System Setup and Temperatures
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
System Setup.
Epox 8KHA+
Athlon XP 1700+
259Mb PC2100 DDR
MSI GeForce 3 Ti500
Sparkle 400 W PSU
To see how well the Koolance watercooling case stands up against an air cooling setup, I used one of the best heat sinks available at the moment; the Alpha 8045. I had a YS-TECH FD8125 80mm Fan on the heat sink and two in the case, a total of three fans and each fan can move 45.2CFM of air. To achieve the loaded temperatures, I run Prime95 torture for two hours in each setting, unloaded temperatures were taken after idling for 2 hours. *All temperatures were measured with motherboard monitor and ambient temperatures remained constant
Well, I think the results speak for themselves, and It would be very difficult to get anywhere near these results with conventional air cooling. It was Interesting that both the PC2-C and the PC2-601 performed exactly the same, even with the PC2-601 and its larger internal diameter tubing. The first thing that I noticed when I turn the Koolance system on is how loud your hard drives are, I have three hard drives in the system and the noise is more than all three cooling fans.
OK lets explain how the cooling settings work, you have three settings; the first setting (1) has the fan speed at 45% until the temperature reaches 45oC and then the speed goes up to 100 %.
The second setting (2) is just like the first one but the speed jump is triggered at 35oC and slowly starts to accelerate the fans to 100%.
The third setting (3) is the loudest setting and is always at 100% and offers the best cooling, but is also the loudest; but not as loud as my current air cooling solution.
The best setting is setting two because most of the time all you can hear are your hard drives and in my case the fans only kick in when the ambient temperature raises, and the only way that I could get that to happened is to put the case next to a heater.
Emergency Shutdown
One of the features that I tried was the emergency shutdown, in the manual it mentioned it but I had a concern that the temperature read out was quite far out from the actual CPU temperature and by the time it reached 50oC the CPU could be damaged.
The only way to test it was to pull the plug on the pumps and watch what happens.
Don’t worry I didn’t use me current rig, I put together a system with some old components that I had lying around; mainly an old Asus A7V mainboard and a Duron.
The results of the test were very reassuring in that as the CPU temperature raised in motherboard monitor the temperature on the read out on the case stabilized, and when the waterblock hit the 50oC the CPU temperature as seen in motherboard monitor was at 50oC also; then the alarm started to sound and then the PC shut down.
After it cooled I re-connected the pumps and booted up and the system worked fine.
Overclocking
As I said earlier overclocking was not the reason why I wanted the case, but what the heck; lets see what I can get.
I could easily get my Athlon XP 1700+ to 1650 MHz (11X150) with my Alpha fitted, so I would need to beat that.
I disabled the onboard USB and audio and pushed the CPU voltage up to 1.85V and the ram to 3V, as my Athlon XP is locked I just raised the front side bus as high as I could.
The highest stable setting I could get was 162 MHz FSB (1782 MHz) and I was gutted that I couldn’t break the 1800 mark, but I couldn’t complain, considering that I just did the best overclock that I have ever done and the temperature never went above 40oC.
If I did a voltage mod on my mainboard I am sure that I could go beyond the 1800 mark.
To classify it as a successful overclock I run Prime95 torture for two hours just like in the temperature tests. I also played Medal Of Honour Allied Assault for an hour or so just for the hell of it.
