Is anyone using water cooling or liquid cooling for the GTX cards? I am looking into a water cooled system and would like some advice. My system with 2 GTX 570s is WAY too hot when I over clock the cards.

thx

What are your temps and fan speeds?

Everything is fine at stock speeds but when I over clock to about 940MHz on both cards, temps go to 82C with fans at max speed. I have 2 fans blowing at the cards but the ambient temps are increasing due to summer time. I can add a few more fans to the case and that might be my next step.

Water cooling is expensive. Water blocks are $120 each and the radiator and pump can exceed $300.

For $600, I can increase the performance of my existing cards by 25% or buy 2 more GTX 570s and increase it by 200%.

It could be a fun way to waste time and money but adding another card would also be a bit of a project.

thx

Next week, we will install a water cooling for our 3x580+1x590. I will report results.

And yes, it's expensive (especially for full cover water blocks), but temperatures of GPUs are about 45°C.

It would be great to learn from your project. What products did you buy? How did the installation go? Can you provide pictures of each step of the process? Did you use compression fittings or standard with a clamp? With that much heat, you must have used an external radiator - which one?

As you can see, many questions.....

Thanks for your help and good luck with the project. Keeping 570s and 580s cool is a chore and full coverage water blocks are the only way to go.

Water cooling is expensive. Water blocks are $120 each and the radiator and pump can exceed $300.

For $600, I can increase the performance of my existing cards by 25% or buy 2 more GTX 570s and increase it by 200%.

However, a better than standard air cooler is recommended.

6 months!! that's quick. Maximum meaning 100% or like EVGA 570 where it only allows up to 85%? Just curious. Been looking at dabbling with aftermarket GPU coolers, haven't done GPU before, just CPU, so I'm somewhat hesitant.

Is installing say a Arctic Cooler that much harder?

We have preset fan speed to maximum and most of fans are gone in 6 months. (MSI Lightning 580)

I have two MSI GTX 480 TwinFrozr II, but their cooler are emitting a very annoying, very high pitch hissing noise, when I rev them up.

Is installing say a Arctic Cooler that much harder?

I just saw this post. I learned the hard way, the environment around the machine is very important. I have a MainGear Shift Super Stock, i7-3930K HT six core, sealed water cooler, and twin GTX580's, sealed liquid cooler.

But, I had the thing under my desk, with only about 4" of head room. After less than one month, I burned out the coolant pump on the CPU.

This machine has the internals turned 90 degrees, so heat ventilates all vertically and out the generous top grills- right into the desk. The ambient temperature got over 100 deg F, and the pump on the CPU cooler burned out, shutting down the machine.

Suffice it to say, the machine is no longer under the desk.

I only lost 36 hours. MainGear is about 30 minutes from my house. They came down lickety-split, picked up the machine, had it repaired and tested over night.

BOINC has little to say about ambient conditions. I made a lot of noise about this on their forums, and hopefully saved some people from making the same mistake I did.
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Rubbing a bunch of money on a problem hardly ever works as well as applying common sense and just a little money. However, if you have too much money in your bank account then water cooling is a good way to burn some of that money off quickly.

There are 2 simple rules for keeping the machines cool:

1) Don't vent hot exhaust from a CPU or GPU into a closed case. NEVER! Why? Because it increases the temp of the air in the case and you can't cool anything effectively by blowing hot air at it. Case fans are mostly worthless. If you can't figure out how to use scissors, cardboard and glue to build a simple duct to carry the hot air outside the case then for goodness sake remove the side of the case.

2) Don't vent hot air from the case into the room. NEVER! Vent it to the outside of the building or else be prepared to pay more for air conditioning or suffer a big decrease in the effectiveness of your cooling solution. Put a fan in the window and duct or direct the hot air from the case(s) into that fan's intake. At one time I had 5 machines all ducted into one window fan. A pair of scissors, some glue, $10 worth of materials, 10 minutes of thinking about it, 30 minutes to build it. The room stayed cool and so did all the machines.

