are my temps ok? can i add a hot gpu?

[darckhart]

Hi all. new to quad oc and cooling.

My old setup (barton) finally kicked the bucket a few weeks ago, so I decided to move the water cooling to the new box and get rid of intel's stock hsf. I have a zalman res 1v2 with an eheim 600 replaced and using their cpu block. The only thing in the loop is my q6600 g0 1.2875 VID, but i'd like to stick a hot gpu into the mix later on. My ambient temp is say 25c.

@ 2.4GHz, 1.2875V set, about 1.250V from cpuz = mid 20s idle, low 30s load
@ 3.0GHz, 1.2875V set, about 1.250V from cpuz = high 20s idle, mid to high 30s load
@ 3.3GHZ, 1.2975V set, about 1.260V from cpuz = low 30s idle, mid to high 40s load

I tried for 3.6 to see if I could get it, but I ended up having to raise all the voltages to ridiculously high levels (1.39ish for cpu and upped all the other ones too) or so it seemed comparing to other posts here and I was worried that I could not adequately cool all the other components so I left it at 3.3.

Can I add a beast of a gpu to this mix? If so, what temps should I begin to worry at?

Also I noticed that as I clocked higher the discrepancy between core temps got wider in idle state. 0 and 1 have about a 3c difference while 2 and 3 have a 1c diff. 0+2 are also about 4-5c higher than 1+3. Seems almost uneven. Is this normal?

Thanks for all the help!

 

[aigomorla]

what gpu block were you thinkn about using?

and what gpu was you thinkn about installing?

 

[darckhart]

Well, as you can see I'm hanging on to the x800xt and waiting for the new cards to make their appearance. Assuming the price and performance is right, I'd pick up the "new" 88gtx card. If not, I'd grab a 88gtx with, I dunno, EK/DD block and attempt to oc as far as possible.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: darckhart
Well, as you can see I'm hanging on to the x800xt and waiting for the new cards to make their appearance. Assuming the price and performance is right, I'd pick up the "new" 88gtx card. If not, I'd grab a 88gtx with, I dunno, EK/DD block and attempt to oc as far as possible.

this is where you'd run into the problem.

First off hand, your mixing metals if you use the EK/DD blocks with the reserator. Mixing metals is the biggest nono in h2o cooling.

Well basically its copper + alu you need to watch out for. *read up on galvinized corrosion*

I was going to say if its your X800 then you can grab a zalman or innotek block for it to keep alu + alu, and maybe pull it off with decient ambients. Maybe an active fan on the reserator would help it out as well.

But the 8800GTX + Quad is seriously asking for it. This is stepping up into PA120.3 territory to be honest.

 

[darckhart]

Hm, yes I had wondered about the corrosion as well since zalman's own cpu block is copper and their tower is anodized aluminum. (Most of the recommended cpu blocks I've read about here/oc/xtremesystems all have copper bases.) However, I have been frequently flushing the system, perhaps once a month or so, and at least the tower appears ok. I have no real way of looking inside the cpu block. Would you recommend replacing my cpu block with an aluminum equivalent as well?

How much of a temp rise to the cpu can I expect an 88gtx class card to add (assuming I've found the correct metal block) all other things the same? My roommate has a large room fan we use during the summer months. I could just manouver the tower into its air path.

Thanks. You've been a big help!