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02/15/08 |
         
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Corsair Nautilus 500 Water Cooling kit April 22, 2006
Yes...I am a n00b to water cooling and this
is my first water cooling exposure. I am not new to PC's though. The
first PC I owned and built was a Pentium 100 so I do have some
gray hair.
I'm not going to show the unit's spec's here as they can be found on Corsair's site. What's not shown in their info is the fan spec's. Here it is: Vette Corp. 120MM x 25MM fan model A1225L 12D. It's a twin ball bearing, 1800 RPM, 74.4 CFM. 3.2 SP and 32db. The first thing I did was take it apart to see what's inside. I unscrewed the fill cap and didn't like what I saw. Some of the plating on the fill cap had come off exposing the water tank to metal chips.
I flushed out the tank with distilled water before proceeding. Opening up the unit shows what the 500 hides inside.
Common sense told me to bench test the unit with distilled water prior to installing it to check for leaks and making sure the pump/fan started and stopped as required.
The water block looked nasty but I knew it held a nice finish once I would clean it up.
I could see 2 small voids/pock marks on the surface. They didn't appear to me to be from shipping but from how they were manufactured. I can't tell if the block is machined or poured but if I had to guess, they looked like voids from air pockets.
After seeing what makes this thing tick and testing, I proceeded to prepare my PC for the unit. I uninstalled an Alpha heat sink/fan, reinstalled the OEM bracket and applied AS5 to the CPU.
I followed the instructions installing the brackets for my 939 board. I must admit though I wish I had another person to help me because it was a bit difficult trying to hold the block in place, with the hoses attached, while at the same time inserting the hold down bracket and tightening the screw but I did manage to get it done. I made all of the electrical connections explained. The unit comes with a green wire (3 pin) and a white wire (3 pin) connectors for monitoring the fan and pump. I really like this feature. I plugged the green into the mobo CPU FAN header and the white into PWR FAN header. I poured 1/2 of the coolant bottle contents into the tank and topped it off with distilled water. I started the PC and continued to fill the system up with distilled water as prescribed. Let's get to the reason for me getting this unit...the performance difference between air and water ! System spec's: Asus A8V Deluxe Rev 2 Bios 1015 AMD Athlon 64 4000 SD, 2761 MHz (11.5 x 240) Windows XP SP2 2 x 1gb Corsair XMS3500LL (2.5, 3, 3, 6) 2.8v eVGA 6800GT 420/1150 Alpha heat sink with 3100 rpm fan Inwin full tower case During air cooled testing I had 5 case fans running. Prime 95 was run for a minimum of 20 minutes
CPU Idle 30º C Load 42º C Case idle 17º C Load 17º C
CPU Idle 27º C Load 38º C Case idle 22º C Load 22º C All case fans were unplugged or removed and holes covered. The 500's fan was on HIGH speed. 4º C delta between air and water is less than I had hoped for but it could be from a relatively low Vcore I used as compared to the stock of 1.4v. I plan to do more testing using the cooler's low fan speed setting and possibly seeing what I can do to lower the case temp's. I also want to see how high I can overclock the 4000 SD with more Vcore. Other than the lower temp's the other thing I like is a lot less noise. The WC isn't completely silent but it is less quiet than the 3 hard drives installed.
April 24, 2006 I have managed to get the 4000 (2.4 GHz stock) to 12 x 240 (2.880 GHz) with some memory tweaks that I will post later and using a Bios Vcore setting of 1.625. That's with using the Nautilus 500 LOW fan speed. Idle temp of 28 and case temp of 16º C. November 20, 2006 I've since installed this unit on a DFI Expert motherboard with an AMD 4000 San Diego core. Temperature's under load go up to 34 C.
I now have this unit installed on an Intel Q6600. More about that in the next article below. December 19, 2007 Corsair Nautilus 500 Water Cooling kit Fan mod
It's been about 1 1/2 years that I've owned this unit. Other than the LED, that shows the fluid level, taking a crap the unit has performed well. I recently put together a rig with an Intel Q6600 which are known to put off heat when raising Vcore for overclocking. The N500 stock 1800 RPM fan just wasn't cutting it any more. I know I could have gone air cooled or upgraded my water kit but I just felt I would give this a shot even though I sacrifice by adding more noise. The nice thing about a variable speed fan is I can turn it back while surfing and so on...when gaming I can crank it up and don't hear it anyway. The stock fan spec's: Vette Corp. 120MM x 25MM fan model A1225L 12D. It's a twin ball bearing, 1800 RPM, 74.4 CFM. 3.2 SP and 32db.
The new fan is a Silverstone FM122 with a controller. 800~2400 RPM, 110 CFM max., 22~44dBA, 5.68 SP. Available from Newegg for $12.29 free shipping. The Silverstone measures exactly the same size as the stock one. 120 x 120 x 25 MM.
Inside the N500.
A closer look.
New fan mounted to the lid.
Removed the stock fan grill and put on the one from Silverstone.
A little double face tape and a notch out of the case for the wire to feed through.
No wiring changes are needed to the Nautilus. I plugged in the fan speed sensor wire (green) and the 12 volts for the fan.
Assembled with the old grill shown.
Before this mod I ran Prime 95 on my Q6600 @ 3.2GHz, 1.3 Vcore and saw the highest temperature to be 65° C after about 5 minutes. After the mod, fan running full speed, the highest temperature reached was 59° C.
Thanks for reading!
This site was last updated 12/20/07 |
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