell swoop- but will I get adequate cooling?

Secondly, I thought of cutting the heatpipes supplying the mosfets, and placing a waterblock on the northbridge and southbridge chips. There is a custom waterblock available for this motherboard that will cope with its 780i double southbridge chip. The problem here is the mosfets will not benefit. Will they need more passive cooling than their current heatsinks? Installing mosfet waterblocks as well could become difficult and unwieldy to achieve.

I'd like to hear your ideas and comments, if that's ok, and also if you have any other suggestions.

Edit: Hmm, specs might be handy:

Asus striker ii Formula + integrated sound card
Intel quad core extreme Q6850
4 gig ram
asus 9800 GX2
Vista 64 bit (suckage, soon upgrading)

 

[IEATFISH]

Welcome to the forum!! You'll find some great help here in the watercooling section. (I've seen people WC RAID cards...

) See section 2 of the Site Features guide in my signature for info about how to put in your system specs (read the whole thing if you have the time

) Another option is getting a custom block made. I'm sure the members here can steer you in the right direction.

 

[bob808]

after a quick internet search, i have only found this for the striker 2-
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/73...la_Acetal.html
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/67...tl=g30c293s728

 

[Ophidia]

IEATFISH- thanks for that, I've updated my profile

.

Yep Bob, I've seen those myself. I tend to wonder, though, if waterblock cooling on the mosfet as well as the southbridge is needed, since I'm not overclocking or increasing voltage. I'd like to get away with passive cooling there if I could.

 

[oliverw92]

You could probably find generic individual blocks that fit the north and southbridge, you could then either find a block for the mosfets or you could buy a normal heatsink and put that on.

 

[Ophidia]

Yep, I can get suitable blocks for the southbridge, northbridge and mosfets- the thing is, this is what I am trying to avoid by turning the current heatsink into a watercooled heatsink. I am interested to know if anybody thinks this is possible (or if they think it's nuts!).

 

[bob808]

you could pull off the stock heatsink and apply some quality thermal goo- then just mount a fan to blow on the parts that are not activly cooled by your wc loop. That would probably help lots for cheap.

 

[Ophidia]

Thank you all for your welcome, you've been very kind!

Quote:

Originally Posted by bob808 you could pull off the stock heatsink and apply some quality thermal goo- then just mount a fan to blow on the parts that are not activly cooled by your wc loop. That would probably help lots for cheap.

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that at all! I thought that thermal goop (I loooooove Arctic Ceramique) could only be used to connect things together. That's a nice plan, thanks.

I think my plan might be as follows: the heatsink, no matter what, is not performing its job and my mobo is over one year old so I don't need to worry about warranties. Therefore, I shall try modding the heatsink by cutting a slice out and replacing it with a waterblock and use thermal adhesive to stick it all back together (I'll take photos if it works). If that doesn't work, I'll go for the more traditional route and get a northbridge and southbridge cooler.

I don't have any temperature probes on my mosfets, but my voltages are nice and stable- are they likely to need more than passive cooling?

 

[Ophidia]

I thought I'd just reply with an update to this- I've made my mod to the heatsink!

I first disconnected the water loop so I could get into the guts of my PC and then added the drain valve I forgot to put in place when I first converted to WC

.

Then the real work started. I took the heatsink off my motherboard, losing patience with those silly little spring heatsink pins and snapping them all off so I could replace them with nylon boltdowns.

I got my dremel cutoff discs, (wearing goggles, gloves and dust mask), and shaved off the heatsink fins in a square patch over the northbridge. I did this in a separate room to prevent any metal particles going into the PC. I was surprised to find that underneath the copper coating, the heatsink is some sort of metal alloy, and damned hard to cut through. I got through two disc just cutting this small area. I ended up with a ribbed surface that I then filed flat using a metal filing attachment.

After cleaning this off, I mounted an alphacool northbridge water block and attached it using 10ml of Arctic Alumina adhesive. I was surprised at how much I needed, and very glad I ordered two packets of it by mistake! I waited 24 hours for this to set before proceeding.

Finally, I reassembled everything, forgetting in the process to take pictures because I'm a dumbass

. Then I tested the water loop for 12 hours, and fired it all up again.

