DIY CPU water cooler won't post,.. please send help

"perry mason" wrote in message
...
Where did I go wrong?
My stuff:
Asus KT7A board
1.4 gig processor running at 1050
couple hds, burner
2 sound cards.

Hi, I'm not trying to overclock, I just can't stand the shrieking
whine of the cpu fan any more as I'm trying to do music production on
a profoundly amateur scale here.
I'm new to AMD. The KT7A seems to have a 1100g CPU limitation. The
chip I got is a 1.4, I believe, but it only boots at 1050 and runs
great on XP pro with a moderately sized but noisy CPU tower type fan.
I've tried several different fans. People tell me this is the business
as far as quiet fans go. It sucks. There has to be a better way.

I have a KT7A, but it is an Abit mobo, not Asus. What do you mean by 1100g
limitation. You mean 1100 "Ghz", not "grams", right? Check for a BIOS
upgrade.

That aside, you say the computer worked just fine with the air cooler, but
then hiccuped after installing the water cooler??

Since you swapped out the CPU, WinXP prolly won't like that at all, although
that shouldn't prevent you from booting up.

I'd swap the air cooler back on, clear the CMOS (pull the plug and battery,
swap the CMOS jumper, then reverse the order) and try booting again. If
that doesn't work, the problem is elsewhere in your system... you may have
fried something on the mobo when you burned up the first CPU.

Btw, the 1.4 is THE hottest running CPU for its output. Bad one to use if
you're interested in cooling. The XP chips actually put out more work while
running cooler.

Just curious, what air cooler did you have that everyone said was quiet but
wasn't??

FWIW, I had a watercooling system on my 1.4 T-bird (Soyo mobo) for a year or
so. Then I swapped to an Alpha PAL8045 cooler w/ a quiet Panaflo fan and my
temps only rose about 5 degrees C. The noise was practically the same as
the Panaflo wasn't any noisier than the PSU and drives. The PAL8045 was top
of the class a year or so ago, but there are better coolers out now.

I think you'd be just fine with a SLK900 + quiet Panaflo fan. You probably
won't hear it unless you have an extremely quiet PSU and drives. Since
you're not overclocking, it should cool the 1.4 adequately.

I also have a coupla Vantec Aeroflow HSF's with the TMD fans. One is nice
and quiet, the other is pretty noisy, just poor quality control from the TMD
factory.

perry mason wrote:
Where did I go wrong?
My stuff:
Asus KT7A board
1.4 gig processor running at 1050
couple hds, burner
2 sound cards.

Hi, I'm not trying to overclock, I just can't stand the shrieking
whine of the cpu fan any more as I'm trying to do music production on
a profoundly amateur scale here.
I'm new to AMD. The KT7A seems to have a 1100g CPU limitation. The
chip I got is a 1.4, I believe, but it only boots at 1050 and runs
great on XP pro with a moderately sized but noisy CPU tower type fan.
I've tried several different fans. People tell me this is the business
as far as quiet fans go. It sucks. There has to be a better way.

Would help to know what heatsink you're talking about because, while not
'silent', an SLK900 with a relatively low noise fan, such as a Panaflo,
should be quiet enough.

As for the 1050, your FSB is set to the default 100MHz (200 DDR). Set it to
133 (266 DDR) and it'll run at the 1.4 Gig it's rated for.


