Water Cooling ASUS Rampage Formula

theLaminator

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I'm probably going to be putting a water cooling system in my rig this fall/winter so I've been looking around and will probably get most of the stuff from swiftec. I'd like to go ahead and do a complete water cooled system with the cpu, gpu, and NB in the loop. My question is this though, on the Rampage Formula it looks like the SB and NB are connected to the same heat sync via a heat pipe. Does anyone know if this is true. If so will have to include the SB in the loop as well or is there some way to remove the NB heat sync. Thanks in advance
 

Kaldor

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The south bridge is the coolest running piece in the setup. You can buy replacement passive cooling heatsinks for your southbridge. For the rest of the setup, cooling with water isnt a bad idea, but watercooling the northbridge is over kill unless you are doing a crazy over clock. Asus' stock heat sinks are probably more than adequate to handle keeping everything cool with a decent over clock. A better solution may be to get a fan for the northbridge like an Antec Spotcool (iirc) if your really worried about heat.

What kind of a loop are you going to setup and what order?
 

bydesign

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Don't do it.

It's not worth the cost or headaches. The only time I would recommend water cooling is for the silence

The chipset on that board doesn't need water cooling even at extreme overclocks.
 

rubix_1011

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Cost or headaches? His concept of financially acceptable and yours might be vastly different. That being said, giving advice to someone who has the means to buy what he wants isn't yours to give.

Headaches? It isn't rocket science and if you don't understand that you should make sure you read directions, seal connections and test components, then yes, you deserve to air cool instead.

Silence? Watercooling and silence aren't always a 1:1 ratio. Those that are silent depend highly on large area radiators and low speed fans. High performance depend on high-flow fans which generate as much noise as most case fans. Where you don't get noise is CPU fan, and GPU fan. The idea that watercooling is silent comes from lesser kits that don't perform as well. And to be honest, even a moderate to high performance setup isn't all that loud...it has to do with fan choice. If you can hear a pump...something is seriously wrong.

As for the heatpipe NB/SB coolers, its an all or nothing approach. You can't separate the stock coolers from the heatpipes and expect them to work. You can look for NB waterblocks (doubt the SB needs one) or get a heatsink/fan for NB and passive heatsink for the SB. If you want to OC...a NB block is a good investment.
 

grieve

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I don't think I would bother with the NB/SB at all... I run water on my processor and have never had a issue with NB/SB, however my overclocks are mild (q6600 @3GHZ). I suppose if you plan to "extreme overclock" investing in a NB water block is a good idea and just passive cool the SB.
 

sailer

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Speaking as someone who owns an ASUS Rampage Formula, I'd say that watercooling the CPU is fine. The southbridge really doesn't need it, but if you want to, go ahead. The northbridge does run hot and if overclocking very high, it either needs an auxiliary fan or water cooling. There is a heatpipe connecting the bridges. Personally, if I did install watercooling, I'd watercool the CPU and just run an extra fan to the northbridge. Or you could do as Grieve suggested and watercool the CPU and northbridge, but leave the southbridge alone.

Anandtech has a couple articles on the Rampage Formula, so you might look them over.
 

bydesign

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1. Grow up and/or calm down

2. Cost to beat air is a minimum of 2x the cost and in return with a modern Intel CPU you might get a 10% better OC. It may look cool and it should be quieter but that isn't much. I would discourage it no matter what his disposable income was unless he was aiming for near silence.

3. Headaches, where to begin... Possible leaks, pain to make changes to the system. Leak testing the loop 24 hours if you got it right the first time. I didn't consider the researching, locating, and initial installation a headache.

4. I didn't say all water cooling was silent. I was implying that I would only recommend it for silence. You could also deduce that I didn't believe that oc was a good reason to do it. I personally hit a voltage barrier that I will not cross for my OC it's the exact same with or without water cooling. Even when I pushed the system in the first month my switch to water only gave me about a 100MHz bump. I have a hand selected money no object loop. Needless to say it performs pretty well in case you're wondering.

5. As for the cooling of the north and south bridges I think Sailer stated it best.

6. Lastly I wish more people would have discouraged me. I was warned and knew what I was getting into but didn't put much consideration in the negative aspect of it. So we'll have disagree about giving advice and opinions about any topic. That's what forums are for and if a few one liners stirs up some discussion that's even better.
 

rubix_1011

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Moderator
That was calm, unless you interpreted my responses to your specific problem areas as a direct attack. I was merely offering an alternative opinion that didn't share your view. Don't take it so personally when someone disagrees with a posting; and don't assume they are acting like a raging lunatic.

Truce offered.
 

phreejak

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The southbridge never needs to be cooled, not for any reason really. It is pretty much the nerve center for your raid functions. If you can fit ANY heatsink on it then that is good enough.

