Recent Modifications (Pictures Inside) (1 Viewer)

[Brett DiMichele]

Hey all,
I finaly got my most recent order from 2CoolTek which included
another round floppie (to replace the last one I screwed up)
and a 3 gram tube of Arctic Silver II Thermal Compound.

The pictures of the HSF show the Arctic Silver II applied
in a neat 1.5 x 1.5 inch square. I measure my CPU and then
masked off the area of the HSF so that I could have a nice
clean pad of ASII where the CPU sits. I also took the time
to polish the base of the HSF Heat Sink to help even out any
anomalies in the surface finish.
So far (40 minutes later) temps have dropped by 2.5 to 3
degrees F and I suspect they will drop another degree or
so after the ASII Stabalizes. Pretty good gain for just a
thermal compound I would say.
I have been in contact with sales at Directron.com and they
have advised me that I can custom order the new all Copper
Heat Pipe HSF from CoolerMaster for a wicked cheap price of
$37.00! This HSF from the comparo's I have seen thus far will
out chill the Thermalright SK6 by a couple degrees and it is
right on the money with the Swiftech Helicoid copper HSF
but at half the price!
The images below are some shots of my MoBo,Wire and cable
layout and you can also see the ThermalTake Active and Passive
DDR Memory Cooling Kit as well as the Sanyo Denki SAN Ace
Fan (HUGE) being used as an auxiliary intake fan when needed.
I would say I have my cable and wire situation all sorted
out. I spent a great deal of time installing nylon expanding
braid to all the fan leads and the speaker leads. The PSU
wires were all hand wrapped in electrical tape (neatly) and
all of the rounded IDE cables are now installed.
Whatcha think? Not bad for a umm "Prebuilt" system? LOL!

Now it's your turn.. Lets see the inside of your modded PC
and the outside too. I have many more mods in store for
this PC. I am painting the whole case, installing a side
window and internal lighting. Why? Because it's FUN!

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Well I went ahead and ordered my CoolerMaster Copper Heat

Pipe HSF and it should be arriving in 7-10 days. I will be

curious to see how many degrees I can drop from this HSF

vs. the Aluminium CoolerMaster I am running at present.

 

[Jon_R]

MEMBER REMOVED.

 

[Michael Silla]

Brett,

Nice job with your system. Good job with the ASII application. What sort of temps are you running?. From your setup, it looks like you are a heavy overclocker (or plan to be). Did you consider going with a watercooling set?. I haven't read any of your other posts on this subject so I am unsure of what your system setup (ie Mobo, CPU & memory and Vid card) currently is.

Michael.

 

[Drew Wimmer]

gimme another 2 months and I'll be back in Texas with access to my dad's tools so I can build my next case (gonna be based on Link Removed)
btw, it's generally a better idea to apply your hs compound to the core(or heat spreader as the case may be), no the heatsink, waste less compound that way

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Michael,

Thanks.. I do plan to OC but I can not do so with my current

MoBo. As of the moment I am running Intel's Genuine 845BG

Mobo which is a great board and it's very stable but Intel

does not support OCing. If I want to kick it up a notch I

will need to look to generic mobos (I have been looking)

Right now the system consists of 256MB of PC2100 DDR running

at 266Mhz, VisionTek GeForce3 64Meg DDR with DVI and TV Out

running 4x AGP, 400 Mhz FSB. It runs very good as it is..

But Overclocking is like adding Nitrous to a engine.. It's

the cheap way to gain more horsepower and I have to say that

it has me very interested.

I figure this way I will have all the cooling components I

need plus all the eye candy I want. When I am ready to swap

MoBo's all I will have to do is just that. Cooling wise I

will be set.

Drew,

After reading Arctic Silvers web site they actualy want you

to put a thin coating of ASII on both the core and the HSF

and then install the HSF. The current HSF is being replaced

as soon as my new Copper Heat Pipe unit gets here. I did not

want to waste a bunch of ASII on a HSF I know I will be shortly

replacing so I just applied a very thin about to the HSF.

Even doing it this way I have seen temperature drops and I

have to say that ASII (or any of the Arctic Silver products)

are very well constructed.

 

[AndyVX]

Jon_R,
Honestly, that post you have just made is not needed on this board.
I don't know what "ver.1" was like, but it's probably better that I didn't see it.
I hope you can see that what you posted is not necessary.
**EDIT**
Whoops, forgot to post what I had originally intended.
Brett,
Looking good! I've been meaning to pick up some of those rounded cables for myself. Not only do they help in keeping things neat and such, they look cool.
Once you get finished with your mods, and you can see inside the case, those rounded cables will make it look so much better.
Can't wait to see the finished product

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Andy,

Yeah I gotta say these rounded IDE's cut down on the mess

inside the case signifigantly. I wish I could figure out

a better way to route all the PSU wires but I feel that I

have them mostly hidden. In a larger Tower Case there would

be a lot more room to breathe but I don't have room for a

full Tower on my Desk and I have never been big on sitting

PC's on Carpet where they could fall victim to static electricity.

