tekHedd – the blog

As usual, it started with a game. Two games, in fact, but Bioshock is the real culprit. This isn’t a review of Bioshock, and I won’t discuss what I love or hate about it, but one thing I will say: it doesn’t run very fast on an nVidia 7600GT video card, at least not at my monitor’s native resolution of 1680×1050. And, sure, I could run at a lower resolution, but then it won’t run widescreen. Oh my.

So, I got a 8800GTS. Whee! And here I had planned to save up some money this summer. (Imagine half-hysterical laughter here.) Well, of course it runs pretty darn well with the default heat sink, but hey I’ve already got a water block that works on it, so I thought, let’s put it on! And while I’m at it, I decided to pull the PhysX card and not reinstall it for a while. (I like the concept, but I’m not adding yet another card to my cooling loop, OK?)

So, here’s the system with a factory heat sink, and the water block sort of sitting on the bottom of the case. Doesn’t that just scream: “hook me up”? Yeah.

Before

I ordered this stuff from Crazy PC:

Essential Supplies from CrazyPC

• Swiftech MC14 bga ramsinks
• Swiftech MC21 heat sinks for those funny other chips on the side that I haven’t bothered to research what they are (but which look like a power supply circuit)
• the G80 adapter kit for the Swiftech MCW60 water block
• Arctic Ceramique for the GPU
• Arctic Silver adhesive epoxy, because I heard the MC14’s come with completely useless double-sided tape
• Extra hose clamps, in case things go horribly wrong.

For refreshment during this procedure, I chose Session Lager from Full Sail Brewing Company:

It's a Session Beer!

OK, so it’s time to pull the card and try to remove the factory heat sink without ripping half the chips off of the board. I used to think this was the scariest part of installation. It’s still quite frightening. As you can see, the heat sink is held on by a billion screws on the back, and two on the side:

The pretty backside of the 8800GTS

8800GTS Faceplate

And I managed to get it off safely by gently twisting back and forth and pulling. Fortunately, while they use plenty of goo, it’s the kind that comes off. BFG has been good to me in this respect.

8800GTS with stock heatsink removed

So, I cleaned off the goo with paper towels and lots of denatured alcohol. Sure, it’s not industrial degreaser, but it works pretty well. Right? Well, it always has in the past, anyway. Minor geeky point of interest: They sanded the RAM chips down, presumably so we won’t notice that they’re purchasing super-cheap RAM and overclocking it. Fine, OK. If it makes them happy, that’s all well and good.

The Mystery RAM

Next, I’m thinking that it’s time to replace the adapter plate on the GPU water block. I was hoping that I could switch it out without pulling off the hoses, but no luck. Oh well, I can pull the hoses off no problem, and then just reattach… and just reattach… I’ll just reattach…

What the hell is that?

What the hell is that?

Oh my god, there’s waxy buildup in my water block. I should have used a different brand of furniture polish! Let’s look closer at the gunk:

Extreme Waxy Buildup

Yup, that’s definitely pink wax from FluidXP Extreme. Oh man, how deep does the rot go? Now I’m really scared. Sure, it’s only a little sediment, but how much is in the radiator? Is the pump clogging? At the very least, I’m going to flush it and get rid of the FluidXP.

So, naturally I had to spend several hours investigating the extent of the problem, flushing out the system with warm tap water, and doing other fun things like disassembling the pump.

We are making enquiries

Well, in the final analysis, I’m convinced that it’s gross, and I’ve probably lost some cooling ability, but that there’s plenty of cooling power left. Faced with the decision between trying to flush it out with
nasty solvents that might damage the copper, replacing the radiator, and just living with it, I guess I’ll live with it. The system still runs pretty darn cold with the waxy buildup. But I will have to order some new tubing, just for appearances.

The pink color is there to remind you not to buy FluidXP

Yup. That’s not coming off. So, by this time I’ve lost some of my will to take pictures, and have run out of beer. Fortunately, I have some wine here. This is taking longer than I expected!

It soon becomes apparent that the double-sided adhesive on the ramsinks is not going to stick. I mean, not at all. It doesn’t even feel tacky to the touch. So, I set to work removing the double-sided tape from eleven (11) MC14 forged copper heat sinks, while watching Total Recall.

Hey, I’ve been at it for over 8 hours by this time, I’m ready to relax for a bit.

Wow, Total Recall is a fun movie! “You blew my cover!” Also, I’ve noticed that this adhesive tape sticks very well to the bottom of the ramsinks, and it was hard work removing it. Why couldn’t the other side work as well? So, mixing up the epoxy and gluing on a zillion ramsinks is the work of a few minutes, give it 15 minutes to partially set, and I’m ready to start reassembling. I know people get crazy about spreading arctic ceramique, but I’m a fan of the “put a blob in the middle and let the two perfectly parallel planes squash it out into a thin layer” method. The art, of course, is in knowing how large of a blob to use. This is the one part of installation that is still an art, and only practice will teach you how much is right.

Ramsinks Look Cool

Here is the reassembled video card, along with a nice bottle of Pepperwood Grove. Tasty.

Water is for cooling, wine is for drinking

And then the ramsinks started to fall off. Granted, I did in fact touch them, and epoxy needs several hours to fully set. Plus, thinly-squashed epoxy sets even slower (for some reason that I don’t fully understand). Ugh. Nooo, please let this end!

