My Corsair A70 install w/ lots of pics

[Shock]

This is for all you tech hungry nerds who love to see stuff being installed with pics!

First off my lapping area where I lapped my new A70, I have some dish soap, some water, and some 1500 grit wet/dry sandpaper. The bottom of the A70 was already fairly smooth so I only spent about 15 minutes on it.

Next is a comparison of what I'm taking out and what I'm putting in, the A70 is on the right.

Here is a picture of the socket after I cleaned off the existing thermal paste, which was Arctic-Cooling MX-2. Really easy stuff to work with.

Next we have the installed cooler with both fans installed in a push-pull combination. It's pretty freaking big and I had to remove a side panel fan so this would fit. It also blocks the first two RAM slots which is kind of lame, but not a huge deal since I only use two. There is also a picture of the repositioned case fan on top as another exhaust fan.

And Finally we have a shot of my complete system, that's a Zotac 560ti. and an Auzentech Cinema 7.1 sound card. The RAM is Corsair XM3 DHX, and is stupid tall. The final pic is the side panel back on, with my cut out side panel fan. The grill made the intake fan whine like a baby because of the design.

Final temps are 19 degrees Celsius idle, and 31 degrees Celsius under a full prime 95 torture test on all 4 cores. This is a drop of around 10 degrees under full load which is pretty phenomenal.

I hope you guys enjoyed the pics and that little bit of skin I flashed in the second pic.

 

[krzywica]

This is for all you tech hungry nerds who love to see stuff being installed with pics!

First off my lapping area where I lapped my new A70, I have some dish soap, some water, and some 1500 grit wet/dry sandpaper. The bottom of the A70 was already fairly smooth so I only spent about 15 minutes on it.



Next is a comparison of what I'm taking out and what I'm putting in, the A70 is on the right.

Here is a picture of the socket after I cleaned off the existing thermal paste, which was Arctic-Cooling MX-2. Really easy stuff to work with.



Next we have the installed cooler with both fans installed in a push-pull combination. It's pretty freaking big and I had to remove a side panel fan so this would fit. It also blocks the first two RAM slots which is kind of lame, but not a huge deal since I only use two. There is also a picture of the repositioned case fan on top as another exhaust fan.



And Finally we have a shot of my complete system, that's a Zotac 560ti. and an Auzentech Cinema 7.1 sound card. The RAM is Corsair XM3 DHX, and is stupid tall. The final pic is the side panel back on, with my cut out side panel fan. The grill made the intake fan whine like a baby because of the design.



Final temps are 19 degrees Celsius idle, and 31 degrees Celsius under a full prime 95 torture test on all 4 cores. This is a drop of around 10 degrees under full load which is pretty phenomenal.

I hope you guys enjoyed the pics and that little bit of skin I flashed in the second pic.

Looking good man....but I don't suppose there is any way to turn it 90 degrees is there? In that setup you are either pulling hot air on intake from the GPU, or pushing more hot exhaust air onto the GPU...neither is optimal.

Oh and I used Maya to model the rest of your body from picture #2....I must say it looks pretty hot.

 

[Shock]

Looking good man....but I don't suppose there is any way to turn it 90 degrees is there? In that setup you are either pulling hot air on intake from the GPU, or pushing more hot exhaust air onto the GPU...neither is optimal.

Oh and I used Maya to model the rest of your body from picture #2....I must say it looks pretty hot.

Hah, I am a sexy beast that's for sure.

As for the East-West configuration, no it's not possible without a very custom mod. It's really not pulling any hot air from the GPU. The pictures don't quite do it justice, there is a pretty significant gap between the fan and the GPU PCB. I can easily fit my hand between the two, over an inch clearance. The airflow in the case is pretty wild. With the temperatures I'm getting I'm not too concerned with it. I've actually wanted to try a North-South configuration for a while now and this heatsink was pretty much perfect for the job. I may eventually try a push-push configuration, as some people have reported an increase in performance.

 

[Mika75]

[Aren't non-modular psu's a PITA!]

Question: Is the Hard Drive outside the front fan's airflow for a reason ?

 

[Shock]

Question: Is the Hard Drive outside the front fan's airflow for a reason ?

Yes, hard drives do not need airflow.

 

[EDM95]

Where do you get your parts from?

 

[Shock]

All of my parts are from NCIX.com

 

[Mika75]

Yes, hard drives do not need airflow.

Oh so that's why Case manufacturers mount fans in front of hard drive cages?

Anyways it's your data, good luck

 

[Shock]

Oh so that's why Case manufacturers mount fans in front of hard drive cages?

Anyways it's your data, good luck

This is /facepalm worthy.

Is it also why all good cases come with 5.25 to 3.5 adapters built into their optical drive bays? Or why some cases just don't even come with dedicated drive cages? Or how about an external hard drive enclosure with no fans at all? A simple temperature monitoring program will tell you that airflow over a single hard drive is useless. The amount of actual airflow getting through is minimal at best.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Ok, I'll have to stand with Mika75 on this one,
unless your drive is Green, for the sake of longevity of your drive you DO want it actively cooled.
I have single 200mm fan in front of HD cage blowing air from room.

Stock image:

my case:

 

[krzywica]

It varies greatly depending on what HDD you are running, what the enclosure is like, and how many HDD's you are running and how close they are to each other.

