Asus Rampage Formula Q6600 4.0Ghz

[tricecold]

My System:
Asus Rampage Formula
Q6600 2.4 GHZ
3 x WD Hd 2 in Raid 0 Mode
Creative X-Fi Extreme Music Sound Card
4 Gb OCZ Ram
Thermaltake Big Water 760i
4x NOCTUA NF-P12 1300RPM 120mm
1x NOCTUA NNF-R8 SESSİZ 80MM

The Story:
After Burning my NB on my super expensive Striker 2 Formula while trying to install Ek chipset coolers, I have degraded myself with asus rampage formula.

My Cpu is lapped and I have no problem running it on 3.6 GHZ with full load temperatures maximum 65 C degrees.

My First Question is I have one fan for pulling and one fan for pushing air into radiator. But I dont beleive I am getting enough cooling this way.

Would setting up the fans in this illustrated way would help or not. Look Below

Legend:
FE: Fan Exhaust
R: Radiator
F: Fan

Current Setup
FE - R - F

I am thinking of
FE - R - F - F - F
if this above is more efficent , would I need the same amount of exhaust fans to stabilize the speed of wind....
any CFD engineers around?


Would lining fans this way increase the wind speed to cool the radiator more. Which I will also be able to tell soon because I ordered this "THERMALTAKE-Flow-metre-TX-Plus-Termal-sensor-LCD-CL-W0138D" so I can check the water temperature.

My Second Question is, Would I get better cooling with these components listed below.

THERMALTAKE P500 or MAGICOOL POMPA LC-Pump700(Already Own) with Liquid Reservoir
MAGICOOL ELEGANT 240 MM RADIATOR

If I use a new pump like thermaltake, would using a reservoir like those tube looking ones installed on the outside of my case would help or not?

I have currently solved the overheating NB issue by removing my mini fans over my NB and installing the 2 120mm Noctua fans right over the NB resting on my Soundcard 😱 !'^'^+'^+%^+%, yeah I am surprised about my self also.........


Information above is of course solvable by trial and error, but my wife really gets angry when I spend too much time with cooling liquid on the floor where my baby crawls everyday. So I need some experienced people to gimme some ideas.


The real Question is ?

How do I achieve a stable Q6600 B0 Stepping 4.0 Ghz with my Rampage Formula which I manage to boot to Vista 64 Bit already but BSOD instantly when I Stress Test 4 cores......

I see some posts on the net with similar settings on load top 50 degrees, so I am sad about my cooling....

Thanks in advance.

 

[Guest]

You wont notice the difference between 3.6 Ghz and 4.0 Ghz. Stop wasting your money.

 

[richardscott]

erm your watercooling sucks if you had the cash for a rampage formula then id sujest you upgrade your rad first then pump the water block. also always go for 1/2"id tubeing

 

[tricecold]

I almost agree with you performance wise, maybe I should save and spent on a new i7 920 so i can reach 4.5 GHZ or even more...

But it just is fun to reach new personal records.

Any comments on fan design on radiators anyone?

 

[richardscott]

the thermaltake rads are crap replace first.

 

[Conumdrum]

Sorry to say, the TT watercooling isn't capable of keeping that cool. The rad is inefficient, the pump is prone to stoppage, the block is a poor heat conductor.

You'll need to upgrade ALL of your watercooling to get good watercooling temps.
Here are some links to help you on the right path.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/index.php? Not a noob site, but great stickies
http://www.ocforums.com/ My fav, good peeps, know their stuff, less hardcore
http://www.skinneelabs.com/MartinsLiquidLab/
http://www.over-clock.com/ivb/index.php?showtopic=20277 A GREAT Europe site
http://www.overclock.net/water-cooling/
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.effizienzgurus.de%2Fmain%2Findex.php%3Fcontent%3Darticle%26action%3Dview_spec_article%26article_id%3D222&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 Info on rad testing
http://skinneelabs.com/

http://www.dangerden.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
http://www.petrastechshop.com/
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/
And Jabtech too!

 

[tricecold]

I know now why I fail to full load 4 GHZ , my PSU barely handles 3.6 ghz and 4 ghz is just too much for my TT 500 which seems to max output 450

 

[tricecold]

It is a disease , and I got it, ok I rearranged my loop, 1/2 hose and Magic Cool 120 x 2 Rad installed with 2 front 2 behind NOCTUA NF-P12 1300RPM 120mm fans and I got my Vcore at 3.6 GHZ 1.36 Volts stable (Guess I was lucky with my q6600). On Load Top 52 Celcius.