I have a machine and welding shop and have been making water (actually glycol) cooled systems for years. All you need is a mill and surface plane to make high quality blocks and a Tig welder to attach the hose barbs. The rest of the parts are stock items if you know where to order from and you can find many of the items, like radiators, brand new in scrap bins if you know where to look and what to look for. I built water systems far better than anything you can find on the market for about $20 and not much labor, with huge radiators and pumps. But guess what, those systems don't work any better than a decent air system and a little common sense. I can't be bothered making them anymore and feel sorry for people who get sucked into buying them. They just aren't necessary.

Dagorath:

Thank you for the wise advice. After a few hours with scissors, a screw driver, electrical tape and a little temperature testing most of the problems appear to be solved. I let the computer run while I made the changes so I could monitor airflow and temps. I rerouted a few cables and taped over some mesh areas and reversed one of my case fans to force air where I need it and vent heat from hot spots.

Both boards are overclocked again with temps in the mid 70s. I need some warmer ambient temps for a real test but at least I don't see anything in the 80's - yet.

thx

You used the magic word... test. You've got the idea, test what you did and if it isn't giving what you want then improve on it.

In my last post I said case fans are largely ineffective. That's a bad choice of words, let me explain. You can mount several case fans and often find they don't improve your temp readings. The reason is that if fans aren't positioned correctly they create turbulence inside the case. Turbulence impedes flow of air into and out of the case. Hence my advice to just remove the side of the case and thereby eliminate the turbulence and air in/out issues completely at a cost of $0 to you. I can almost guarantee you'll gain 2 degrees that way. Position a 110 volt fan, on low (quiet) speed, to blow air into the case cavity and you'll probably gain another degree or 2. Cables inside the case will also cause turbulence so your tucking the cables away was a good move.

If ambient room temperature rises as summer progresses and your devices start running hot again, I have some low cost ideas that are guaranteed to help. Whether they work well enough depends to some extent on your location (how hot it gets outside), air conditioning and other obvious factors but they cost very little to try. And if they don't work then you can always try the expensive solutions.

Hey, Dagorath-

How are you? I appreciate your sentiments; but, you know, that's just not my skill set. You knew I was going to buy the Maingear machine. And, I am delighted with it.

The whole heat issue is not dealt with at all at BOINC or in their forums. So, actually, my situation was a good adventure. All of a sudden, people were coming out of the woodwork with heat problems, and getting good advice.
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Hi Rich,

Good to hear from you again. At one time it wasn't my skill set either but I made it part of my skill set and you can too. That's not to say you *should*, just saying you can.

The reason heat issues aren't dealt with at BOINC is because most people Google "computer cooling" or similar terms and discuss the topic in forums dedicated to cooling issues. It was in one of those forums that I ran into an engineer who designs HVAC systems for buildings. (The same principles apply to a computer case just on a smaller scale.) I could tell he was the guy with the knowledge I needed because he didn't talk about what gear was the latest and greatest and magic pills, he talked down to earth physics and design.

Frankly I'm not surprised to hear that after you spent mega-bucks on liquid cooling you stuffed the unit into a tight space and fried the pump. I could see it coming from the way you were talking about it on the BOINC forum. It was obvious you knew nothing about what you were doing, didn't want to know, claimed it's not possible for you to ever know that stuff and that the guys at Maingear were the gods who would sell you the magic pill that would fix anything and everything for all time. I see it all the time and it makes me very sad... people peeing money down the toilet on expensive stuff they don't need and don't know how to use anyway. Glad you're delighted with what you have but you could have got twice the machine for less than what you spent.

In spite of what the people who make and sell them want you to believe, machines aren't magic. I mean machines in general not just computers. Machines are invented by men/women who are no more intelligent than you and I. If you put your mind to it and if you have the time you can master whatever skill set you need/want to do whatever you want with any machine you want. With the abundance of free info and discussion available on the net there are very few boundaries anymore.

Sometime I wonder if the main message you're trying to convey here is that you make so bleedin' much money you don't need to worry about throwing it away?

But that's all small potatoes. Far more important is the fact that you're here crunching and trying to make a better world. Happy crunching to you now and always!

Ah, you see? We are the perfect forum couple. I represent "Everyman", just a guy who likes science and wishes to participate. You represent the technical knowledge we need to succeed. Of, course, like everyman, I do not listen, I just go my own way.

