Mr. Fox

There is a lot to consider here. Including a radiator in a chilled water loop will always prevent the water from getting as cold as the chiller can get it. There could certainly be some benefits to having an air conditioned case, which is exactly the effect of having internal radiators on a water chilled system. Even with an open bench, if you have chilled water running through the radiator it will blow very cold air onto whatever components are in the line of fire from the fans. It can help cool hot memory modules and hot GPU back plates for sure, in an enclosed case or an open bench. This absolutely has merit for extended hours of intense gameplay if you are a gamer. Because it floods the inside of the the case, (or adjacent air space on an open bench,) with freezing cold air, I think it is more beneficial than the recently release TEC cooling units we have seen hitting the market because the air blown off the chilled radiators is extremely cold. The only downside to leaving the radiator in the loop is that the water cannot get "as cold" because the radiators are counter-acting the work of the chiller by attempting to warm the water to equalize it with ambient temperatures. The more effective the radiators are, the less effective the chiller will be. If the goal is to achieve the highest CPU and GPU overclock possible for chasing benchmark numbers, then you need to remove the radiator from the loop. I think having the chilled air inside of the case may help with condensation because the dew point changes. Having strong fans blowing air vigorously over the CPU and GPU water blocks also helps mitigate the condensation. You can identify the dew point to target a low temperature limit using the calculator at www.dpcalc.org. You need to know the ambient temperature and relative humidity. I have a couple of small desktop hygrometer/thermometers placed near the computer that tell me the temperature and humidity in my office. The ones I have are no longer available, but they are very similar to these: https://www.amazon.com/TASOGEN-Thermometer-Hygrometer-Temperature-Fahrenheit/dp/B08P3QJJZL I generally do the same. I think having positive pressure inside of the case is ideal. It helps with dust, too.

Thank you. I am a big fan of QDC fittings and use them extensively on both of my systems. They make everything very convenient. I have some observations to share, but I have to jump into a meeting at work that is going to run for about 7 or 8 hours today. I will be back this afternoon to share what I have observed in my tinkering.

The fittings arrived a day earlier than originally expected. Rather than photos, I made a very short video so I could describe the setup better. The video is still processing, so quality at the moment is not great. Time to hit the sack. You guys have a nice Friday and a wonderful weekend.

Great point. That is important to consider as well. That said, ice doesn't flow inside of a loop very well, so something with poorer thermal conductance might work better than a clogged system, LOL. I am not going to be making any kind of changes right away, but it is certainly something fun to think about for a project in the future.

Thanks. I did not recognize that the base was a CPU cold block. It looked like a stand-alone device in the photo.

I wonder if running methanol inside of the loop would chew up o-rings, tubing and pumps due to lack of lubrication and acting as a solvent on the materials? I'd hate to have to start replacing things because they got ruined by the methanol.

What is that? Do you have more info you can pass on?

It is the light blue Asian vehicle coolant. I got tired of the green color of Prestone and flushed it out when I moved all of my PC guts to the Level 20 XT. So, I will look on the jug or just get a cheap anti-freeze tester from AutoZone or O'Reilly's.

That's prett sweet, bro. Running chilled water through the loop with that submerged in methanol/dry ice might deliver some temps that the chiller alone, or the heat exchanger alone, are incapable of. In fact, I would have to check and see how low the mix can go in the loop without freezing. And, I would probably need to take appropriate steps to protect against condensation in spite of the crazy low humidity here in the Southwestern Blast Furnace. I think that could easily drop temps below the dew point. Did you find a place to buy 5 gallons of methanol for a reasonable price? Or, did you mix it with water? I might want to put that outside of my office window on the side of the house and run the lines through the window, LOL. With the heat here I wonder how fast it would evaporate? Probably would not last as long as your did in the winter. It is never cold here, even in the winter.

Thank you. I'll have a closer look at that and explore the possibility of adding something like that in series between the chiller and computer on the cold side. Let the water go through the chiller first as it leaves the PC, get it as cold as the chiller can get it, then from the chiller through the exchanger submerged in methanol and dry ice to make it even colder and maybe take longer for the dry ice to evaporate. I'm running automotive antifreeze pre-mix in my loop already, so I don't have to worry about pure distilled water freezing LOL. For clarification, I need to ask what you meant by not pumping water through it. This took the place of your radiator if my understanding is correct. So you did have water circulating through the heat exchanger in order for the water to become chilled, correct? If not I'm not sure I understand how you used it.

It your "heat exchanger" the silver/aluminum thing with white plastic caps on four top ports? Do you have a link to where you purchased that so I can examine it closer?

All very true. I tend to not fret much over "security" issues and vulnerabilities because I am very cynical and not influenced much by fear and risk. So, whenever possible I disable mitigations. IT Security is very similar to Big Pharma. Their ability to thrive depends upon always having a crisis and avoiding solutions. They make gobs of money off of the public perception of crisis and lose money the moment a cure surfaces. I truly believe most of the Boogie Man issues we face today are fabricated for the purpose of generating wealth for the self-anointed "leaders" of our world. They aren't really leaders, as much as legends in their own minds with nefarious intentions.

