Finally got my 437watt TEC system up and running

I picked up an Arctic Web/Wintsch Labs 437watt TEC block and meanwell PSU for it from another member of this forum, vmsein (thanks again man) and have finally finished building the system and now have it running.

the system specs are:

ABIT AV8 3rd Eye (with uGuru clock) socket 939 motherboard

AMD soclet 939 Opteron 144 CAB2E processor (week 0546) - so far, a good overclocker... does 270FSB at stock volts without hesitation... have had it to 290 with stock volts as well... but ran in to other problems and haven't had much time to play with the overclocking

2 x 512 OCZ Platinum ram

ATI X850XT-PE AGP video card

Maxtor 300gig SATA-2 hard drive

TDK DVD burner

Coolmax 600watt PSU

and for the cooling:

Arctic Web/Wintsch Labs 437watt/24volt peltier water block

MCP650 water pump

1 BIX 120.2 (2 120mm Yate Loon fans)

1 Bonneville/320 heater core (2 140mm Aerocool Streamliner fans)

Meanwell 600watt/24volt PSU (holey frickin loud fan batman)

1/2" ID primoflex tubing and a floppy bay drive reservoir and also a polarflo blue fillport

It took quite a bit of time and patience to do and build this system, but it turned out fairly well - i wasn't going for teh best looking system, more for excellent cooling, which is what I got.

unfortunately my motherboard will not report temps below 0*C/32*F and just shows them as 00.0, and the temp monitor I have... a Superflower temp monitor/fan controller beeps constantly and shows 99.9 all the time... so it has a cold bug too LMAO - I have left the probe attached and am getting a digital nurse or something like that instead.

My coolant temps though are only 31*C under full load, with the cpu o/c'd to 270FSB, so I know that the CPU temps have to be pretty good with coolant temps like that... I can barely feel any warmth at all when I touch the rads... even after hours of prime95 and folding@home.

It is kind of full in the case, a Chenming/Chieftech 601 Aluminum case, mostly because of all the 1/2" ID - 3/4" OD tubing inside of it

it still has some work to be done on it, but it is working pretty darn good and I am very happy with how it turned out.

When I started building it, I did an awful lot of reading first... asked a bunch of questions on various forums when I couldn't find answers elsewhere... and then went to work

I sprayed the board with conformal, front and back... I also coated the area around and right up to, and as underneat as I could get, of the cpu soclet with liquid electrical tape... non-conductive and also thermally insulating... I put at least 3 coats on and then put another coat on and while it was still wet, placed the gasket for around the socket in place... that way it is sealed to the board with little to no chance of air gettin in and causing condensation... I did the same thing on the back of the board behind the cpu socket.
I then filled the cpu socket with dielectric grease and made sure it was filled completely.

I also took the pelt water block and gave it a good coat of liquid electrical tape and then applied the gaskets to it... making sure they were also sealed air tight... and lastly I put a good bead of dielectric grease on teh base gasket that goes around the cpu socket so that when I put the peltier block in place, the gaskets on the block would seal air tight against the gasket around the CPU socket.

I felt that taking all these precautions would eliminate most of the chances of condensation issues, and so far, after 4 days of solid running... not one drop or hint of condensation - and it runs great and with the dual rads the coolant is barely warm... and I have the meanwell dialed right up as high as it will go.

I am going to play with the meanwell a little after I am able to get some accurate temps, so I can find the pelts 'sweet-spot'

even the ambient case temp is only 30* C ... the hdd runs at 31 and the NB at 29-32 depending.

here are a couple pics of it complete (will take running pics in a couple days) and a screen shot of temps with a 250FSB, although all it says is 0* C LMAO

















I know the wire management still needs some work and there are a few other things left to do, but it is still a work in progress... and I have a couple other projects on the go at teh same time... such as an X-QPack case with a socket 754 gigabyte board and a 1meg cache 3700 that has a Swiftech 226watt pelt block on it.

The door isn't on the case in the pictures because I was just installing a 4 line x 20 character white lettering with blue backlight LCD screen in it so I can use it to display different things... using software like LCD Smartie or something like that.

