Phase Change AND Water Cooling? - Tech Support Forums

Kc2iLq · February 22nd, 2003, 01:27 PM

A friend of mine called me yesterday and wanted to know about computers. He's VERY wealthy and want a truly top-of-the-line system. He also wants to do some extreme overclocking. I thought about what to do for him and came up with a really weird idea. Phase change cooling will only cool a processor, but what will cool the super-hot video card and northbridge? Would it be possible to take a Prometeia phase-change system and use a koolance case with it? Or to mod the Prometeia case to have a water pump, reservoir, etc in there? Since money is really not an issue, I was thinking about a Barton 3000+ with a few DIMM's of Corsair XMS PC3500-C2 DDR. I kind of like how the Chaintech 7NJS-Zenith looks, but is it any good for extreme overclocking? I want to use the XMS RAM because it is tested at extremely high speeds and guaranteed to work up to 434 Mhz. The other components will just be a Radeon 9700 AIW, Audigy 2, maybe a SCSI RAID card with some 15K drives, etc. I know this sounds crazy, but the guy is really loaded and wants a totally crazy system.

-Kc2iLq

munky · February 22nd, 2003, 04:50 PM

Hey...kc2ilq..(i'll answer your quesiton just wanted to let you know I re-did the site and its in flash..very nice i think you will even like it.) Aside, Now knowing too much about Phase Changing the idea sounds sick, if he has the cash to do it I would say to research it...and go for it. If you could tell me more about Phase Changing cooling, I could give you a more definite answer.

-=mUnky=-

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munky · February 22nd, 2003, 04:52 PM

btw, which raid config are you going to do?

Kc2iLq · February 23rd, 2003, 01:03 AM

Hey munky! If you get MaximumPC, it has an excellent article comparing different extreme cooling options. If you don't get it, wait until Monday and I'll show you. It basically uses a compressor to create an extreme low-pressure system to bring temps below freezing. I heard it's a bit messy to set up, but works really nice when it is set up right. I was just wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to a way of setting up the Prometeia system to use water cooling as well.
As for RAID, I was thinking about the Adaptec 2100S with four Fujitsu 36.7 @15K 68-pin disks in a RAID 5 config. Personally, with an aray like that, I would expect a multiprocessor system, but there's no phase change cooling available with dual compressors yet (that I have found anyway). He wanted an extreme system, so he shal get one.

If anyone sees any great flaws in my plans before I go ahead and start ordering, please let me know.

-Kc2iLq

davidamarkley · February 23rd, 2003, 02:03 AM

What exactly is he wanting to do with this system?

BTW, I get MaxPC and I think the Prometia is AWESOME!! I wish I had the funds to do it right now...

I'm pretty sure it should work with the koolance case, but just see what the dimensions are for the prometia case and also for the koolance. I know they work with the Lian Li cases really well, and you can get a kit to make the compressor case to match the computer case, same size and look.

You might as well get bigger harddrives than that. Especially since you're using RAID 5 (36.7 GB x 4 = 146.8 GB) That's not much space considering all that you're doing for the computer.

Even though I know you said this guy is 'loaded' I think he would get ALOT better results from four IBM 180GXP Deskstars 180GB 8MB buffer 7200RPM, or Western Digital WD1800JB 180GB 8MB buffer 7200RPM. (Just think, 180GB x 4 = 720GBs

)

If you would hook those up to a RAID 5 system, or even better, a Raid 0 system for even more performance, then you will definately get more for the money spent then for the SCSI. Because the IDE drives are around $250-$300 each, but the SCSI drives are around $400 each.

[EDIT]
( I know that RAID 5 is striping also, just with parity bits, but there is performance lost in RAID 5 because of this extra data being written to the drive. If I were you I would stick with RAID 5, because of the redundancy of this setup. I was just wanting to let you know all the options.)

[/EDIT]

And, it will actually be cheaper to get 720GB's IDE than 146.8 GB's SCSI.

So, my suggestion would be to you is, if he is wanting the most performance, then yes he could go for a SCSI RAID setup, but he could get so much more space for HALF the money than the SCSI drives, and there is hardly any real-world difference between the two setups I have told you about.

HTH,

David

Kc2iLq · February 23rd, 2003, 02:44 AM

Thanks for the reply david. I do know quite a bit about IDE RAID and was considering the 180GXP's because of their ability to do the smooth data sweep that scsi srives do, but the scsi drives are twice the speed. SCSI can also read and write at the same time. Also, RAID 5 (AFAIK) is much faster than RAID 0. I have a server set up (it's actually at Compaq right now being worked on) that has two independent RAID 5 arays and find the speed of the data transfers incredible.
I figured I would go with the scsi setup because money is no issue and it's truly top-of-the-line. If there's a better 15K 68-pin SCSI drive than the Fuji's, I'd go for it. Or, if there's a single socket A mobo with 64-bit PCI, I'd get that and get an 80-pin SCSI RAID controller. I wouldn't use a dual socket A mobo (which would have a 64-bit PCI slot) with only one cpu because they are not compatable with the 333 FSB of the Bartons.
I'm still looking for ideas on a good mobo to use that will support an extremely high FSB because I would assume that with the Prometeia on the cpu and water cooling on the northbridge and video card, speeds of 3.0Ghz (well, at least 2.8) would be possible. I know that it depends on the chip, but I've heard great things about overclocking the 3000+.
BTW- he wants the system just to have a really awesome computer, and for gaming.

-Kc2iLq