I can't wait to get this thing painted and get the window

installed. I have to call my local GM garage and order the

paint's that I will be using (Corvette Millennium Yellow and

Elctron Blue Metallic) that'll be about $40.00 tied up in

paint! (that stuff is pricey) As for the window, I haven't

decided how I am going to do that yet. All the cases I see

with windows held in place by rubber mouldings I am not big

on that look. I think I will hold the plexi to the back side

of the case with double faced adhesive leaving a "clean"

hole into the case.

But remember I am not making use of any of these mods and

it's just all "pretty" LOL!

 

[AndyVX]

Brett,
Just a question for ya. What are those fancy looking things covering your two sticks of RAM?
I want some

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Andy,

Those "Fancy" things covering my ram are from ThermalTake.

They are Ram Coolers and to do 2 sticks of SDRAM you need

1 Passive and 1 Active kit (you could use 2 Passive Kits if

you don't want another fan) the Active Kit is the Orange

Heat Spreader with the Fan, the Passive kit is the Blue Heat

Spreader.

The Passive kit also comes with 2 high quality Finned Heat

Sinks that can be used on GeForce Video Card Ram Chips.

(You can see the Blue Sinks on my Vid Card)

 

[James St]

Andy. those would be Thermaltake active memory cooling kits. I may get some of those too when I buy my new case.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Michael,

Sorry I forgot to answer your temperature questions. Right

now under heavy processing (Seti@Home running all day long

as a foreground application) I run at 118-120 Degrees F

(48-50 Degrees C ) on the Processor and 93-100 Degrees F

at the MoBo ( 34-36 Degrees C).

This is on a non OC'd 1.8Ghz Pentium 4 with an aluminium

Cooler Master HSF.

You don't have to be an OC'r to want cool temperatures IMHO

heat is the worst enemie of any PC component (even ram) and

with today's processors even non OC'd systems run hot.

I feel that my temps are hotter than they should be and

this is why I am trying every trick I can to cool it down.

The benefit will be that when I do decide to OC the machine

I will have all the coolers in place that I need.

Watercooling is nice but at this time it's a bit drastic for

me. But when I do decide to OC and if I go nuts OCing the

thing, then a WaterCooler may be a option to consider.

 

[Patrick Sun]

FYI: I changed the thread title (Mods -> Modifications) in case someone thought there might be recent photos of Moderators in this thread...

 

[Camp]

And you deleted my post. Give a guy a moderator badge...

 

[Michael Silla]

Brett,

Those temps do seem a bit high for a PIV. I'm hoping to ditch my 1.2 GHZ TB in the next couple of months for a Athlon XP (I am using the EpoX 8KHA+ board). When I make this switch, I will probably invest in a better case. The best I can do, temp wise is 52/32 (CPU/MOBO in Celcius) unloaded and 2-3 degrees higher under "duress." I am not particularly worried about those temps as they seem averae for a TB.

That said, I hope to do better, temp wise, with the XP processor. If I can get 35-40 degrees unloaded I'll be a happy camper.

Michael.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Michael,

Some of the contributing factors to my high temperatures

could be the case. I am running a mid tower which when loaded

with all the goodies, does not leave a whole lot of room for

breathing.

As much as I like my Micron case, I believe when I upgrade

to a generic MoBo I will also upgrade to an Antec SOHO Full

Tower for more breathing room.

After all, the best HSF won't do much good if you can't get

the hot air out.

 

[AndyVX]

I just checked the temps of my system. I don't know if there is a way to check in windows, so I just restarted and entered the BIOS.

Anyways, here is what I'm getting.

System Temp: 27C

CPU Temp: 40C

Are these good temps to have? My system is an Athlon 1600XP.

Thanks.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

1) I removed Jon_R's comments from this thread.

2) I deleted the posts replying to Mr. Jon_R's out of place comments, as they were moot.

-Vince

 

[Camp]

Andy,

that's a very acceptable temp for an AthlonXP. You have no reason for concern.

You can check your temps within windows with several applications. Motherboard Monitor is a common one.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Andy,
I would concour with Camp, I also feel those temps are well
within reason. The only reason I am concerned about temps
are for stability and longevity. Yes my system is running
well within Intel's spec for Processor and MoBo temp but
the quest for cooler temps can only prolong the life of any
electronic component plus add to the system's integrity.
Heat = Crash