But, I am not quiet about it and that is important. I have always felt that as a technically incompetent person, if I bare my faults and soul in these forums, others without the fortitude will find out what they need to know from folks, like you, with the knowledge they need.

Look, I am 71, I have done "O.K." and crunching is a passion. If it were not for my wife, I would call Maingear and order a duplicate machine today.

There are 295,000 crunchers active right now. Most are technically incompetent. If that is not true, then we have not reached out enough into the general population. I speak for those ordinary people.

BTW, if you want to see where I am competent, check out my blog, ScienceSprings.
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I learned the hard way, the environment around the machine is very important. I have a MainGear Shift Super Stock, i7-3930K HT six core, sealed water cooler, and twin GTX580's, sealed liquid cooler.

But, I had the thing under my desk, with only about 4" of head room. After less than one month, I burned out the coolant pump on the CPU.

This machine has the internals turned 90 degrees, so heat ventilates all vertically and out the generous top grills- right into the desk. The ambient temperature got over 100 deg F, and the pump on the CPU cooler burned out, shutting down the machine.

Suffice it to say, the machine is no longer under the desk.

If it were not for my wife, I would call Maingear and order a duplicate machine today.

I have 3 more case fans ordered. My idea is to keep most of the current modifications and add these 3 fans to force more air in the right places. The real issue right now is the fact that the computer vents into the room and the ambient temperature in the room is rising as summer continues. A regular box fan is now circulating air in the room and that is likely the most important change to date.

The tests will continue. For now, the system is running with temps in the mid - high 70s. Everything works fine below 82C and the goal is to keep it below 80C.

I doubt more case fans will help much if the room temp gets too high. You need to push the hot air from the GPU to the outdoors so it doesn't heat up the room. The box fan in the room will make you feel cooler because you sweat and are cooled by evaporation but your computer doesn't sweat so eventually the box fan in the room won't help either. Here's some inexpensive ideas for blowing the heat out of the house.

If you're in an older home you may have the old sash and frame style windows. If they extend down to about the height of a desk or table you're nearly done. Put a 110 volt fan in the window (the box fan you mention might be just the right size) such that it blows air from the room to the outdoors. Next, if your GPU is like mine it blows the hot air out the back of the computer case and not into the case. If so then put your computer on a table that is just the right height to line up the GPU exhaust with the window fan intake. Even if the GPU exhaust vent is 6" below the window fan and 6" behind the fan, most of the hot air will rise into the fan intake and be blown out the window. However you can run the window fan at a lower (quieter) speed and catch more of the hot exhaust if you can line up the GPU exhaust and fan intake as close as possible.

If your home is newer then you probably have smaller windows that are higher on the wall. You might be able to put the computer on a tall cabinet or shelving unit. Or go to the hardware store and buy a couple of angle brackets, find the studs in the wall, screw the brackets to the studs, screw a shelf on top of the brackets and set your computer on it. If you're worried about the computer being knocked off a high shelf then screw the case to the shelf, tie it down with some twine or a bungi cord. Put the shelf at the right height to line up the GPU exhaust with the fan intake. You can determine the proper height with a few measurements and a sketch. Or you can put the fan in the window and have someone hold the computer at the height required to line up the exhaust and intake, then put a light pencil mark on the wall at the height of the bottom of the computer. That's the height your shelf needs to be at.

With the fan in the window you'll have an open gap above or beside the fan. There's 100 ways to cover that hole. Cut a piece of plywood to fit and paint it, staple a piece of polyethylene to the wall outside or inside, stuff a big pillow in it, for a few examples. You can make it look very nice or not so nice it's up to you.

If you can put a fan in the window but there is no way you can place your computer up close behind the fan then go to the hardware store and buy a length of flexible dryer exhaust duct. I mean clothes dryer. You could leave your computer on the floor below the window or put it 20 feet away if you get a long enough duct. Fasten one end of the duct to the computer so the GPU exhaust blows into it and fasten the other end to the window fan intake. There's various way of fastening the duct to fan/computer. If you can't line up the fan and computer as mentioned above and are forced to use the duct then let me know and i'll give you some ideas for fastening the duct.

