Immediately after my watercooling loop inside my Ncase M1 started leaking (block seal malfunction), I checked what air coolers have a perfect fit inside the Ncase M1 and perform well. Luckily a day and a half later I was up and running again.
I suddenly remembered how easy air cooling is to install and doesn't need constant monitoring. Air cooling can only really be ruined by a broken fan, which watercooling doesn't like either. You lose sight of these simple things in life, when you have a full-time job you don't want to come home to another few hours of work on a PC because it decided to spring a leak on you. No matter how carefully you installed it.
How did my newly purchased Kabuto II and Arctic Cooling Accelero Extreme IV perform ? Extremely well. It was quieter than my watercooling loop and it had close to the same performance. But it was essentially completely silent at idle. Bliss.
So with this motto and the upcoming Cerberus, I was contemplating to continue this heavenly cloud of airy computing but not just transplant it. I wanted to get another Radeon 290X and Crossfire the thing, ON AIR. Yes you read that correctly: 550W TDP on air. Some of you might feel light-headed, most of you will think I'm stupid. Is a mad scientist ever stupid when he doesn't know any better ? This is actually more of a test than anything, because I was/am not sure it will work.
"But how you crazy nutjob, there is no room for the Arctic Accelero, not even with three slots !" You are correct. So I'm going to need to put the card or the heatsink somewhere else. The card is tricky, as the case itself won't have much room to put that block of molten lava anywhere relevant. (Except the front, that could have maybe worked...)
So I'm going to use heatpipes to put the heatsink where the fan bracket is, roughly resembling this:
Thermalright Spitfire (EOL)
But the problem is, there doesn't seem to exist a suitable "L-bracket". So I need to make one myself, using two blocks and heatpipes. After many many hours of searching, I found the only good block that seems remotely capable of handling the TDP:
HDPlex H5 passive GPU heatsink system
But it wasn't compatible with the R9 290X according to the website, probably because of the 95W max TDP (remember: passive) but also because the screw hole distances were half a millimeter off. I ordered one anyway, see if it fit. It did, although barely. So I ordered another one, along with ten 6mm x 220mm heatpipes and a copper pipe bending tool. The second heatsink arrived today and here is what it came of it.
Arctic Accelero with the HDPlex H5 GPU block and 8 heatpipes attached.
It's not easy to get an equal amount of pressure on all 8 heatpipes. I haven't used thermal paste on the one attached to the Arctic Accelero yet.
Yes the heatpipes are mounted the wrong way, no worries.
Still with straight pipes, I want to test this with straight ones first to see how much of a difference it could be.
1629 gram of copper and aluminium. A Noctua NH-D15 heatsink weighs 980 gram.
I used the screws that came with the Accelero because the ones from the HDPlex block were too short. But these were too long so I needed to cut these.
The monstrosity I need to figure out if it is viable.
So how does it run ? I scrambled some parts together, grabbed an Ubuntu Live USB stick and fired off Heaven benchmark. But I can't read temps or atleast I haven't figured out how to yet. But it does work, both heatsinks heat up and the Arctic Accelero absorbs heat too. But because I can't monitor temps and I have it laying flat on the table upside-down, the VRMs aren't getting ANY air so I don't want to stress it just yet. This weekend I'll get a Windows install running and fire up the brimstone.
I suddenly remembered how easy air cooling is to install and doesn't need constant monitoring. Air cooling can only really be ruined by a broken fan, which watercooling doesn't like either. You lose sight of these simple things in life, when you have a full-time job you don't want to come home to another few hours of work on a PC because it decided to spring a leak on you. No matter how carefully you installed it.
How did my newly purchased Kabuto II and Arctic Cooling Accelero Extreme IV perform ? Extremely well. It was quieter than my watercooling loop and it had close to the same performance. But it was essentially completely silent at idle. Bliss.
So with this motto and the upcoming Cerberus, I was contemplating to continue this heavenly cloud of airy computing but not just transplant it. I wanted to get another Radeon 290X and Crossfire the thing, ON AIR. Yes you read that correctly: 550W TDP on air. Some of you might feel light-headed, most of you will think I'm stupid. Is a mad scientist ever stupid when he doesn't know any better ? This is actually more of a test than anything, because I was/am not sure it will work.
"But how you crazy nutjob, there is no room for the Arctic Accelero, not even with three slots !" You are correct. So I'm going to need to put the card or the heatsink somewhere else. The card is tricky, as the case itself won't have much room to put that block of molten lava anywhere relevant. (Except the front, that could have maybe worked...)
So I'm going to use heatpipes to put the heatsink where the fan bracket is, roughly resembling this:
Thermalright Spitfire (EOL)
But the problem is, there doesn't seem to exist a suitable "L-bracket". So I need to make one myself, using two blocks and heatpipes. After many many hours of searching, I found the only good block that seems remotely capable of handling the TDP:
HDPlex H5 passive GPU heatsink system
But it wasn't compatible with the R9 290X according to the website, probably because of the 95W max TDP (remember: passive) but also because the screw hole distances were half a millimeter off. I ordered one anyway, see if it fit. It did, although barely. So I ordered another one, along with ten 6mm x 220mm heatpipes and a copper pipe bending tool. The second heatsink arrived today and here is what it came of it.
Arctic Accelero with the HDPlex H5 GPU block and 8 heatpipes attached.
It's not easy to get an equal amount of pressure on all 8 heatpipes. I haven't used thermal paste on the one attached to the Arctic Accelero yet.
Yes the heatpipes are mounted the wrong way, no worries.
Still with straight pipes, I want to test this with straight ones first to see how much of a difference it could be.
1629 gram of copper and aluminium. A Noctua NH-D15 heatsink weighs 980 gram.
I used the screws that came with the Accelero because the ones from the HDPlex block were too short. But these were too long so I needed to cut these.
The monstrosity I need to figure out if it is viable.
So how does it run ? I scrambled some parts together, grabbed an Ubuntu Live USB stick and fired off Heaven benchmark. But I can't read temps or atleast I haven't figured out how to yet. But it does work, both heatsinks heat up and the Arctic Accelero absorbs heat too. But because I can't monitor temps and I have it laying flat on the table upside-down, the VRMs aren't getting ANY air so I don't want to stress it just yet. This weekend I'll get a Windows install running and fire up the brimstone.
