The guilty party.

In the beginning

A tad ago I got a brand new computer system from a place called Chillblast, which is based just over the wall in Glasgow. It's a hell of a system, a nice little pentium dual core 3.0 with a pair of matched corsair 1 gig sticks, 1/2 terrabyte of western digital sata drives ...... ohhhh, and it was water cooled! ........ which was a great gimmic to brag to my mates about. So, for the best part of a year I've been toddling along on my chilled beast, with it's cpu ticking over between 35°C and 45°C, with the motherboard about the same temperature and all was happy in the world ......... until 3 days ago.

The calamity!

The water pump died on my cooling system, which I caught on to real fast ...... mainly because the temperature meandered through the 80°C mark ( at which point all sorts of alarms and bells went off ) ... skipped through the 90°C's ....... and the system promptly turned off at 100°C!!!!! ..... Now, whilst this is an exceptionally fast way to shut a system down, I don't recommend it. As you can imagine, this was a tad of an upset for me, I had to wait 15 hours before the shop was open and I could attempt to get this resolved ....... 15 hours of no pc!!!!! No worries, I'm mummys brave lil soldier, I can survive that long

The impending doom

After sleeping in as long as I could, and then sitting by the phone watching the second hand meander round the clock face with as much patience as I could muster I eventually decided that anybody who said they worked for a living should damn well be at work .......... The good news was, they had an answering machine which politely informed me that most people don't consider dawn to be an appropriate start time, and would I mind phoning back in a few hours when the dew had evaporated? ....... The second hand gets really boring after the first few hundred revolutions ...... Anyway, eventually they answered ( "they" is a guy called Martin ..... anyone who puts up with a blonde like me deserves naming ).

We can rebuild it.

The death knell

Martin is an incredibly helpful guy, and very patient. He'll even explain things in monosyllabic words so that I can understand. He very helpfully explained to me that the company that makes the water cooling system that I have had gone bankrupt, and that he was unable to replace the pump!!!! WHAT!!!!! ...... So, now I'm facing sending my pc away to Glasgow for the best part of a week .... so I've text'd Nick, and he's off on one trying to buy a backup pc so that I don't turn into a gibbering wreck ..... and then I remember that Martin's still on the phone, and, unlike most companies, he doesn't invalidate your warranty if you undo the side of your pc ...... in fact he encourages it!

A fair wind blows?

So, I asked Martin what could be done about things, only to find that the solution was simple. I could be reverted back to the stock cooling system with no problems at all ( and he'd happily refund me the cost of the cooling system ...... which I'd forgotten to ask about ) "it'd need to be a real intel heatsink and fan though" ...... how cool! I got sent all the extraneous bits when my system was first delivered, so I had those ..... remember how I said Martin encourages you to take the side off yourself?

So ..... now I've got the side off and Martin's talked me through everything that I need to do to remove the old pump and *snap* in the "real Intel inside" heatsink and fan ( btw Martin, when you said "you have to apply a tad of pressure", you weren't fuckin' kidding! ) and I've hung up, got my screw driver and toilet paper ( to clean the paste off the chip huh? ) and I'm ready to rock and roll.

Bacon butties at a time like this?

After a fair amount of pushing, I decided I had the clips the wrong way round, so I pushed my graphics card back in ( which had popped out cos I bent the board that much ), turned the clips around, tried again and everything went like a dream! Not only had I managed to convert my chilled beast back into a beast, I'd also gained two inches on my biceps from fitting the heatsink .... with a smug look on my face, I hit the on button and watched windows meander round it's merry path trying to work out what a silicon implant was.

During one of my more "control freak" moments of the windows start up, I clicked "ok" in an aggressive manner on an alarm window that was politely informing me that my cpu would prefer that it wasn't associated with temperatures in excess of 80°C ....... 80°C!!!! .... damn ..... so I went to find some bacon and eggs ... as you can imagine, I wasn't a happy bunny. My system now ran at about 65°C to 75°C instead of the 35°C to 45°C that it used to run at

Ready to test drive

So, where do pond pumps come into it?