You might be tempted to just attach the duct to the computer and place the other end in the window and not attached to a fan. Bad idea. The flexible duct is rough inside and the small fan in the GPU won't push air through it very well due to turbulence and friction. You need a fan at the exhaust end of the duct to help the little fan in the GPU. Also, the longer the duct the more heat you'll lose out of the sides of the duct back into the room. That's why putting the computer right behind the fan and eliminating the duct is best.

Some of my suggestions obviously need tools. If you don't have them you can often rent them for a few hours at low cost. Also they don't cost much to buy new and an electric drill and a saw come in handy for so many jobs. Some hardware stores will cut wood for you. You can nice buy pre-finished shelves in various lengths and widths, you don't need to buy a 4 X 8 sheet of plywood just for 1 small shelf. If there's any house construction going on near you don't be afraid to ask for a few pieces out of their scrap pile. It's going to the landfill anyway. They may even cut it for you for a 1/2 dozen beers.

If you have the kind of windows that slide back and forth in tracks then it's very easy to cut a piece of 1/4" or 1/8" thick material exactly the same height as the framed glass that slides in the tacks. Your material will then be held in place by the tracks, same as the glass is held in place. Lift the glass up and pull the bottom clear of the track to get it out and on the table where you can measure the height very precisely.

Ah, Dagorath, my friend, you see? This is exactly what I try to accomplish by bringing forward my problems: others also come forward and you are presented with a platform on which you can explore the problems and try to help those of us capable of improving our technology.

My Maingear computer actually vents all of the hot air vertically. The whole internal structure of the machine is turned 90 degrees so that heat vents upward and draws in cool air near the bottom of the machine. The best illustration of this is that all of the cabling to ports is on the top of the machine instead of the back of the machine.

My Maingear machine sits between two windows in a corner. Both windows are kept open. I do have a box fan in one window to exhaust the hot air out of the house.

My house is a masterpiece of 100 year old Craftsman architecture. I would not be tempted to do anything to disturb this architecture, so I have done what I can best get done.

You might think of starting a blog with entries based on the kind of discourse in your last reply. You could alert crunchers to the blog's existence in the various project forums. You could go way beyond the problem of heat. You could even push the benefits of Linux to your readers.

Thanks again for all of your time and all of your help.

Go NJ Devils!!
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All of your venting ideas are great. I have 2 cruncher in a basement / garage. It is a large space and below ground level on 3 sides with a block wall and concrete floor. The good news is that the floor and walls are usually cool - even in the summer but the air does not move much.

The box fan moves enough air to keep to neutralize the local hotspot around the computer. By the end of the summer we may have issues but for now, all is well.

Has anyone looked at the advantages / disadvantages of going 220V instead of 110V for AC power? Most power supplies appear to be more efficient at 220V.

Thank you

I've never compared the specs for psu efficiency on 220 vs. 110 but I'll tell you something else about 220 vs. 110 you may find interesting. Every house in North America has 220 running to the meter and the customer is charged on the basis of 220. To get the 110 they split off half of the 220 and discard it but guess what... you pay for the half you use plus the half you don't use!! That's not such a big deal when most 110 appliances don't use a lot of power anyway (light bulbs, refrigerators, etc) but you NEVER want to use 110 for a water heater, cooking, heating the home or drying clothes because those appliances draw high amps.

With the cost of electricity rising the way it is these days I think people should consider switching all appliances to 220 if they can, including computers that run 24/7, just because of the fact they use everything you pay for instead of throwing half away.

The efficiency of a power supply running on 220 is another matter with obvious positive benefits in addition to what I mention above.

Pick up a book or search the net for DIY wiring. The electrical code is pretty standard all across North America. You don't have to have an electrician run a 220 line to your computer to be legal and stay covered by insurance. In most states and provinces the law says only that the installation must meet the code. If your house burns down they won't ask who wired it, they'll look at the wiring and if it meets the code you're OK. That's MOST states and provinces, not necessarily yours.

Dagorath-

I think here you are mistaken. I believe that the 220 is split and that I have 2 110 lines serving in my electrical panel.
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Dagorath-

I think here you are mistaken. I believe that the 220 is split and that I have 2 110 lines serving in my electrical panel.

[quote]Dagorath-


The -110 component isn't used (except in the 220 volt circuits) but since the meter counts both the + and - halves of the waveform, you pay for the - half that is never used in the 110 circuits.

