when a pump fails ...

[Psi*]

... the processor overheats, makes steam, steam escapes system, over heated processor shuts system down, steam condenses, soft tubing for w/c system collapses and hardens (normal hardness) with cracks.

This is a section of tubing extracted from said machine. This happened to the tubing on both sides attached to the CPU with a little more, ~6", on the out flow side. The pump was only 11 or 12 years old and only rarely shut off. An Eheim 1048 pump and I am not really unhappy.

Where the hell is everyone!?!?! Not much activity here for a while. Are there any amateur radio operators here, aka hams? I have been re-studying ham radio digital modes & sdr and wonder why gamers cannot play over the air? Researching this. Some digital modes work even under the noise floor!

 

[Rob Williams]

I'm not a water-cooling guru, but 10+ years on a pump seems -amazing-. Years ago I had a Thermaltake AIO setup in my mom's PC, and the pump died after two years. That was before the market was inundated with AIO kits though, I am sure the situation is better. I've been using a Corsair AIO for probably three years and it's still chugging away.

Either way, that sucks man. I really hope none of your actual components were damaged. I'd think the protections in place nowadays should be enough to prevent that.

I am not doing too bad, and you're right, the lack of activity sucks! I figured that would happen as soon as we put in-article comments. I'd love for these forums to flourish once again. I need to start posting more threads ;-)

 

[Tom Roeder]

Howdy PSI - KC9MSA here! Were you wanting to transmit game data over the air, or just use for talking?

 

[Psi*]

Hey Rob, I think I have noticed a trend where no one re-posts, at least to my threads, until you do! Maybe just me being paranoid, although I don't know how that actually applies.

Hi Tom,
Given the variety of digital modes I am thinking about game data. Call me Rip Van Ham ... waking up after a long time away! Imagine games where players territories come & go not only per their schedule but also propagation. The adventures would not be dependant on the net in other words.

 

[Tom Roeder]

That might be neat, I'm not sure how reliable digi is during propagation, personally I think the first time I was in intense game play and my signal dropped and I got killed or something else happened, I would scrap the whole thing.

 

[Rob Williams]

Hey Rob, I think I have noticed a trend where no one re-posts, at least to my threads, until you do! Maybe just me being paranoid, although I don't know how that actually applies.

That's just because I am the first to notice. Given the forums are so, ahem, dead, even I'm slow sometimes. I gotta put in more of a real effort. Sometimes I post things too that don't get responses! Soon enough I will likely merge a bunch of sub-forums together, so that it doesn't look quite so dead, and it will look cleaner. No need for so many separate forums unless the forum in general is booming.

 

[Kougar]

It's more like Rob lives and breathes on these forums I drop by once in a blue moon just to stick my head in these days alas.

Sorry to hear about the pump failure, hopefully nothing else in the system was damaged. 12 years sounds about right for the lifespan of the pump though, I would be astonished if my own Lang D5 lasted that long.

Regarding the tubing, you might look up some of the watercooling brands. I used to believe tubing was just tubing, but ever since I installed the DangerDen flextubing I've been amazed, and forced to eat my words.

The stuff seals sooooo much better that I don't even technically need to clamp the hoses off (of course I still do obviously). It's extremely flexible but doesn't kink, has a lower water-evap rating, and it's still crazy easy to get on and off the ports. The bad news is I bought mine from DD's going-out-of-business sale, you'd need to check a few Watercooler forums to find an equivalent high quality tubing. I forgot who DD sourced theirs from.

 

[Rob Williams]

I forgot who DD sourced theirs from.

That'd be interesting to find out. It's kind of sad that the best tubing was purchased from a company that no longer exists...

 

[Psi*]

No damage to anything, aka the CPU. The tubing is rated to 160°F & the water definitely exceeded that rating. I replaced the tubing with more of the same that I had bought some while ago. I do have a mad scientist plan for running the plumbing of 4 machines thru 1 radiator (possibly a chiller also), 1 pump, & 1 reservoir & will look for that better tubing if I actually get that ambitious.

On the same day this pump failed the main pump in my marine aquarium system failed ... 90 g. display, 55 gal. refugium, + 25 sump. I replumbed all of that also and still need to do a little more. The aquarium pump was many times larger than this little Eheim.

So, I got some unplanned plumbing experience. Worked out ok I guess.

 

[Rob Williams]

I'm glad there's no damage to the hardware, but still, what a pain in the ass thing to happen.

I caught a glimpse at your forum sig and it brought on a surge of memories of when we were talking about that motherboard, and that CPU. That board is X58 and now X99 is due out later this year! Really, not much time has passed at all, but the generational gap can make it feel like a LOT of time has.

 

[Tharic-Nar]

If you want to look into tubing, broaden horizons a bit and think where it's used with both heat and reliability in mind... Try automotive and mariner supplies for cars and boats respectively. More often than not, they will have fitted connectors and such, but it's the tubing you are after, stuff that is actually graded, rather than "tubing" with no other indicators. Think intercoolers or hydrolic cooling radiator pipes (sometimes called vacuum tubing), usually made from silicone rubber (rather than PVC) and rated to 200-250C. If the pipes were old, then they will degrade. All perishables (rubber) should be replaced every 5-10 years anyway.