~NortH~

damn what a monster... lol

good job man .. looks like you got a freezer ...

hit 3ghz w/ the opty or will the board not go that high?

mal

the board will, by the amount of FSB and voltage, allow me to hit 3ghz easily... but.. I am not completely sold on whether the board will actually do that much, or even the cpu.. but I have hit 290 FSB which is 2.6ghz... I need to get the FSB up to about 335 to hit the 3ghz mark, and I am not positive the board will actually be able to do that, even though it has all the options to make it happen... but I am going to try

What I do like about this board is all the voltage options and stuff it has.... i can increase the voltage to the CPU, ram, northbridge and the HTT (or was it LDT... can't remember now and I am not on that system)... but it has tons of overclocking features and adjustments, so I will at least give it a real good try and see how far I can push it... I also have a friend with the same chip on a DFI (we got ours at the same time from the same place... same stepping/week etc) and he has hit just over 3ghz with is... so if I can't hit it.. I am giving him my cpu to test in his board so we can find out what is limiting it.

~NortH~

PS: thanks for the compliments!

Damn, only 2.25 at 1.40 volts? Couldn't you at least bump it up a bit?

yup... can boost it up a lot more... that was when I first fired the thing up and started playing... so far I have been up to 290FSB, which is 2.61 ghz.

I just haven't had the time to really get down to some serious overclocking... but should be able to over the next couple days... maybe the weekend

I don't plan on keeping the Opty in this system... I have an X2-4800 that I want in it, but was not willing to take and chances with the CPU until I knew for sure all was OK... and all I had for testing was this Opty.

I think I am either selling the Opty or building another system for it... something SLI.

When I started building this system - I decided to use parts I had sitting around that were not quite as important to me as others... that way if something did go wrong, I didn't lose something horribly expensive... Like the motherboard... it's a decent board, but it's far from the greatest out there LOL

Once I have everything just perfect, then I may swap out the hardware to something more deserving

but for now... it is getting the temps I was shooting for, and that was all I had planned on... overclocking wasn't all that important to me... I just wanted to see how cold I could make it, and if I could get it under 0* C and still be close to silent.

~NortH~

Looks Great !

Where'd ya hide the Meanwell ? I don't see it in there....

I assume you are just running the meanwell at stock voltage ? Once you get the rig cooling the way you want , you may consider backing the voltage off the pelt....(+- 5% adjustable)...you should get the same cooling with slightly less volts...save a few pennies on the power bill.

Actually the meanwell is backed down all the way... and it is outside the case and runs off of a relay connected to the 12volt line of the computer's PSU... comes on automatically with the computer.

~NortH~

BrainEater said:

Looks Great !

Where'd ya hide the Meanwell ? I don't see it in there....

I assume you are just running the meanwell at stock voltage ? Once you get the rig cooling the way you want , you may consider backing the voltage off the pelt....(+- 5% adjustable)...you should get the same cooling with slightly less volts...save a few pennies on the power bill.

Click to expand...

this is the PSU for it... and it sits behind the system, on the floor



~NortH~

In the last pic, I noticed that you are using a plain molex connector to power your pelt. I remember reading that the immense current you are sending to your pelt from the meanwell ps can practically melt the inadequately thin molex pins - i.e., you need a smaller gauge wire that can safely handle the amperage. Some people run a straight line from the power supply to the peltier in order to avoid a connector with thin interconnects, which becomes a weak point that can fail.

LMAO - gee... you couldn't have predicted that any better

I noticed that about 3 days after building it... had it running for about 6 hours and shut it down... all was fine... but went to unplug everything and found the molex was absolutely melted.

I switched over to and actual house style, 2 prong outlet and power cord and 12 gauge wiring.

I wired an outlet to the meanwell... something like the female end of an extension cord, and then the male end to the peltier... this way they are still on a socket style of system and i can disconnect the system any time I want - this new system works way better.

My only gripe with the whole thing is that the peltier unit it's self only has thin wire soldered right to it, from factory... same wire gauge used on all peltiers and about the same gauge as what is used in a molex - at 30amps and 24volts, it should have a way heavier gauge wire attached directly to the peltier unit.

The computer worked awesome, got as cold as I wanted it to and was a great and fun project to build - but that was all I wanted to do... just build one and see how good it would perform.

I have already moved on to the next project and sold the pelt block and meanwell to a friend of mine. I am now building a QPack case with an Opty in it and a 15.1" Laptop LCD screen mouted to the top of the case that can flip up when I need it and with wireless networking, making the QPack portable - I have a high-powered invertor in my van, so I can run it in there as well... and when it is in use on my desk, I can run dual monitors.

~NortH~