Alain Maes said much more accurately what I was trying to say.
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[quote]Dagorath-


The -110 component isn't used (except in the 220 volt circuits) but since the meter counts both the + and - halves of the waveform, you pay for the - half that is never used in the 110 circuits.

Really funny, electric companies would certainly love that idea.

More accurate is that AC power generation always uses a 3 phased system, or 3 lines if you want.
Nowadays, at least in Europe, each house gets a 380 V AC inlet with the 3 phases or lines. This allows to split/balance the power consumption over 3 different 220 V AC phases or lines. The 220 V AC exists between any phase and a single neutral line.

For everyone interested in watercooling, here is a part of our water cooling for nVidia GPUs. Installation is in early stage.

http://www.ha-soft.cz/watercooling

Current GPU temps are about 38°C-40°C.

Nice pics!!

But.....

Is that a stock CPU heatsink lol?

Is that a stock CPU heatsink lol?

Ah. Just caught me off guard from seeing that amazing gpu water cooling. Again, very nice.

I am going to solve my ambient heat problem with some low tech dollars: a simple window air conditioner for the room, maybe 6-8000BTU. The room is only about 12FT X 12FT.

The house has central air conditioning; but my digiteria is at the end of the line pressure wise. So, to cool the room, I would need to freeze everyone else out of the house.

The hardware vendor says everything is safe to 100F (38C).
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It's safe to 100C not F, what is your ambient temperature in the room?

Actually, Support at Maingear was very specific: 100F, no where near 100C.
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NVIDIA is very specific: 100C

NVIDIA, not Maingear, makes the chip so I think I'll believe NVIDIA. When you think about it 38C is a ridiculously low max. temp for a processor. I can't think of any processor or any IC that has a max. temp that low.

I think I know why Maingear told you 38C.

Here's the link to NVIDIA's website, towards the bottom of the page they actually show 98C

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-580/specifications

mitrichr, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of getting cool air INTO the case as well. Remember, the hot air must leave the case and have ample room to dissipate, and cool air MUST enter. The cool air entering the case, after all, is what the cards are using.

If you feel that a small AC unit will help, and TECHNICALLY, it would, than go for it. BUT those consume A LOT of electricity. As long as there is enough room for the hot air to leave the room and area around the case you should be fine. For example, since the room is 12x12, don't close the door, otherwise this traps the hot air in the room, thus raising the room's temps rise quite quickly.

Sorry, the vendor was answering my question about the ambient temp, the room temp, when they said 100F. Sorry for the mis-understanding.
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I am going to solve my ambient heat problem with some low tech dollars: a simple window air conditioner for the room, maybe 6-8000BTU. The room is only about 12FT X 12FT.

The house has central air conditioning; but my digiteria is at the end of the line pressure wise. So, to cool the room, I would need to freeze everyone else out of the house.

Good point. I also do this, and it works well. Close un needed vents.

Yes, I know; but my wife - you remember my wife - really gets quite cold when I have the A/C running. So, a window unit, expensive as it is, may have to be the ticket.

I can personally tolerate heat in the room up to about 80-85 F, if I use my fan.

Who's your candidate for "The Cup"? Right now, we have the Devils and I think the Rangers.
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The Cup? What's that?

Lord Stanley's Cup?
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Rangers. My blues got taken out, but that was expected....

Ah, shlockey. Got no time for that crap. Other than a shlockey player, who is stupid enough to remove gloves and pound a hard plastic helmet with their unprotected fists? Btw, we often get blamed for inventing that crap but we didn't. We invented hockey and it has nothing to do with shlockey.

Take it your from Canada......

One of the things we did was set the central AC fan to on. In this mode, the fan on the central AC runs all the time that this drastically moderates the temps to keep the computer room cooler without freezing the rest of the house. The downside is that after 5 years, the fan motor went up in smoke and it was not inexpensive to replace (DC motor, variable speed, bla bla bla).

The temps have been between 50F - 65F so I open the garage doors early in the morning to cool the area as much as possible. The computers and the sun heat it up all day and then I open the doors for a while again at night. This will work for now but the hot days and nights are on the way.