You better be sure I have active cooling in my server, with all those HDD's next to other chirping along in hot swap bays. They are also all Seagates...which run hotter than most drives.

On the other hand I have no drive cage in my Workstation as I have 2SSD's and a 320GB WD Blue drive in my optical bay area.

Active airflow on a hard drive isn't really very effective in and of itself, as there is no component that will actually transfer the heat of the drive into the air that is being blown across it. This however is a different story if it is in a drive cage that absorbs the heat of the drive.

 

[Shock]

A server setting is completely different than consumer applications.

Actively cooling a hard drive in a standard case is almost completely useless. The amount of airflow actually making contact with the drive is next to zero, and there is no effective way to remove the heat from the drive.

Some drives do run hotter than others, however the difference isn't going to be significant to need active cooling. In reality the front fan on a case is more beneficial to increase air pressure, rather than air flow. This 640 GB caviar black doesn't go above 27 Celsius running OCCT on the GPU and Prime 95 on the CPU to fully stress the system.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

A server setting is completely different than consumer applications.

Actively cooling a hard drive in a standard case is almost completely useless. The amount of airflow actually making contact with the drive is next to zero, and there is no effective way to remove the heat from the drive.

Some drives do run hotter than others, however the difference isn't going to be significant to need active cooling. In reality the front fan on a case is more beneficial to increase air pressure, rather than air flow. This 640 GB caviar black doesn't go above 27 Celsius running OCCT on the GPU and Prime 95 on the CPU to fully stress the system.

"Server setting" typically occurs in actively cooled server room. Yes, you'd have no need to cool hd in "Server setting".
Last time I checked both OCCT and Prime don't stress test HD. Try to run defrag on it for hour and two and then please report to us the temp of you WD drive. Efficiency of air cooling hd's are granted typically low, but without any cooling especially ,older drives, get very hot to touch - almost at point of burning... and hot hard drive means short life one.

 

[krzywica]

"Server setting" typically occurs in actively cooled server room. Yes, you'd have no need to cool hd in "Server setting".
Last time I checked both OCCT and Prime don't stress test HD. Try to run defrag on it for hour and two and then please report to us the temp of you WD drive. Efficiency of air cooling hd's are granted typically low, but without any cooling especially ,older drives, get very hot to touch - almost at point of burning... and hot hard drive means short life one.

Not really......I remember reading an article a while back that said drive temperature doesn't leave to drive failure (temps within spec), so keeping a drive cooler won't make it last any longer. And you certainly DO need active cooling in a server environment when you have 20+drives all squished together and under load for long periods of time.

Here is the article.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Not really......I remember reading an article a while back that said drive temperature doesn't leave to drive failure (temps within spec), so keeping a drive cooler won't make it last any longer. And you certainly DO need active cooling in a server environment when you have 20+drives all squished together and under load for long periods of time.

Here is the article.

While google says there's no 100% correlation between hd temp and it's life expectation they didn't says the the correlation is 0%...
"The report lacks a clear cut conclusion"
Adding fan is cheap insurance, just like changing black car oil...

I meant for server env. for build like shock - aka single 7200rpm drive.
Surprisingly enought our new SAN - Netapp FAS2040HA with 4x shelfs of 450gb 15k SAS drive makes much less heat and noise than older dual Fas3020 with total of 5 shelfs

 

[krzywica]

While google says there's no 100% correlation between hd temp and it's life expectation they didn't says the the correlation is 0%...
"The report lacks a clear cut conclusion"
Adding fan is cheap insurance, just like changing black car oil...

But again as the article states its not insurance of any kind, nor does it affect failure rates. Hard drive failure is a mystical thing that cannot be predicted at all.....hence backup and redundancy solutions.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Hard drive failure is a mystical thing

How mystical?

 

[krzywica]

How mystical?

That^ mystical.

 

[Shock]

"Server setting" typically occurs in actively cooled server room. Yes, you'd have no need to cool hd in "Server setting".
Last time I checked both OCCT and Prime don't stress test HD. Try to run defrag on it for hour and two and then please report to us the temp of you WD drive. Efficiency of air cooling hd's are granted typically low, but without any cooling especially ,older drives, get very hot to touch - almost at point of burning... and hot hard drive means short life one.

Ofcourse they don't stress the hard drive, I was using them as the maximum heat generated into my case.

I just got back from a run (8k ), I'll run a defrag and let you know the max temp both sensors hit.

"To the touch" isn't a good way to measure temperature. The threshold of pain that mammals possess in terms of heat is only 43-45 degrees Celsius if the heat is conductive. People touch something that's hot and think "Oh that must be super hot" when in reality, it's not that hot.

P.S. That is extremely mystical

Edit: 27 Chassis, 27 Air Flow were the max temperatures after a full defrag, they increased a degree from when the defrag started.

 

[krzywica]

"To the touch" isn't a good way to measure temperature. The threshold of pain that mammals possess in terms of heat is only 43-45 degrees Celsius if the heat is conductive. People touch something that's hot and think "Oh that must be super hot" when in reality, it's not that hot.

I was going to make a joke about your mom, mammals, being conductive, touching, and thresholds, but no combination of these would yield a less than X rated result.