Ground loopin' - Look ma, no fans or rads.

[DDogg]

****, I'm glad I got off my butt and did this. Inlet temp is a constant 25/26C no matter how much I load it. Presently running 2.150 VCore and SiSoft says it is 200 watts, though I'm not sure if that is accurate.

So far, so good and it sure is quite and cool in my computer room for once. Cost me about $75.00 for the materials, plus some aspirin for my back. I'm way to old to be digging 5X2X4 foot deep holes, but it was worth it.

Here are some pics. If anybody is interested I can provide some more details. Right now I'm going to soak my back in the hot-tub.

[-navairum-]

Thats awesome man, great job!

[Bobonit]

Only thing I want to know is where you are located. What is the climate like?

[DriveEuro]

What the hell pump are you using that it'll push the water that far?

[DDogg]

@Bobonit - Dallas, Fort Worth area. Soil, 3 or 4 foot down if you don't have a frost-line and maybe 6 foot if you do stays around 69 F/21C all the time nearly anywhere. At least that is what I have read. [btw, the air temp was around 80-85F today I think.]

@, DriveEuro - As for as the pump, you guys will belly laugh. Its a $19.00 fountain pump from Lowe's. Rated at like 125 gph and IIRC, only a few feet of head. Works ok, the flow did drop a fair bit though. Note those two 3/8 ID copper 30 foot butterflies are in parallel and the risers are 3/4 rigid copper. In effect, the pump sees a 40 foot 3/4 ID line (each riser is like 5 foot). Of course, then it drops to another 20 feet of 1/2 inch ID clear (10 feet x 2) to get from the wall inlet, to the computer, and back to the wall outlet. Crap load of tubing for such a little guy to deal with.

Eventually I'll upgrade the pump, because when I run 2.150 VCore now for 2860 MHz, I'm seeing 54C. That's just 2 degrees less than my single pass fedco 342 triple fan external rad box would keep it in 25-26C ambient air providing inlet temps of 31-32, so, I'm pretty sure I just need to increase volume some. I would guess the volume now is like 1/2 gpm, maybe 3/4, but I have not measured it.

In the end run, only the die temp is important, and my little giant **** ant fountain pump and the 6002-A WB has never had a problem keeping me cool at 1.975 - 2.025 VCore although inlet temps would get up around 30C. I expect much better with a decent pump with 25-26C inlet temps. The 6002-A should come alive with some decent pressure to work with for once.

[aszyd]

First the rad box, then this... Respect!

[Lando95]

Very nice!!! I am not an AMD guy, but isn't that vcore a little high? Or am I totally wrong?

[aszyd]

Nah, not if you have good cooling, but it is close to the upper limit. I personally wouldn't run it if my temps were 54c, but hey, to each his own.

[DDogg]

Originally Posted by Lando95

Very nice!!! I am not an AMD guy, but isn't that VCore a little high? Or am I totally wrong?

It is ok if you can keep it cool. Less than 50C with a high blip 52 Max C occasionally is considered best by many.

I'm running at the moment with bios set at 2.03 VCore. On an Abit NF7S that fluctuates between a true 1.936 and 1.952 volts (at least it does on mine). That gives me 2808 MHz/ SiSoft PR 4061/168 watts and runs around 46C with the new GLoop. I'm real happy with that given the baby pump and low volume.

I had become frustrated with the way the ambient temps fluctuated in my computer room. They would vary between 72-80 F, depending on wife or kids screwing with the AC, and how the sun was on a given day.

I need the speed for some video encoding stuff I am in to. It is **** hard to have a reliable and solid OC for lengthy video encodes with ambient temps all over the place like that. Plus the stuffy heat and background noise distracted me. Now, I believe this solution will provide a constant inlet temp to my PC under near all climate fluctuations. Plus, my AC bill should drop a bit with the heat now going outside. The silence is sure ok by me too.

[onewecallgod]

ooh i get how your system works. using the ground as a "chiller" good idea!