I really like http://www.ha-soft.cz/watercooling and would like to use an automotive radiator. It would be great to get 3 GPUs and my CPU all together with a dual pump configuration running on an external power source. 9 fans will do but I would likely just mount a box fan to one side of that radiator, maybe a fan on each side.

The discussion on 220V / 110V to the home was interesting. In my electrical box, we get 220V from the meter. One leg of the 220V energizes one column of breakers and the other leg of the 220V energizes the other column. A neutral runs down the middle. I am sure I am not wasting one side of my 220V.

Please update this thread with results from your cooling solutions.

The discussion on 220V / 110V to the home was interesting. In my electrical box, we get 220V from the meter. One leg of the 220V energizes one column of breakers and the other leg of the 220V energizes the other column. A neutral runs down the middle. I am sure I am not wasting one side of my 220V.

I'm not sure what goes on in the electric panel. I could be wrong but if I am then I know a Master Electrician and power engineer who are wrong too. Whatever.

Automotive radiators work well but they can be very expensive. What you're paying for is high heat exchange rate in a compact design. You need that in a vehicle but not necessarily in a home where you have a lot more room than in a vehicle. You can get auto rads cheaper used from an auto wrecker but you never know what condition they're in. They might leak or they may be filled with mineral deposits that reduce their efficiency if they weren't maintained properly.

Another thing about auto radiators is that they work best when air is being pushed through them. That's no problem in a moving vehicle and when the vehicle is not moving you can start up a fan. Those fans make a lot of noise and the air rushing between the waffles makes noise too. You might not want that in a house. A better solution for a house, IMHO, is a radiator desgned to work on simple, quiet convection.

I used tube-fin radiator for my homemade liquid cooling systems. They work on convection and here is a picture of tube-fin radiator. It's used extensively in baseboard hot water designs. Notice how simple it is compared to an auto rad. I think tube-fin can give you the same cooling capacity as an automotive rad for a lot less money and no need for a fan. I must admit I am not sure of the price for fin-tube because a friend who works at a place that manufactures fin-tube salvaged it for me from their scrap bin. Five feet of tube-fin can dissipate a lot of heat and since it's just a straight smooth tube you don't need high pump pressure. I'm pretty sure you can buy it in home improvement stores like Home Depot. If not then I'm sure a plumbing store would order a length for you.

Automatic transmission auxillary coolers are not expensive and should work very well too.

You can make a decent rad yourself from 20 feet of soft copper pipe. Wrap the 20 feet around a 15" to 20" diameter cylinder to form a coil then remove the cylinder. It's compact, cheap and dissipates quite a bit of heat. Put it in front of a fan and you can dissipate even more. Put it over an air conditioning vent and it gets even better. The nice thing about it is that you can buy it in 1/4" and 3/8" diameter sizes which is very near the size of the hose you would attach to a water block. That saves money on adaptors and fittings. Compression fittings are great but if you slide a hose over a properly prepared pipe and put the right size gear clamp over the hose you get a good dependable seal that way too. If you can solder then it all becomes even easier.

Whatever you do, don't dump the heat into the house. Take a 12" long by 5/8" diameter drill bit (rent one or borrow one from the cable TV installer) and punch 2 holes through your wall to the outdoors. If you put the holes between the wall studs and below the height of your electrical receptacles you won't hit any electrical lines. Push the hose or copper pipe through the holes, plug the holes up with silicon caulking, buy colored caulking to match the color of the walls if you're really fussy but in 2 weeks you'll forget about it and won't see it anyway. Then plumb any kind of radiator you want outside and any water block you want inside. This kind of arrangement avoids heating up the computer room. It works best on the north side of the building where there is less sun but it can work on the south side too. The beauty of fin-tube or a copper coil is that if what you build doesn't dissipate enough heat you can double the capacity very easy.

I made my own pump, just a simple diaphragm pump powered by compressed air. You can buy a million different pumps as stock items from various suppliers. If you buy one from a computer stor you'll end up paying double what it's worth or more. I've heard aquarium pumps are inexpensive and very durable.

Still, in the end, after playing with all sorts of liquid cooling designs I have to recommend against it. Just push the air from the GPU directly to the outdoors via a duct or by putting the exhaust directly in front of a window fan. It works just as good and it doesn't get much cheaper than that. Believe someone who has actually tried both.