The northbridge, however, definitely does have it's cases where it is better to err on the side of caution and include it in a cooling loop - although, I do not recommend doing it that often.

The Northbridge, typically, controls memory functions like %u2013 a memory controller (for Intel Chipsets), a level 2 cache communicator and bridges the gap between the CPU and Ram %u2013 it also handles functions between the CPU and the graphics processor on the PCI, AGP and PCIe slots. Since this particular part is always busy it can generate quite a lot of heat. Now, the only case I would ever recommend adding it to a watercooling loop is if the person in question was aggressively o'clocking - I mean, the CPU, Ram, voltage tweaking - you get the picture. Otherwise, a decent HSF combo would suffice.

 

Lavacon

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Taking apart that stock north bridge set up is very easy. 4 Screws :) I took mine apart to apply better thermal paste. I will be adding a swift tech North bridge water block myself in a few months.
 

Lavacon

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Well, A 40mm fan and some zip ties are in order. You will have to mount it to the side due to the wave design of the heatsink over the NB. Depending on available room you can point it Up or down, but there will be no left,right or top mounting of the fan without modding the crap out of the wave piece. Personally, I am just going for the waterblock and taking the whole wave part off.
 

rubix_1011

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You can also find replacement northbridge and chipset coolers on many sites like Newegg and FrozenCPU.com. Many of these have alternative mounting mechanisms for a variety of motherboards.
 

modtech

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I paid a pretty penny for this motherboard. I'm not going to risk taking the NB heatsink off. I've got zip ties, I just need a 40mm fan. I have absolutely no idea where the zip ties have to pass through the fan nor the heatsink. Any help on how it's done, advice, photo's, links etc is appreciated.
 

Lavacon

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fail-at-failing.jpg
 

modtech

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Failing at failling is sweet success!
Lavacon. You're an idiot. You fail at explaining something simple. Go chew on a buffalo's anus.
I've zip tied fans plenty. Just not on a northbridge that won't allow it done from the top. The space to place it by the side is very tight and zip tied fans are rattle prone. You have useless photos up your ass but can't come up with something for this? Pathetic...
 

rubix_1011

Contributing Writer
Moderator
Wow...you don't have to get so uptight about it. Part of modding and customization is figuring out how to do things yourself. Not every motherboard is going to have the same mount holes and not everyone is going to have the same board. Those that do might not be doing what you are doing, so you have to pioneer your way into something new.

If he fails at explaining something so simple to you, why does it even need to be explained in the first place?

No one said it would be a cheap or simple solution in every case...you obviously aren't too interested in it if you can't even attempt trial and error yourself and insist others show you pictures of what they did. We all aren't going to go out and buy your motherboard to come up with an idea of how to mod yours for you.

Edit: You also hijacked Laminator's thread.
 

Lavacon

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Modtech, I would suggest changing your name to Nontech for one.

Let me tell you a story. My 2 year old asked me " Daddy, radio on? Radio Broken?" I told him to that radio was not broken and that he had to to turn it on himself if he wanted to use it. I told him where the on button was and even how to change the frequency. A few minutes later I could hear music coming from the room upstairs. He had turned it on and found a channel that he liked for the moment.

Moral of the story? We can only do so much. I told you where you should place your fan, witch direction to point it, and what to attach it with on the cheap. To this you ask for pics, diagrams and a damn you tube video explaining it. We can not help you any further.

Note: Way to hijack Laminator's thread.

 

rubix_1011

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Moderator
^LOL.

Whatever.

Excellent response; I expected nothing less from someone too lazy to do something themself. A pouty 'whatever' speaks volumes about the kind of person you are in response to the people who gave you as much information they could to answer your question from a thread you hijacked, no less.
 

modtech

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Just because I work hard doesn't mean I shouldn't be using a rampage formula or that I'm lazy. If you could stop being an assclown for one second something positive might come of this. So it's a question of aircooling a NB, not watercooling. Still relative, the only thing being hijacked here is your senses.
 

rubix_1011

Contributing Writer
Moderator
I think the problem is that we all were contributing to your answer, but yet that wasn't good enough for you so you demanded pictures, diagrams, step by step instructions, etc. The point of my debate remains the same: if you don't want to put in the time and effort to figure it out for yourself, then maybe you should stick to leaving things stock and the side of your case bolted up. Outside of offering ideas, there isn't anything else any of us can do for you.

Always consult your unbiased, eternal friend, The Google for all other needs.
 

modtech

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I already knew I had to zip tie a 40mm fan for cooling the NB before I even posted in this thread. I'm NOT demanding diagrams, step by step instructions, that anyone buys my motherboard and does it for me or smartass replies. I wouldn't have posted if I hadn't have sifted through several pages of google results either. Seriously either offer help or piss off.