EDIT: you should use a multimeter to check your vcore. on my NF7, the sensors were way off: i set it at 1.95, in mbm and bios is read between 1.9-1.925 and my multimeter said 1.85-1.87

[DDogg]

Originally Posted by onewecallgod

ooh i get how your system works. using the ground as a "chiller" good idea!

Yep, if you will squint real hard at the first pic, you may be able to see the temp is 21C according to my Probe. I measured it for a few days like that in a smaller hole I dug and it always said the same thing no matter if it was 60 or 85 outside. I reckon the ground is like a huge thermal flywheel.

[Bobonit]

Way cool, nicely done. I'm in South Florida and the thought of doing that had crossed my mind. Saw it done in another forum once, but your setup looks much nicer. Good Job !!

[DDogg]

Update, and thanks for the positive comments:

(From a post I did on another forum) -

As I was retiring around 2 AM, my inlet temp showed as 27C. This was after throwing what SiSoft estimated as 180-200 watts into the ground loop for around 9 hours. I don't know if the thermistor I'm using is actually reporting the correct temp, but for comparison purposes that was a rise of 2C from my freshly filled starting point 9 hours previous.

Before going to bed I setup the machine at 2.00 actual VCore as reported by 8rdavcore. This was a bios setting of 2.1 volts VCore. SiSoft showed 180 watts estimated wattage. I set it running Prime95. I has some worry that the temps might continue to rise above 27C.

This morning, 6 hours later, I was pleased to see Prime95 still running and the inlet temp was still at 27C.

Given that the temp did not rise in 6 hours after a 9 hour previous input of the approximate same SiSoft estimated wattage, I think one could then start to conjecture that this small butterfly ground loop can dissipate the estimated 180 watts reported by SiSoft.

As I said before, the SiSoft number may not be the real wattage, but I would think it would serve as a portable comparison reference for others...

[Superdave]

that is awesome. I wonder if my apartment complex would have an issue with me doing that outside the spare bedroom/office????

[misterheadache]

Good Lord, man, fine job

Probably should keep an eye out for gophers and rabbits which might take a liking to digging in and making a heated burrow

[cetoole]

Just make sure it doesn't get too hot in you house that you have condensation issues. Those cpu temps seem a bit high with that kind of cooling, my air is lower. What kind of tubing is that, did you get it in the coils or mod it yourself? Looks great, have fun and replace that pump.

[Starwise]

Man, that is one of the more impressive setups I've seen so far. Too bad my comp room is on the 2nd floor.

[Bobonit]

Originally Posted by Starwise

Man, that is one of the more impressive setups I've seen so far. Too bad my comp room is on the 2nd floor.

Just get an Iwaki MD-30RZ, 2nd floor will be No Problem !!

[DDogg]

Update2: It went to 28 today. Hopefully it will stabilize there.

Interesting thing happened. I picked up a 300 GPH 12 ft head pump from Lowe's, thinking to myself that a pump was a pump. Not so. This pump, although it drastically increased my pressure and volume, made the temps go up.

That just confused the heck out of me, until I realized it was a 70 watt pump and it was dumping some serious heat into the loop. It was hot to the touch. Too hot to hold comfortably.

Moral of the story is that bigger ain't necessarily better. You have to pay attention to how much heat is generated by the pump and pay close attention to what the wattage is of the pump itself.

I reinstalled mt 126 GPH fountain pump rated at 10 watts power consumption. The temps of the machine and the ground loop dropped back to where they had been. Go figure...One thing for sure. Flow is not as big a deal as people make it out to be. In fact this clearly shows how the extra power needs of a bigger pump can actually hurt via dissipating added heat into the water circuit.

I ended up buying another 126 GPH for $19.00 and put it in a small gray liquid tight electrical panel box. Its pretty cool, I wish I had taken some pics. Mounts on the wall where the return comes in from the GLoop. You would not think it is a pump.

So now I have two of these little jewels in series. Got a pressure and volume increase and I'm thinking maybe 2 or 3 C less CPU temp. Plus now I have redundancy. If one fails the other will do just fine.

[Jimmer411]

hehe nice nice idea there. i wouldnt do that in california tho! 1 earthquake might break a pipe.