I will grab some pictures for you. I had to order more fittings after reconfiguring my setup with the distribution manifold and ran out of fittings in the process. As soon as I get the chiller reconnected I will post them. I should have the fittings I ordered by this weekend. Conceptually, your setup works exactly the same except for your bucket with the submerged heat exchanger takes the place of the water chiller. It might be "ghetto" as you described it, but I am sure it works as well as, or maybe even better than, the chiller for a fraction of the cost. It might not be as convenient, but still seems highly effective. Yes, I understand completely and we actually agree on that. In some respects these are two separate topics. They are related in some ways, unrelated in other ways. Some people are like snipers and only need one bullet for the head shot. Others go in spraying bullets everywhere, or they just use napalm or nukes and destroy everything in sight. God can sort them out later. Both are effective at eliminating opposition.

That is why overclocked benching is fun and interesting to me. I don't have to care about anything except winning and losing. Efficiency becomes an irrelevant topic. If the inefficient product wins, it's still a win. The more efficient product was slower. That is all that matters. Performing "almost" as good while using substantially less power is still losing. No trophies for participation and no honorable mention. Keep it simple: yes/no, on/off, up/down, win/lose, left/right, right/wrong... that is how I like it. That said, it depends on what one is measuring that defines the win or the loss. Doing more with less is not overclocked benching. It is something else, and the winner might be a different participant in that contest.

Indeed. Overclocking and benching is perhaps the only aspect of computing that keeps me interested in technology. Absent that, I don't think I would actually care about any of it anymore. My setup is sort of a hybrid system. I have the HC-500A Chiller connected in series. Most of the time it is not used, and water simply circulates through it. It adds capacity to the loop, and that alone is beneficial for ordinary use. It takes longer to heat up the coolant because there is roughly twice the volume of the loop minus the chiller. When the ambient temperatures are hotter than ideal, I sometimes run the chiller to improve thermals for normal daily use. Living in the Phoenix area, summer heat can get my office ridiculously hot even with the central AC going with two overclocked PCs belching hot air into the room for days at a time. I don't game much anymore, but it was particularly useful for the occasional 12-16 hour gaming binge that kept the system under load for extended periods. My radiator on that system is a MO-RA 360. The lines are connected with QDC fittings. When I push the overclocking harder for benching, I bypass the radiator completely because it is an impediment. It actually prevents the water from getting as cold as it needs to be because the radiator is designed to normalize the water temperature with ambient temperatures. I have QDC fittings on the inlet port (female) and outlet port (male) of the radiator. I unplug the inlet fitting coming into the radiator, unplug the outlet fitting coming out of the radiator, then connect the ends of those lines directly to one another when I am on a benching spree. The QDC fittings are installed so that the orientation matches at the end of the lines where they connect to the radiator. So, the conversion from radiator and chiller to chiller-only takes about 15-20 seconds. I have a D5 pump mounted to the chiller and two D5 pumps with 270mm reservoirs mounted on the sides of the radiator. All three D5 pumps are working regardless of whether or not water is being circulated through the radiator. The arrangement of the loop is like this: Daily Use: CPU > GPU > Radiator > D5a > Chiller > D5b > D5c > CPU Benching: CPU > GPU > D5a > Chiller > D5b > D5c > CPU

I suppose it is all relative. I am not impressed by anything from Intel, AMD or NVIDIA. They all suck, and I simply choose which one seems to suck less. We can toss Micro$lop's name into the hat as well. They're not really PC hardware experts, which is evident by their Surface crap, but they excel at suckiness in the realm of technology.

Each year replace two e-cores with two p-cores and viola... 4 more generations. Planned obsolescence... er, I mean, Scalable architecture.

Too funny, bro. Great minds do think alike. I posted that over here earlier today. I did not really expect the KS to be a different product as much as a binned sample of an existing product. So, there is some basis for disappointment. However, taking the glass is half full view, buying a KS might be the best way to avoid being dealt a tragic ticket in the silicon lottery. That's not a bad thing per se, but paying $200 extra for something that isn't as good or better than a superior 12900K silicon sample is where the basis for disappointment comes in. It's more like damage control or loss prevention than an upgrade. You have to decide whether it is better to roll the dice on a K and hope for a win, or pay extra for something that is, at least, pretty good... with potential to be better than pretty good. If the chips are now being culled in favor of KS branding, then the chances of winning with a K might be drying up as old stock gets sold and replaced with stock representing the culled chips that didn't make the KS cut.

I am more than willing to forego the experience of "playing" the auction game. For me, it's all about getting what I want at reasonable if not lower price, then moving on. That's what gives me the boost of adrenaline. I have never used Auction Sniper, but I almost never bid on anything. I most typically use the "make an offer" and "buy it now" and purchase when the price is right because I don't like waiting for however long the auction is scheduled to run. Most sellers know what they have is worth and if it is overpriced just to see if a sucker is dumb enough to grab it at full asking price without thinking they will often accept a reasonable offer.

The nice thing about benching obsolete hardware is you can often swoop in and steal rank from people that previously set high scores when the hardware was current after it is too late for them to return and try harder because they no longer own the hardware and can't re-enter the competition. It is like playing the role of a sniper. Just patiently waiting in the shadows until the opportunity for a stealth headshot surfaces. Nobody sees you and the moment they let their guard down *BAM* ...game over.