hi y'all
 

Just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Steve, and my username is sjmorgan. I've read from the site on and off for the last three years but today, the site encouraged me to join and I want to thank jmke for that! I usually build servers for others, but this week I'm building a workstation for personal use, and I want the system to be quiet. I am not too familiar with water cooling solutions, having only built two such machines (they were gaming rigs) and need help in this area. I've resisted mixing water and electricity in the past, but am rapidly becoming a convert.

My dilemma is this :

1) Stay fully air cooled, which means I need a quiet air cooling solution for the GPU's.

2) Go full-blown water cooled, in which case I am over my head and need HELP, please, especially with water blocks for CPUs and GPUs.

3) Somewhere in between, with air cooling for the CPUs and water cooling for the GPUs.


Details :

Lian-Li V2000 Case
Tyan i5400PW S5397WAGsNRF Mainboard
2x Intel Xeon 5482 Quad Core [Need HELP with Thermal Solution]
1x PNY Quadro 4500 [Need HELP with Thermal Solution]
1x PNY GTX 280 [Need HELP with Thermal Solution]
48GB FB-DIMM [8x Kingston 4GB + 8x Winbond 2GB]
8x Samsung 1TB SATA Disks, 7200rpm
2x Seagate 1TB SATA Disks, 7200rpm
4x Seagate 500GB SATA Disks, 7200rpm
2x Fujitsu 147GB SCSI Disks, 15000rpm
1x Adaptec 31605 SAS RAID Controller
1x LSI 39320 SCSI Controller w/ External Links to :
Dell PowerVault 221
15x Fujitsu 300GB SCSI Disks, 10000rpm
2x Infiniband External Links to :
8 Bay Hot Swap Enclosure
8x Samsung 500GB SATA Disks, 7200rpm

I know it's a nice situation to be in. I never thought that profits from what began as a hobby 15 years ago could put me where I am today. Your help would be greatly apreciated. Thanks in advance.

Best,
Steve

welcome aboard :hello: thank you for taking the time to register!

I still prefer air cooling over water for several reasons:
- cost
- maintenance
- risk
- upgrade path

I know some prefer water cooling, but to each his/her own:)

the stock cooling on GTX 280 and Quadro 4500 is dead quiet when running idle, under full load, it won't be noisier than your 15krpm SCSI drives ;)

if you still want better:

http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_pa...r_hr03gtx.html

for the Quadro 4500, on what consumer card is this based? Maybe arctic cooling accelero S1 will fit on there.

there are not tons of Xeon third party heatsinks available, it depends on the mounting system; you can mount the Ultra-120 from Thermalright with this kit: http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_pa...eonboltthrukit

Thanks for your reply. I agree, the air cooling always seems less costly, less aggravating, fewer risks and easier to upgrade. Your perspective has reinforced my knee-jerk reactions to going water cooled. I'm not sure on which consumer card the quadro 4500 is based, but I'll check into the arctic colling accelero S1. Surprisingly, the 15K Fujitsus are relativelly quiet, especially compared to gtx 280 or quadro 4500 stock cooling running under load (at least that's what I've found). Appreciate your comments and helpfulness, especially this quickly.

Just a question why do you need +/- 20tb ?

Need help please...
 

Hi...I'm new guy here..
Want to ask your opinion about my pc which i built my self..
Here is the spec :

Case : Lian Li PC75 with 2x 120mm Fan
Motherboard : DFI Infinity Dark P965
Cpu : Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo E4500 2.2
Cpu Cooler : Xigmatek HDT-S1283
Psu : Gigabyte Odin GT 800w
GPU : 2x ATI RADEON HIS HD 3870 512MB DDR4 ( CrossFire )
RAM : 4GB Mushkin DDR2 800
HD : WD 160GB Sata
Samsung 18X DVD

Sorry, my english not good, but i respect what ever your opinions and please give me some advice about my pc.
Thank You

welcome!

that CF setup will draw quite a lot of power for the average performance it delivers, a single HD4000 GPU would suite you better :)
also note that your CPU at 2.2ghz will limit the Crossfire performance as you need a faster CPU to handle the load balancing; are you running the CPU overclocked?

No, because i don't know how to oc my cpu and i'm afraid it will damage my pc....Please give some advice....Thanks friend

Large DCC Project Files, Large CFD Files, Huge Reference Library.

you got a motherboard from DFI which is very OC friendly, set your memory to CL5 5-5-15 increase VDDR volts to v1.8~v1.9, bump vcore a tiny bit and same for northbridge, next starting increasing the FSB with 10Mhz bumps, boot into windows and run 3DMark03/05/06 or other 3D benchmark of choice, loop it a few times; then go back into BIOS and bump FSB another 10Mhz; check with CPU-Z your memory speed, try to keep it near 400Mhz (in memory tab) using the dividers in the BIOS.

overclocking is a trial and error process, if you take the gently approach and not push to the max there is no risk, just work your way up until you notice instability , then back down the speed a bit and perform a long stress test to make sure the system is running stable.

I will try it. Thanks friend and wish me luck. I will contact you later...:)