So I’m reapplying them, and I can’t decide whether they’re falling off because I did an inadequate job of removing the old grease, or whether the epoxy needs more time to cure. But I finish replacing the ones that fell off, and finish reinstalling everything. While filling and testing the water cooling part, I power it from my old HP Pentium 2 computer. This computer is reliable, quiet, and slow as molasses. But it makes a great 12V power supply.

The Pentium II

…and waiting for the epoxy to dry on the other ramsinks that fell off. By now I’m really hitting the wine pretty hard, and starting to get depressed.

Reattaching the ramsinks -- the first time

And finally it’s all together. Here it is, upside down. (Don’t get dizzy.) I don’t recall clearly through the wine haze, but I believe the computer is upside down here while I wait for still more ramsinks to be
reglued. :(

Re-reattaching the ramsinks?

So, no other ramsinks have fallen off since then, but at some point I’m going to have to touch them to make sure they’re on securely. It would be bad to have copper thingumies falling into the power suply!

[Update: I carefully checked the ramsinks, now that they’ve had time to dry, and they seem to be properly glued on now. Whew!]

Finally, a quick, blurry picture of everything actually working. Notice that I replaced that one tube, so that’s the only one that is green. The rest are still coated with FluidXP goo!

All together now

And at this point it’s nearly 5 AM. I’ve been at this since noon. Argh. The moral of the story is: give your ramsink adhesive time to dry, and clean the hell out of the chips before you apply it. You might even want to get out the emery cloth or 800 grit sandpaper and rough up the surface a bit.

In the final analysis, the system is very quiet now. The only remaining issue is that the video card now blocks most of the airflow to the NForce motherboard chipset, which causes it to run hot again. It’s always something! Be sure to check back next week, when I demonstrate how to change a light bulb, in the process replacing most of the electrical wiring in my house.

Friday, the G80 adapter kit and other accessories arrived. That’s right, I have all the hardware necessary to convert my 8800GTS video card to water cooling. So, I thought to myself, an easy conversion. Switch it over.

Well, it’s turning into a nightmare. I have pictures. I have a full report. And that is forthcoming. But most of all I’m learning that no matter how carefully you clean your ram chips off, nothing will stick to them. Because the heat sink adhesive epoxy is epoxy, not glue. And don’t get me started on FluidXP.

I’ll have a full report, and naked pict… sorry, pictures of the installation, later.

While searching for the ultimate gaming keyboard[*]

I came across the Razer Barracuda headphones. As frequent late-night gamer, I was immediately attracted, and bought a pair. The features speak for themselves:

• 5.1 surround
• Microphone
• Amplification
• Bling

Excellent, these can help to achieve two goals: 1) an immersive experience, and 2) better positional location of enemies. I didn’t notice the bling factor until I got them home and plugged them in.

Razr Barracuda Headphones, sitting on a SteelSeries mouse pad

Uh oh, blinky lights. Expensive, blue blinky lights. Let’s hope they didn’t spend their entire budget on those lights. There is also a switch to turn off the lights. This is a good thing, because when I went to bed they were lighting up half the room. (The computer turns off, but the light stays on!)

There are a million plugs (well, four) and a USB connector on the end. The USB powers the six-channel amplifier. The amplifier has volume controls for each channel, and this is a good thing (see below). So, I plugged all of these into my NVidia integrated sound card (which is basically a Realtek chip) and so on. The surround sound works pretty well, but not perfectly. Since the front and rear speakers can’t really be in front of or behind you, there is a limitation to how far the audio image can seem to rotate. Also, the rear speakers are tiny, tinny speakers. This is probably OK, because it’s like a free audible clue that something is actually behind you (since the spatial positioning is a bit limited anyway).

In terms of sound quality, they’re quite musical and reasonably flat. I didn’t do a/b comparisons with monitoring headphones, because these are gaming phones. For gaming they are quite good, sound quality-wise. Quite good, but with one exception. They have no bass. Well, this isn’t strictly true. But it’s very quiet. I turned all of the other channels off, and checked my crossover, and bass was definitely happening. Just not very much, that’s all.

An article in Razer’s knowledge base suggests turning down the volume of all channels but the subwoofer channel. This works…if you like your games really really quiet. In addition, the subwoofer speakers go “booong” when I thump the side of the phones. It sounds, well, like the low tom on a drum set. And, yes, this resonance, once I noticed it, was audible any time a bass impact happens in a game.

The subwoofer is unacceptably weak for a pair of gaming headphones. Considering that they have their own special amplifier, this is very odd! I boosted the bass and maximized every volume control, and managed to get them almost loud enough. Almost doesn’t cut it, though! So, I satisfied my need for bass using the Buttkicker Gamer, and found them to be very comfortable for extended gaming sessions, both physically and aurally. But I still feel like I paid for a subwoofer that doesn’t work.

Wait, what about the microphone? Well, it works OK. Since it only reaches halfway to your mouth, it tends to pick up a lot of background noise, and I had to crank the mic gain and enable boost. Slightly sub par, but it looks cool.

In the final analysis, are they better than using a nice Audigy sound card and regular headphones? It seems about the same to me. I think that you’ll get better sound from a $79 pair of audiophile headphones[**], and just use the “headphones” setting on your sound card. I’m using a really, truly ancient pair of AKGs now. Anybody want to buy a pair of surround sound headphones with really bitchin blue lights?

* – which is to say, one that feels like I remember Mac SE keyboards feeling, but for real, and not just in my imagination
** – Well, you can’t really get an “audiophile” pair of phones for 80 bucks, but you can get some really nice ones!