I made a water tight cooler taking a 3 inch tall aluminum cylindrical
tower cooler and removing the two inside fans. The walls are finned so
there is plenty of mass and surface area and so on exposed to the
circulating water. I wrapped the outside except for the bottom lightly
with masking tape to contain the epoxy and goobered it up with two 1/4
inch copper pipes sticking out. The bottom is not treated at all, just
a dab of thermal paste. The inlet is close to the heat synch at the
bottom and the outlet is near the top of the container. The board sits
horizontally. No leaks. I used a tiny pump intended for waterfalls not
higher than one foot (Rio 90- $20usd) submerged in roughly a gallon of
ice water. It cycles freezing cold water through a 1/4 inch line at a
pretty good flow. I can't believe cooling is the problem here. The
whole tower is ice cold to the touch.
The first attempt failed as the blob didn't fit very well on the CPU
so it wasn't properly coupled physically to the little square CPU
thermal transfere thingy. Failed to start and never started again.
Scratch one chip. It didn't protect itself by shutting down.
I made a proper lash up to attach the cooler and now is fits perfectly
and is nice and snug. The new 1.4 chip gives 3 successive beeps at
post and I shut it down by pulling the plug. The chip is cold to the
touch and the lines are condensed and the tower cooler is absolutely
freezing cold. The return line is spewing icewater at boot time. If
heat were a problem the water being returned would be hot, right? I
plugged the original CPU fan in while holding it in my hand just to
see if it was a feature of the Asus board not to boot if it sensed no
CPU fan plugged into the board but that is not the deal. I put the
routine cooler back on and it boots fine. I tried the spunky DIY buzz
buster water cooled marvel on a P200, BX board and it ran fine at a
DOS prompt with no ice, just water for 4 hours. If anyone has some DIY
ideas I'd be grateful to hear about it. Please don't post links to
$200 completed H2o systems as I'm really not that class of customer.
Thanks for your time, pm.

Hard to tell from a verbal description but sounds to me like you're
creating condensation with all the ice and that's shorting out the processor.

3 inches of 'cooling tower' is overkill as the vast majority of heat
transfer is going to be at the CPU contact area (wouldn't hurt to visit a
few sites that sell water cooling systems to see what they look like as a
design guide), but it shouldn't hurt either. If you do, indeed, have good
CPU contact then try using room temperature water, like you did with the
BX, to avoid condensation because you don't need it so dern cold; you just
need to get the heat out and keep the CPU at a reasonable temperature.

"perry mason" wrote in message
...
snip
running. The only reference I could find for the 1.4ghz Athlon CPU
stated 95C! was normal temp. I have a lot of trouble believing this
snip

I believe they state the maximum operating temperature of the chip is around
95C (~200F). However, safe operating temp should not exceed 72 - 75C
(~160F). Any cooler that keeps your chip (and computer) running stable
below 65C should be just fine.

Many people on this newsgroup are trying to get their temps into the 30's
because it makes for much more stable overclocking, voltage tweaking, etc.
With no overclocking, you computer should run (and last) just fine as long
as it's below 65C (~150F) or so.

mrdancer wrote:
"perry mason" wrote in message
...
snip

running. The only reference I could find for the 1.4ghz Athlon CPU
stated 95C! was normal temp. I have a lot of trouble believing this

snip

I believe they state the maximum operating temperature of the chip is around
95C (~200F).

The Althon Model 4 Data sheet specs 95C as the maximum operating die temp
from 1.1 to 1.4 gig. Below those speeds it's 90C.

FTI, the max power dissipation at 1.4 gig is spec'd at 72 watts with
typical being 65 watts.

However, safe operating temp should not exceed 72 - 75C
(~160F). Any cooler that keeps your chip (and computer) running stable
below 65C should be just fine.

95C should be 'safe' too, if one trusts the AMD spec, but cooler will
increase life span.

If you're checking at room temp then you sure as heck wouldn't like to see
95C because then there'd be no room for the system to operate in higher
ambient temperatures and your recommendation of 72 to 75C fits with that
'margin' (I.E. it would then be 'safe' to a robust 50C ambient, assuming
the room it's measured in was at 25C).

None of those specific numbers apply if one is overclocking, of course,
because one doesn't know what the 'maximum operating' temperature of the
overclocked processor is.


Many people on this newsgroup are trying to get their temps into the 30's
because it makes for much more stable overclocking, voltage tweaking, etc.
With no overclocking, you computer should run (and last) just fine as long
as it's below 65C (~150F) or so.