Upgrade to Peltier Cooling - Upgrade to Peltier Cooling
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Upgrade to Peltier Cooling
Performance
Now we have everything hooked up, double checked all the connections, and run through another leak test with the system installed. It's time to power it up for the first time and see some frosty temps. While we will not be benchmarking the system, we will be running some benchmarks to stress the system and get some load temps. The system setup is as follows:
Test System
Benchmarks
- SiSoft Sandra Pro 2003, BurnIn (2003.1.9.26)
- Prime95
- Enter The Matrix
- Doom III (Early Alpha version)
The programs were run simultaneously (one cpu load, and one gpu load. i.e. Burn In and Enter the Matrix, Burn In and Doom III, etc...) to stress the components and get load temps. (Yipee!! I actually get to play some games for once...) The temps are recorded in half hour intervals, then averaged together for a final result. System temps are taken via Motherboard Monitor, Ambient room temps via Senfu Digital Thermometer. We went with the 5800 Ultra for temps since core temps can be recorded via the drivers.
System as tested
Stock: CPU 11x166 @ 1.6V, MEM 2x256 TwinMos @ 2-3-3-7 2.6V, VPU 500 Core / 1000 Mem Default display settings. (600 Core was maxxed out in the nVidia Display Properites)
Overclocked: CPU 12x217 @ 1.9V, Mem 2x256 @ 2-3-3-7 2.6V, VPU 611 Core / 1000 Mem (using PowerStrip v3.40) Default display settings.
Ambient room temp: 23°C
Case temp: 20°C
That's a real nice improvement in temps. As stated earlier, moving to H2O will get you close to ambient temps while really not pushing the system, and allow for a nice overclock will still keeping the temps within reason. When you move to a peltier system, your starting block for overclocking is much lower, and not until some serious voltages are being pushed, and the system being stressed are we reaching ambient temps. As well as seeing some real nice temps drops, the maximum overclock the system can handle has been raised as well. While on water, the CPU would max out in the low 2500 MHz range depending on the ambient temps in the room. Moving to the pelt system netted approx a 100 MHz increase as the chip can now be run at 2600 MHz. On the video cards, the 9700 core was maxxed at 390 MHz on H2O, and 410 MHz on the pelt. I suspect a volt mod is in order to squeeze any more out of the 9700 core. On the 5800 Ultra, with H2O 560 MHz on the core was max, and a whopping 610 MHz with the pelt system.
The one thing I have noticed is when the pelt system is working overtime when overclocking, the radiator, and MeanWell PSU are pumping out some extra heat. The water heats up considerably (still have to get an inline water probe to measure temps), but it can be felt through the plenum of the radiator. While there is not much that can be done to remedy this aside from running chilled water (maybe soon...), we can break out the tools, and take care of the MeanWell. The dinky 60mm Sunon fan is just not enough to effectively cool the psu. The case of the MeanWell would get pretty toasty after a while. After thinking about it, and searching my spare parts box, I came to the conclusion that 2x92mm fans would fit nicely on top of the psu. One is acting as an intake, while the other is an exhaust. With this setup, the psu remains cool, and is barley audible.
While the psu was apart, it ended up getting a fresh coat of paint, as well as the fans to match the radiator stack on top of the case. Here are the 'parting shots' with the beast fired up, and heatin' up the place...
Conclusion
While it was a long road finally deciding to move to pelt cooling, the products used today are of the highest quality, and take the scare factor out of most of the equation. As long as you take your time, and check all of your work along the way, you will be very satisfied with the results. I was focusing on making the system somewhat portable, and with the components supplied, and some time planning out the mods, it can be achieved.
The overclocking achieved with the peltier system was just astounding. With the cooling factor almost fully taken out of the equation, you can get down to some serious tweaking to find your systems limits. You have to make sure you are running some quality components since they will be stressed pretty hard with the levels that are achievable with peltier cooling. The decision to move to pelts should be one of the last ones after you have acquired all those go fast parts, and have hit the ceiling on them. Once you do, you will be very please to see the headroom they have left.
Pros
Cons
There is a long list of thank you's here, so make sure you go and check out what each one of the sites have to offer. They all have excellent products and customer service, and with out them, this article wouldn't have been possible. First off, Bruce at CoolTechnica, who provided the Delay timer kit, and the Black Ice 2 radiator, as well as hours on the phone before even getting the first part in discussing setups, and theories. He gave me a crash course on pelt cooling.Xtreme Tek Werks for providing the blocks,CritiCool, for the Power Plant, and Water Plant, and Swiftech, for the relay kit.
Any questions, comments, flames, make sure to drop into the forums and let me have it...Thanks for hanging in there for the duration.
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