Shotgun LAN

What's the maximum and average temperature for everyone's Athlons (assuming someone has one) because I'm getting 55 (Max) and 48 (Avg).

That's fine.
I believe AMD think the maximum is 85 degrees C (i.e. don't let it get anywhere near that).

But, basically, if it's running at even 70 odd it's not the end of the world. But keep your eye on it when the weather gets warmer

Mine runs around 50. The only problem I have ever had with heat was last summer when it topped 40 Deg C in Naples...

Today I bought a CPU water cooling kit from PC World. Yeah, I know. ..PC World - but then I think for somethings it's vital you can march in and say "I want my money back".

I hope the rest of the PC came from there too or you will have a new coolers with some damp dead stuff...

Buy a *PC* from PC World? Not in a million years

What make kit? I've got the full waterchill one from asetek.

Just a pretty basic one:
http://www.qtec.info/products/product.htm?artnr=13793

It fits into a 5 1/4 bay though, which is pretty neat. (Actually, it's very neat.). All you do is attach the CPU water block, fill with water (provided) and switch on.

It is not a great cooler, performance-wise, (it is about the same as a high-end HSF with a fast fan) BUT it makes almost no noise at all. Near silent-running now (apart from the PSU fan). Bliss!

It was £85 in PC World, by the way. A bit steep, maybe - but not bad for a water cooling solution. And I'm glad I got it from there because it was only pumping at about half capacity, due to an internal leak. I took it back this morning for replacement and picked up a second one for DjArcas too. We spent the morning fitting them to our PCs and Dj found *his* one was leaking very slightly at the waterblock. Not good!

Still, it was easily fixed by taking it apart and reassembling it, doing the screws up properly. Now both PCs are running nicely on their water coolers - the room is a lot quieter.

Top tip though - test your water cooler rig outside of your case for a bit before you put let it rip on the inside.

Now that's pretty nice, I've got a real problem with CPU cooling in my case. Roughly how much clearance do you need above the cpu?

Hmm, the tube is very soft - you could probably get away with about 5cm (from the surface of the chip) although, naturally, that's putting the flow through a fairly fast 90 turn.

Gotta be better than the 1-2mm clearance between the top of my zalman and my psu Might to take a look in pcworld tomorrow.

Does anyone know if it's possible to get a waterblock that can clip in to a motherboard? I don't have the holes on the motherboard around the processor or that square plastic thing.

How do you not have a 'square plastic thing'? What does your processor sit on? The thing full of holes that all the little pins on the processor poke through? That's the square plastic thing for most people. It normally has three lugs on each side (for Athlon processors).. ..I don't know about P4s though.

Watercooling is only really worth doing for overclocking or in cases with very little airflow. Most watercooling setups are only slightly quieter than air setups cause you've still gotta have a fan pushing through the radiator (unless its one of these bloody huge car radiators people bolt in outside the box).

lemon: im pretty sure there is one somewhere, but I cant remember the name of it, try forums.overclockers.co.uk they've got plenty of experienced watercooling people there.

I promise this has no such radiator and is utterly, utterly quiet
Whether it works still in summer is another matter.

That's the square plastic thing for most people

On some motherboards you get a plastic bracket that is black and holds a fan or waterblock on top of the processor, because it is too bit for the conventional clip in way.

Thanks LazyManc, I'll have a look.

afaik only Pentium 4 motherboards have that.

If you look at the product page for that cooler, you'll see it comes with a square plastic convertor for P4s, that sits over the CPU. Is that what you mean?

There's a motherboard for the new 64 bit AMD that has it:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/spec ... l?ASU-K8VD

1337!