|
Posted by
Per Hansson
on May 04, 2001
I recently bought an
Abit KT7A motherboard to couple with a Duron processor
running at 700mhz. Of course, I wanted to overclock and the
results I got were not bad at all; with a standard HSF I got
my the Duron running stable at 850mhz, I knew however that
the CPU could do better because I was able to P.O.S.T. at 1
GHz, and thereby I looked into water-cooling.
I ordered one of the
water-cooling systems available at Leufken
Technologies. Notice however that I have the “older”
model of the water-cooler, the one with an aluminium water
block. The only thing that differs from the new version is
that it has an inline water pump. This means that the pump
is inside the water tank and thus it reduces sound by a
small margin. The other difference is that the water block
is made of copper instead of aluminium. The difference this
affects cooling performance is probably within the error
margin of the motherboard’s inbuilt sensor so don’t get
too excited about it.
Installation
It took me
approximately 30 minutes to install the water-cooling system
but as you read on you will see that I did some
modifications to my case, etc. and of course this took some
extra time.
The included manual
could have been better, I didn’t have any problems at all
but someone who isn’t as experienced with computer
hardware might find the installation a bit difficult. Now,
don’t let this scare you off, anyone can install this and
the instructions easily explain the installation, but if I
say that all the instructions are included on a single A4
paper, then you get the idea.
As you saw on the
first photograph I put the water tank in the lower front of
my case, and the radiator on the back, then the water block
on the CPU. The water goes from the tank to the radiator
into the water block and back to the tank, quite simple.
You should first
measure out the required lengths of the hoses and cut them
accordingly. Attach everything but don’t power it up for
the first time inside your computer, remove it and let it
run for an hour or two to be sure that there are no water
leaks. This would of course be disastrous.
Leufkens water-cooler
comes with a clip to mount the cooler, although I did break
off one of the feet on the CPU socket with it, so be
careful. But seeing as the Socket-A motherboards have four
holes drilled around the CPU socket I could use those
instead. The required hardware for this mod is 4 screws with
bolts and non-conductive washers plus two flatpliers with
holes drilled. If you don’t want to do this, the included
clip will work perfectly fine but as I said, I broke my CPU
socket so I didn’t have any choice. This little extra work
also gave me a cooler CPU.
You might be a bit
afraid that the water cooler will not fit in your case but
don’t worry, I only have a regular mid-tower case and I
had no problems installing it inside of the case. The
radiator fitted perfectly in the back between my expansion
cards and the case's outer edge. As for the water block, it
has the same width and height as my CPU and is only 1,5cm
wide so it is much smaller than a standard HSF. The
“clip” I made myself will have no problem to fit on any
other Socket-A motherboard either, because there are
restrictions on how much space the components around the CPU
socket may take up.
If you want some
information on how to make this clip yourself take a look here
in our forums.
If
I am to sum up the installation I can say that it is very
easy to install if you use the included mounting clip, so
Leufkens could not have made this kit any easier to install
and they really succeed in this aspect. If you instead
prefer to do it my way you will need to mill out the
required hardware, as well as cut up a hole on the back of
the metal plate that your motherboard is seated against, if
you don’t want to remove the motherboard every time you
want to change your CPU, that is.
|
