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Watercooling the Asus Blitz + OCZ Flex Memory.

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Posted in on November 4, 2007 at 2:51 am

Ever since the Asus Blitz motherboards were featured in Custom PC several months ago, I new I had to get one. I fell in love when they were first featured in the news section - the integrated watercooling system looked fantastic and is the answer to many enthusiasts problems regarding cooling chipsets and voltage regulators. Modern motherboards now use heatpipe/heatsink systems to cool chipsets etc using case airflow but more importantly, residual airflow from the CPU heatsink fan. If you watercool the CPU then there is none of this local airflow blowing through the heatpipe heatsinks and as a result things get very hot very quickly even if you are not overclocking.

Even with exceptional airflow, the local cooling at these heatsinks still isn’t enough and I certainly wouldn’t want to increase the voltage above default to the north or southbridges for example. The Northbridge heatsink on my Asus P5K Deluxe, the board I used before the Blitz, used to get red hot - quite literally too hot to touch! Asus actually include optional fans for these sinks for this very reason but they arn’t the quietest things in the world and once you’ve spent a fortune on a quiet watercooling system, the last thing you want are a load of noisy fans!

I’ve experimented with chipset and mosfet blocks before and successfully cooled  an Asus socket939 motherboard.

You do of course have to remove the heatsinks to install the waterblocks. Be very careful not to scratch the PCB else you’ll need a new board…

Plumbing in this kind of arrangement is not for the faint hearted and well done if you’ve tried it! With an additional 3 blocks in the system, the chances of things going wrong are quite a bit higher. Routing tubing neatly and avoiding kinks is very difficult.

When it’s all up and running it does look good and if your pump hasn’t packed up due to the increased resistance then you’ll end up with fantastic cooling too. Only the most powerful pumps with pressure heads exceeding 4metres can cope with this kind of arrangement and still cool the CPU effectively - other pumps will struggle to provide a decent flow rate. You also need copious amounts of radiator power to cope with all the heat!

So when the Asus Bitz appeared, it was the answer to my prayers - no costly chipset or mosfet blocks and no need for a degree in plumbing! The Fusion block system comprised a copper waterblock which is thermally connected to the rest of the heatpipe system. While the Southbridge, mosfets and Crosslinx chip aren’t directly cooled, once they heat up and the pipe start conducting heat, the cooling provided by the northbridge block will be far better than any fan and should help keep things cooler.

Also included in the mix is another recent innovation in  PC watercooling - the first RAM to have it’s own integrated waterblock! The OCZ Flex should help keep the RAM nice and cool too - very useful if your going to be pumping a few extra volts through to get some more points in the Custom PC benchmarks!!!

The OCZ memory uses rather awkward 6mm/ 1/4″ Outside diameter barbs. This is pretty much the rarest tubing size there is but luckily there are some ways round it. Places like www.over-clock.co.uk stock some “T” blocks and “F” connectors which can be used to incorporate this small tubing into your existing system. This came in very handy as my system uses 1/2″ ID tubing which is clearly a lot bigger, and also the Fusion block system of the Asus Blitz uses 3/8″ barbs - again a rare size.

 T-block (images courtesy of www.over-clock.co.uk) has three threaded holes so you can use any barbs you like to use different sized tubing in a loop.

 Swiftech “F” fitting - splits flow between smaller and larger tubing.

I used two T-blocks  - As the rest of my system is 1/2″ID tubing, I was reluctant to reduce this down to 3/8″ for the fusion block system, never mind 1/4″ for the OCZ memory! What I decided to do was to split the flow between the Fusion block and memory using a T-block. This way the resistance is eliminated although the flow to the block and RAM will be reduced - not too much of a problem as they don’t heat up anywhere near a CPU or GPU.

Here you can see how the T-blocks are plumbed in. The 1/2″ tubing from the rest of my system will enter the block in the centre where the flow is split. It then comes back together in the block which I’m holding and continues as 1/2″ tubing to the reservoir.

3/8″ tubing is pretty easy to come by. However the 6mmID tubing for the RAM was a little more difficult. Luckily Koolance, who make ready-made watercooling systems, use 6mm ID tubing so I manage to pick some up from www.thecoolingshop.com However it was very stiff and didn’t provide a tight fit over the barbs of the memory. barb clips of this size are very rare indeed and the ones I found didn’t look very effective. An alternative was cable ties but these can lead to leaks as they don’t provide even pressure. As luck would have it I was in B&Q and found some tubing there which had 5mm diameter - 1mm less than the barbs. Now if you’re familier with 1/2″ID tubing then you will know that by using a slightly smaller size (7/16″) you can create a watertight seal by heating the tubing and letting it shrink onto the barbs which usually eliminates the need for clamps. I tried it with this 5mm tubing from B&Q and it worked an absolute treat - a bit of boiling water helped loosen the tubing enough to prize it over the barbs of the RAM and when it cooled you would quite literally have to cut it off it was that tight!

All Done!!! And best of all, a month later and no leaks, just a very cool running stable system. Below are some more pics of this fantastic motherboard - larger res versions available HERE

• Watercooling the Asus Blitz + OCZ Flex Memory.
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