Now this is with Bigwater 760i pump 500lt/h and TT cpu block ( however Bigwater 760i Cpu Block barbs are fixed and are smaller than 1/2 so i added smaller hose to the 1/2 hose at the connection.

To Overcome this:
I ordered :
Swiftech MCP655-B™ 12v Water Pump w/ 3/8" Conversion Kit (317 GPH) 1200lt/h
Swiftech Apogee™ GTZ Universal CPU Waterblock
Shin-Etsu X-23-7762 Silicone Thermal Compound - 1g
from frozencpu.com

and I am absolutly broke at the moment, but with these addons I beleive i will pull down at least another 5 degrees. I will Post the results once I receive and tested them...

 

[db140]

you may want to add another 240 rad in there if your going to be pushing your system like that. and it would at least help make sure that your getting enough heat out of the system before it loops back around to the cpu

 

[rubix_1011]

You wont notice the difference between 3.6 Ghz and 4.0 Ghz. Stop wasting your money.

I don't think that you have the right to tell someone what they can or cannot do with their money. If someone has the financial means to spend the money, they have all the right to do so, even if it goes against your personal beliefs of what to do with money. Even if someone is relatively poor, you still don't have the right to tell them what to spend their money on. That being said, perhaps you shouldn't criticize someone for seeking information with a negative reply without also giving any beneficial information.

 

[tricecold]

It didnt occured to me that way about spending my money, but thanks rubix for making a good point about it. However nobody made a comment on the fan design.
Since I might add anıther 120x2 Rad, Should I make it like

Legend:
EF: Exhaust Fan
R: Rad
F: Fan

EF-R-SPACE-R-F
or
EF-R-EF-R-F

anyone with experienced double fan setup please respond.

 

[tricecold]

PS: I cannot put rads in diffrent locations because I am running out of space in my CM Stacker

 

[tricecold]

nd my wife will go berserk once i receive the new pump and the cpu block in 2 days, so dont except some replies for some days.

 

[tricecold]

I received and installed all, now the setup is
Swiftech MCP655-B™ 12v Water Pump w/ 3/8" Conversion Kit (317 GPH) 1200lt/h
Swiftech Apogee™ GTZ Universal CPU Waterblock
Shin-Etsu X-23-7762 Silicone Thermal Compound - 1g
MC Dual120mm Radiator
one tube looking 250ml reservoir.

I must say this pump is off the charts compared to my last one, I think i need another 120 dual rad to slow it down a little.
q6600 3.6 ghz idle 27-30 on load 59-61 , should I expect better Load temps or this is as good as it gets with one rad at ambient temp 23 degrees.

 

[Fruity]

just been reading this thread....interesting since my set-up is similar, minus the watercooling.

Asus Rampage Formula
Q6600 2.4 GHZ OC to 3.6GHz @ 1800MHz FSB (x8 multiplier)
Arctic 7 Freezer Pro CPU cooler with AS TIM paste
4 x WD Hd, ready for stripped mirrored array
Creative X-Fi Extreme Music Sound Card
2 Gb Geil Black Dragon DDR2 800 Ram
Zalman case
2x NOCTUA NF-S12 120mm
2x 80MM as supplied with case

With no water cooling my CPU temps are similar to yours, however I can't get to 4GHz without BSOD either. I'd put it down to the RAM maxing out (it's currently running at just over 900MHz).
Is your OCZ RAM 800 or 1066? Would be interested to find out if we're having similar problems!

 

[tricecold]

Well first off all, if we get the same heat then my cooling is wrong. I beleive my OCZ ram are 1066 but i need to check once i am back home, my 3.6 runsa at 400 * 9 multiplier. I can get into windows at 4.0 but prime 95 restarts it, But my psu is 450 and i beleive i need more juice for 4.0ghz according to some psu calculator web site

 

[Fruity]

Does seem a bit odd for the CPU temps. What is your northbridge running at? This is where my problem will arise with air cooling - it's at a toasty 70°C @ 3.6GHz! I've read that the long term running temp for the NB can be as high as 90° but don't really want to find out if this is true or not!

If your RAM is 1066MHz then it looks likely that there's a BIOS setting or two that need to be changed on both of our PC's. I can send you a post my BIOS set-up if you think it would help?

Similar to you, windows loads at 4.0GHz (with a lot of tweaking in the BIOS) but prime95 reboots the pc after a short time.

