I'm bringing TEC cooling back.

Finally 90% of the parts I need for my 400W TEC water chiller have arrived so here is a teaser.

I like modularity and low costs so this right here is a single 200W TEC cooling "module". It's composed of a single EK RAM block, 2 100W TECs, and 2 Silentium PC FERA CPU coolers. It's held together by MX-2 thermal paste and zipties(all hail the almighty ziptie). Now I'm not 100% certain that the water block is actually capable of dissipating 100W of heat with a low delta T however it should be enough. The modular part of this comes in that I can build as many of these 200W modules as I want and to combine their cooling power I just have to put them in the same water cooling loop. Which means that you could use quick disconnect fittings to make it very easy to add these into a water cooling loop.

Today I also got my tripod and Logitech C920 webcam and I've tested them and my GPUs so the stream will be starting tomorrow at 4:00PM GMT as planned. It will be up on my Twitch.

The face of a GPU murderer hours before the act.

Thanks to Cooler Master for making all of this stuff possible. They are literally powering this blog.

The CoolerMaster Seidon 120V version 2 on an R9 290X

If you read this blog regularly then you know that CoolerMaster recently sent be a bunch of stuff to use in my articles.
They sent me a V1000 series power supply which saved me a couple days ago when my Antec HCP died. Originally the PSU was supposed to go into my Haswell system which be used for RAM and GPU reviews. However now it literally powers this entire blog.
They sent me 6 case fans to review. These are 4 Silencio fans and 2 Jetflow fans.
They sent me a Seidon 120V version 2.

I have 2 Seidon 120Vs version 1. They are fine coolers they sit on my GTX 590 and work just fine. However the 2400RPM Thrustmaster fans on them are really really loud. The version 2 uses a high RPM version of the Silencio fan and is so very quiet. However that's not why I'm writing this post. That would be boring.
No today I'm writing because of this:

It is the most versatile and easiest to mount AIO out there as far as I'm concerned. It has an incredibly simple mounting system for both intel and AMD CPUs and the intel pump bracket also makes it incredibly simple to ziptie onto GPUs. More importantly it's also pretty good at cooling. For example it kept my R9 290X at 60C°(30C­° less than the stock Windforce cooler) even though I was running at +200mv and which is 1.4V core and 1190mhz. At that point the card uses way more than 400W. Right now as I write this article I still have the Seidon attached to my 290X. The only down side to doing this is that the VRAM on my R9 290X gets really hot and so the card crashes shortly after starting Unigine because I ran out of VRAM heatsinks to use and the VRAM overheats.

This is just a prototype of the mod once I get some better thermal pads and VRAM heatsinks I will finalize the design to the point where I can run 1200mhz core all day every day. I will also put out a video guide on how to do the mod.

Thank you to CoolerMaster for powering this blog .

Good news everyone!

My Phenom II X4 965 BE didn't die! This means that I will be using it for all my fan testing because it's easier to setup than an FM2+ CPU and puts out more heat which should lead to bigger temp differences in my testing.

I've also got a new fan controller to use for fan reviews so now I will do noise and temp testing at varying fan RPMs.

My main system is also back up and running so I now have more space to work in. I also bought an Asrock 970M Pro3 motherboard to review and here's a terrible video overview of it that I made. You'll be happy to know that my actual review of the board will be held to the same standards as all of my other blog content.
I've already played with the board a little. So far it's been OK. However the VRM is making me have second thoughts. Luckily the retailer I bought it from offers an extended no questions asked return policy so if I do burn the board(I hope I don't) I can just return it.

In other news I've redone watercooling loop on my main system.

The tubing is now Tygon 15.8mm by 12.7mm. It's really soft and flexible so it doesn't kink. It's meant for used in laboratories and so it won't get damaged by most liquids. The only down side to it is it costs 2x what other tubing does. The fluid is just a mix of car cooler anti freeze and distilled water. The fittings are 16/12mm EK Black Nickle fittings. Everything else stayed the same as before.

I ended up getting rid of the 2400 RPM Noise blocker because while it's not all that loud it has an incredibly annoying pitch.

The best thing about this loop upgrade is that I've
rebuilt it in such a way that I can swap CPUs without having to drain the loop.
Even though I swapped over to using Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra between the CPU block and CPU my temps haven't gone down so I guess I've hit the dissipation limit of my radiator and the 2000RPM Sickle Flow fans.



Just by the way:
 TekSyndicate is giving away a GTX 980 Ti AMP EXTREME!