Watercooling + Sonata = Hassle

Jammer

Just finished installing the Asetek Waterchill Antartica in my Sonata, with the help of VeVeX. It was my first time installing watercooling and was nothing but hassle...it was a pain having to install the PCI/AGP cards etc while the case was standing up etc. The Antartica waterblock looks class in there though...

It fits in without any mods. I screwed the rad on the outside, and the fan on the inside, on the back plate. The pump and resevoir are under the HD enclosure, i had to take out the 2 lower HD slides, i dont' use them anyway. I also have the 120mm silent fan that came with the case at the mount beside the drives. Just to cool the NB/Graphics card.

It cooled my AMD64 from 48/49 idle to 30. it was 53/54 on load, likes 34ish now! So theres room for a bit of a hike. On air (Stock AMD cooler) it went to 2.4GHZ (2.2 stock) without any volt changes, so with the lower temperature i should be able to up the voltages with the MHZ! What would be a suitable temperature to stop at? Around 55 on load i'm thinkin?

Will post up pics in a few mins!

OfflerCrocGod

Jammer wrote:

What would be a suitable temperature to stop at? Around 55 on load i'm thinkin?

You may want to keep an eye on the voltage rather then the temp - pumping too much voltage into your chip is not good for it, temp wise I'd say your H2O setup will keep it cool enough as it is

Jammer wrote:

Will post up pics in a few mins!

Looking forward to them

Col_Loki

Did you mount the rad on the outside where the 1200mm fan blows air out yea? I found the sonata to be perfect to fit everything in (with a couple of mm to spare ) , i have the Rad inside the case with two fans on it .

Thats a very big drop in temps, nice effect on noise level aswell yea?

Hows the overclock going?

Jammer

cant find the bleedin digi cam. have to wait till my bro gets home!!

Noise ok, about the same as the 2 120mm's i had before at 7v...maybe a bit more!

The rad is on the outside, the fan inside blowing out. The pump and resevoir are where the last 2 hard drive bays should be. have a 120mm fan on the mount at the hard rive bays sucking.

I have come across something very odd, i overclocked it slightly...went to run 3dmark03 and got a file corruption error...put it back to stock, and it was grand...weird. Thats using a windows GUI thing that came with the motherboard though....think i'll go with the ol' bios now...

Col_Loki

Sounds a bit like the AGP/PCI lock isint kicking in. You have to set the FSB to 201mhz in the BIOS to activate the lock and then you can overclock through windows..........

Jammer

Have it at 2530mhz now, stable. I reckon it will go a few MHZ higher though, its going into mid/late forties on Prime95 max heat test. Almost at 3800+ speeds now....

Jammer

Col_Loki wrote:

Sounds a bit like the AGP/PCI lock isint kicking in. You have to set the FSB to 201mhz in the BIOS to activate the lock and then you can overclock through windows..........

it was a problem with the RAID/SATA thing, the lock wasnt reaching them. Sorted it out with help of msi support forum!

Col_Loki

TBH it looks alot like your hitting the 230mhz wall , have you tried using one memory stick and 3x HT? Temps are good, it sounds to me like the CPU isint limiting you.........

Jammer

im testing it at 2607mhz now its still stable, thats 237x11 at 1.65v. I have set the divider to 5:6 i.e memory @ 166mhz. So at present setting the memory is running at 197mhz (394mhz ddr) 2.3.3.6 so there's still more room on both volts and memory for more mhz. All at htt x4

Temps are around 42 idle to a max of 53 (prime95). Taking into account the room is warm the temps are resonable.

To lock the pci/agp/sata its actualy the agp setting you up to 68mhz from 66mhz. That switches it on.

So 2.6ghz so far not too shabby.

Col_Loki

Thats going very nicely i must say . You must be pretty damm happy, 1.65v @2.6ghz!! You really should put the Ht to 3x, it wont effect your system performance and you tend to get alot better results with it at 3x.
It should help to loosen up the PC a little, ie higher HT(FSB) mhz, possibly tighter timings at higher speeds

To lock the pci/agp/sata its actualy the agp setting you up to 68mhz from 66mhz. That switches it on.

I was almost sure that setting the FSB to 201mhz set the AGP to 67mhz and locked it there...... that was with most of the other AMD64 boards anyway. Good to hear you got it working anyway.

Please keep us posted on the overclock, its the chip of choice IMO...... and its great to see it doing so well.

Jammer

On the pci lock Col_Loki ... I also read about upping the fsb to 201 enables the lock on a couple of sites. But it didnt work with this board. Normally the changes you mentioned have the desired effect but I needed to up the agp to 68mhz to get the lock active. The fsb remained at 201 (in bios). At 67mhz it was causing the corruption I mention above.

From what im reading on the net my current overclock is quite good but im going to try what you've mentioned about the ht x3 and see how it goes at 2.7ghz.

1.65v is the recommend maximum according to my boards bios. I presume seen as the water cooling will keep the temps in check I could raise it slightly?

Heres a few pics quality isn't great they were takin with a nokia 6600

BloodBath

Nice overclock.

Benchmarks please.


BloodBath

Col_Loki

Id say 1.7v should be fine, wouldnt go too far over that especially for 24/7 usage. Good to know about the lock needing to be set by upping the AGP to 68mhz first time ive heard that.

2.7ghz would be a very nice result, you picked the system pretty well i must say. @2.7ghz thats roughly 3800+ (or a little more), who knows you might even get more.

Good job so far!!

Jammer

Banchmarks in my sig now...what ya think? im not overly impressed tbh