I err'd on ther side of caution with my PSU and went for a 1Kw job! I've just checked the CPU power running Prime95 and it's drawing around 140W peak according to Everest. CPU voltage is set to 1.464 according to CPU-ID, although I'm pretty sure I can reduce this by a fair amount and still run properly.
I'm not sure how much power your watercooling needs, but if you're running a single grapics card and the watercooling pump and fans don't need to run your central heating, it sounds like 450W might just be enough.

 

[tricecold]

my NB does not pass 55 degrees, and btw given cpu temps are core temps,
my cpu runs at 1.35v at 3.6 from cpuz, cannot remember the NB temp but i guess less then 1.5v anyways I would be happy to see ur bios settings at 4.0 ghz, so I can compare with mine,

Also my loop is currently pump to cpu, i will change it to pump to rad to see if it will make any diffrence.

 

[Fruity]

Ok, i'll retweak the bios and see if i can get windows to load again at 4GHz and let you know the settings.
The CPU temps I gave weren't the core temps, so that explains a lot.

I'm about to demostrate a shear level of ineptitude on thermofluids so read the next bit with caution:

The position of the pump shouldn't make any difference to the level of cooling your system gets. Water (or antifreeze!) is incompressible so the flow rate of fluid should remain constant through the circuit*. What may be important however is the temperature that the pump is running at. Having it immediately after the radiator (i.e. where the fluids should be at their coolest) may increase the pump efficiency and longevity.
Setting the circuit to run Rad - Pump - CPU - Rad may be worth trying???? Also, as you've mentioned, try varying the flow rate of fluid a bit. There's no use having the fluid move so fast through the rad that it doesn't have time to cool.

Like I said, I may have just left myself open to slander from the world of Toms Hardware - If i have then....errrrrr, somebody please say so, then everyone else ignore me!!! I do alot of cooling design work for cars, but not so much for PC's!!



*there is a caveat to this: if there are any parts of the circuit which have excessively low rigidity, then there may be efficeincy losses in those areas which may result in a variable flow rate, although, unless this is happening at the points at which the cooling is taking place it shouldn't make a difference. Also, the velocity of water will vary with pipe diameter, but if the pump is moving 1 litre a minute out, then it has to be receiving 1 litre a minute in, no matter where on the circuit it is.

 

[richardscott]

the water temp shouldnt affect your pump, if your rad is doing its job correctly then the water temp will only go up a few degrees above ambiant.

 

[tricecold]

I upload a sketch of how my setup will be after i receive my second rad, currently it is same but with only one rad.

 

[tricecold]

http://img172.imageshack.us/my.php?image=loopry7.jpg here is a bigger image...

 

[tricecold]

With no water cooling my CPU temps are similar to yours, however I can't get to 4GHz without BSOD either. I'd put it down to the RAM maxing out (it's currently running at just over 900MHz).
Is your OCZ RAM 800 or 1066? Would be interested to find out if we're having similar problems!

I've tackled 4.0 GHz even booted for 4.2 GHz but not stable but can be, just need to add another rad.

So as you can see from the image below it is all good, I upped my vcore to 1.6 and runs at 1.584 at cpuz. NB at 1.5 rams at 2.10, I took down the vcore to 1.55 and it failed after 10 minutes so maybe it can settle somewhere around 1.57 so can pull down several degrees maybe.

Here I present you my messmaker as my wife indicated before. (It leaked once, all over the floor, and proved that yes that liquid is not conductive)

 

[Fruity]

Tried re-tweaking the PC yesterday and can't even get it close to stable at 4Ghz now - i was struggling just to get windows to load.
I eventually got something close to working at 3.8GHz but the temps were so high in the NB (well over 80°C and approaching 90°C during stress test) that i got a bit scared and ended up turning everything right back to 3.2GHz!
At least this has had the effect that the NB is now at 60°C and Vcore is now less than 1.3V. Gotta be saving me a fortune in electricity!

I pulled the PC apart last night to rearrange the fans to see if i could get more airflow over the NB, but I'm not sure it's enough. I reckon it's just a bit of a daft location & design for the NB heatsink, especially for an actively cooled CPU. If anyone has any ideas on how to cool the NB please let me know!

What's the OCZ rated voltage for your RAM? Thought most of the OCZ 1066MHz RAM was rated at 2.2V (or higher?)??? Might explain some instability?

 

[tricecold]

my ocz are 800 mhz, i cool my NB on rampage by one 40mm fan as u can see from the photo, japanese glued to the NB and also the standart fan, there is another 40mm fan next to the fan but they make a lot of noise..