As for a pump that lasted over 10 years... don't be angry, be ecstatic, lol. MTBFs like that are really rare these days, pretty much anything you buy now will have half that life.

And yes, dead forums - we have plans, well, Rob does at least. Apologies for that, I'm guilty of "Forums are dead so I won't look".

 

[Psi*]

Good points Thar. I replaced the pump with a new Eheim of the same model. It doesn't seem to available from PC guys any more. Performance PCs told me that people stopped buying it. I ended up getting it from Dr. Foster & Smith aquarium supplies ... who knew?!?! And, it was a very good price. Unique about it is that it is 120VAC versus running off the PSU. My PSUs have the capacity but I have never been comfortable running something as inductive as a pump is (I think) off a PSU.

The tubing is about 3 years old. Discolored, not pretty at all, but functional except for not being up to the task of an over heated CPU. When I installed these CPUs I used the TIM that is low melting point metal ... Indigo Extreme. The initial step after everything is ready to go is running a CPU stress-er program to intentionally cause it to go >90° C which re-flows the TIM. Worked well, and I did see a little foaming possibly from the water boiling or air being driven out of the water at the time but for just a few seconds. This failure event might have lasted much longer. At least long enough to get the CPU to shut things down. When the CPUs (I have 2 nearly identical systems) are running with all cores maxxed the high temp is about 75° C which can last for hours.

The new system boards & CPUs are faster but not near the increment of having a graphic accelerator of recent vintage. I have posted on here in the past what I have. The latest Nvidia cards are only twice as fast as mine. Not quite the incentive needed to spend $4K/card. Even the new system boards/CPU are not a fast enough increment to make the leap. I do have an empty Lian Li case that could be filled with something tho. Maybe an X99 later in the year.

I have only posted when I am about to buy, have just bought something new, or had a failure ... causing me to buy a new something. Lately I am looking at the newest Ultra books. The largest screen size is 15" which I am not happy with. Usually I use a notebook to access the desktops so the performance of the portable doesn't matter so much. Larger displays are better, but I realize that the market is driven by size & weight and is why I want one. I will use this one to run the desktops AND hook up to the new software defined radio (SDR). The serious hams have 2 large monitors for running all of the "stuff". I will probably make that choice by the end of summer ... maybe I will some evaluation here?

 

[Tharic-Nar]

My main issue with aquarium supplies is that they are not really meant for hot environments (>50C), so I don't know how the bearings and seals will hold up over time. I know they are meant for 24/7 operation which is good, but the heat is probably what will kill it in the end. Going the external power route was probably the better choice, not from a power load perspective, but from a redundancy point. If the pump is controlled by the PC, or enters a sleep state (greater than S1), then there's always the chance the pump will stop. I guess the only issue is remembering to turn the pump off when the PC isn't on - although if memory serves, you never turn your PC off due to it constantly working.

A relative of mine was in the market for a new laptop, tasked me to look for something (always within an undefined budget), and I quickly found a distinct lack of 17" portables - at least reputable anyway. Of the ones I did find were either really expensive, or had really poor resolution (I thought 1080p was standard these days, but I guess not). I guess people are not interested in desktop replacements.

For more or multiple displays, driven by a laptop, you pretty much only have one options, DisplayPort Daisy Chaining, but you'll need to fork out a bit on the GPU front to get that. You will also need monitors that have DP in/out. If you just want an additional single monitor output, then pretty much any laptop will handle that, usually over HDMI.

 

[Merlin]

Water cooled machines

I use two pumps on my system, one for the GPU and the other for the CPU.
Both have been perfect for five years, so far ( knock on wood )
One is a Koolance COV-PMP450A for the CPU.
And the other is a Swiftech for the GPU
So anyone in search of a good pump that lasts, I recommend either of these.

Merlin

 

[tyr2]

@ Psi*
Not wishing to sound overly prissy, but I've found using Tygon and re-tubing every year reliably obviates some of the, er, more adventurous aspects of HPC/PSC.

On a semi-related point, I just got to this forum and your Tesla M2090 thread via Google. I've a (cardboard) box sitting near me with 4 x GTX-580's with factory waterblocks and 3 x M2090's wanting similar homebrew attention ... hence, the cited search. Are you, yet, pursuing CUDA/PSC (whatever) lunacy? Oh, BTW, given your locale, I suspect we know some of the same folk.... Applied large-scale matrices of stochastic differential equations "with" dollar signs? (I was, also, on a grad-school faculty relatively near you ... though, this house is far nearer to Merlin ... as I just noted in his "bio".) Cheers!

 

[Psi*]

I am considering making one housing for the water cooling parts. Plumb out of it to all that need WC with separable connections. I am also an aquarist with 3 saltwater tanks so the plumbing & manifolds I am kind of comfortable with. Talk is cheap for now.

I use the NVIDIAs for the solvers in CST electromagnetic software. I get a 5X to 10X speed up over the i7-5960X octa-core in the host systems. Not all of the solvers use them tho and they run on the host which is e/w 64 GB RAM.

I am getting back into C++ lately slowly. Interested in software defined radios on accelerator cards ... big subject tho. I have thought about any matrix manipulations for years. What I would like to do with the SDRs might require re-visiting that also ... multiple signal correlations from a few sites a small distance away over the internet. Just something to do