It's worked perfectly. My asus striker formula II motherboard heatsink now has integrated water cooling, and runs at a respectable 50 degrees C instead of an obscene 95. I am therefore pleased. A fellow wow raider pal of mine saw my PC and renamed it 'Festerguts' in honour of the green water now gurgling around in its innards.

I hope you've enjoyed hearing about my mod here- I'm posting it in full since I've not found mention of anything similar being done and I thought people might want to try it themselves- at their own risk, of course. I am not responsible for wrecked motherboards, limbs, sanity or souls.

 

[dejanribic]

Pics?

 

[voigts]

we need some pics!!

 

[djsi38t]

Let me get this straight.You switched to watercooling because your case was too loud?You own an extreme edition cpu but have no interest in overclocking?
And where did you get that 90 degree temp reading?

 

[Kirmie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ophidia I thought I'd just reply with an update to this- I've made my mod to the heatsink! I first disconnected the water loop so I could get into the guts of my PC and then added the drain valve I forgot to put in place when I first converted to WC . Then the real work started. I took the heatsink off my motherboard, losing patience with those silly little spring heatsink pins and snapping them all off so I could replace them with nylon boltdowns. I got my dremel cutoff discs, (wearing goggles, gloves and dust mask), and shaved off the heatsink fins in a square patch over the northbridge. I did this in a separate room to prevent any metal particles going into the PC. I was surprised to find that underneath the copper coating, the heatsink is some sort of metal alloy, and damned hard to cut through. I got through two disc just cutting this small area. I ended up with a ribbed surface that I then filed flat using a metal filing attachment. After cleaning this off, I mounted an alphacool northbridge water block and attached it using 10ml of Arctic Alumina adhesive. I was surprised at how much I needed, and very glad I ordered two packets of it by mistake! I waited 24 hours for this to set before proceeding. Finally, I reassembled everything, forgetting in the process to take pictures because I'm a dumbass . Then I tested the water loop for 12 hours, and fired it all up again. It's worked perfectly. My asus striker formula II motherboard heatsink now has integrated water cooling, and runs at a respectable 50 degrees C instead of an obscene 95. I am therefore pleased. A fellow wow raider pal of mine saw my PC and renamed it 'Festerguts' in honour of the green water now gurgling around in its innards. I hope you've enjoyed hearing about my mod here- I'm posting it in full since I've not found mention of anything similar being done and I thought people might want to try it themselves- at their own risk, of course. I am not responsible for wrecked motherboards, limbs, sanity or souls.

Nice work. I know that the NB throws at horrible amounts of heat on these types of boards with the nVidia chips.

Edit:

Quote:

Quote: Originally Posted by djsi38t Let me get this straight.You switched to watercooling because your case was too loud?You own an extreme edition cpu but have no interest in overclocking? And where did you get that 90 degree temp reading?

The only odd thing there is not wanting to overclock. I believe that you can get the NB temp on the Striker II through BIOS. If not you can get it with an infrared thermometer. Also, 90 degrees C on these chips isn't that hard. I thought I burnt myself touching the heatsink on mine when I had the voltage up a couple notches once.

 

[Ophidia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by djsi38t Let me get this straight.You switched to watercooling because your case was too loud?You own an extreme edition cpu but have no interest in overclocking? And where did you get that 90 degree temp reading?

I switched to water cooling because my PC was so damned noisy (CPU fan, 2x 80 mm fans, 2x100mm fans, 3x 50mm fans, plus power pack and gfx card and *still* running hot). I could hear it in every other room of my fairly large house. It has a nice onboard sound card, but it wasn't like I could hear a thing from it because the PC was busy going RRRRRRRRR! I have no need to overclock, since my PC handles everything I throw at it so far- I might look into it in the future if it starts to struggle.

I also wanted to try water cooling just to see if I could

.

And the BIOS can give you temperatures for NB and SB on an Asus motherboard (oddly enough, the asus PC probe software can't), and as Kirmie said, Asus mobos are notorious for running really hot. Hindsight is a wonderful thing- I wish I had bought a different board, but eh, too late now.