Well, technically they don't, but I haven't posted about pond pumps for ages, so I was just reminding google that I should be on page one ....... anyway, it does involve a fish tank pump, which is close enough ...... so, I'm a smidge of an unhappy bunny, when I remember that I know somebody who owns an aquatics shop .... and apart from many other things, like dahlias and stuff, they happen to have pumps .... and I need a pump ..... and not all blonde ideas are screwed, just most of them ..... so, I packed my disconnected cooling system into my bag, and wandered off to the field.

Barry, if yer reading this, turn away now ....... cos I got Gary infected with my plan and we spent the whole of his brew break playing with buckets and pumps and shit .... oh yeah, I owe you for a pump ...... ok, now that Barry's gone, my reasoning was simple. It was the pump that was gone on my system, so I needed a new pump, and I had a mate that stocks pumps from 100 litres an hour to "urm, we appear to have emptied the ocean", and I needed a new pump .... I may be blonde, but 2 + 2 is only a slightly rigorous but achievable challenge. So, after fannying about in the warehouse for a tad, playing with various sized pumps, we decided on a 400 litre an hour thing .... all we needed now was some tubing and a bucket.

Plenty of room for beer

Who needs a pond pump?

Not us, but we did need to crack open a tube of silicon ( another £1.20 I owe yah, if yer reading ). From a scraps bin, we found some couplings that would allow us to pass a hose through the side of the tub we settled on using, so that was the inflow taken care off. A few cups of hot water and some biceps enhancing and we managed to stretch the original tube onto the pump outlet .... of course, boys and their toys and all, we had to test it ..... then, being anal, we had to test it without the cooling system in the loop.

Being the technical guys we are, we decided that we couldn't see much of a difference in the pumps outflow, once it was connected into the loop with the radiator and the knackered pump, so we decided that we were on to a winner ..... God loves a trier and all that ...... apparently .... so, then we ran round half the town trying to get some paste stuff that you're meant to put on a heatsink before slapping it on a chip and firing up ..... we wanted to look professional

The big switch on

Ok, it doesn't look pretty .... and it's certainly not as "self contained" as the original system ..... but I'll make allowances ...... *hits the on button* ..... now, like most people, I have a load of temperature and fan sensors and shit scattered around my system ... some of them even work ... and I have some software that sparks up with those readings ( the same software that gives the polite "excuse me, your chip asked me if I could possibly interrupt you and mention that it's feeling a smidge on the warm side" notices ) ..... and I was watching it like a hawk, not that I've seen many 6 foot hawks, but I'd imagine I looked like one if one existed

23 degrees!!!!! WOW!!!! Now that's almost cold enough to throw your beer in, and I made sure I got a big enough bucket to fit in a 4 pack huh. To give you a comparison, the previous watercooling ( which, admittedly, didn't have 50 litres of reservoir on it ) used to hit about 40°C on start up, drop to about 36°C and then eventually wander to 42°C ish for a running temp ..... Our "Bodge it Sons & Co" system started at 23°C degress and has finally ( after several hours ) managed to find 32°C as a running temperature. The air cooled version on the other hand made some great bacon

Chilled to perfection.

Any wise words?

Having studied the events and outcomes of the last few days, with the same dedication that I give to other complex stuff like breathing and things, I've come to the following conclusions ( you can come back now Barry )

1. If you live in the UK and want to buy a system, you can do far worse than buy one from Chillblast, they give great after care service.
2. It *really* helps if you know somebody that owns an aquatics shop.
3. It really makes a HUGE difference when yer chip's 40°C+ below stock cooling
4. It really does help when you don't invalidate yer warranty by taking the side off.

Those of you that know me know that I'm not a "get yer shit from here" commission whore ( hey scott, notice the total lack of amazon links? ), but I've been really impressed with Chillblast from day one, and that's never been dented when I've had problems. ..... Martin, thanks for putting up with a blonde and I hope this post generates some sales for you

And Scott ( from the pastel palace ) thinks he makes long posts
¥

Ps. Martin, my chilled beast lost it's overclocking when the pump died ..... so, you gonna send me a cool chillblast case badge for my bucket, or do I need to send it to you for the install?