I have decided to start and upgrade my system now even thou i have no 8 series graphics card yet,I will just have to add this later when the money comes in.



SYSTEM COMPONENTS IM REMOVEING AN8-SLI FATALITY 3G OF RAM SUPER TALENT, AMD X64 DUAL CORE CPU 2.4GHZ

The image above is just a shot of the system as it stands as you can see its a mess lol, I will be using the same case and some of the other hardware.
The upgrades here will consist of a new motherboard "Asus striker" new ram "OCZ reaper edition" & the Intel Quad core Q6600.

I will take it through the steps from draining the water cooler to installing the Os, in this system it might be Xp.

I may even be brave like duffman and lap the cpu lol

Watch this space,Please make any comments.

This is where i am going to drain the water from,The reason for this is the Swiftech and Dangerblock are in place nicely and i don't wont to disturb them, in my opinion draining from the out side is a safe option for this setup as the reservoir sits on the outside.



This next image shows the draining i used paper tissue to protect the holes in the pc from water and of course a bucket for the fluid.


The image here shows the reservoir and pump completely removed and the ends of the tubing have been plugged up just in case there is any dripping.


Now the cooling fluid is drained and everything has been removed i can safely lay the pc on its side allowing me to install the new motherboard.

Ok now to safely remove the cables,Dangerden cpu block and nvidia 7800 gtx with swiftech block and any other pci cards

Heres some of the tools i will be using the most important to me is the anti static band.


The Gforce 7800 gtx removed safely with the dangerden cpu block all connected for water cooling still so i hope this will make life a lot easy down the road


Now every thing is cleared out i can safely remove the motherboard and pack it in its original box.



Its important to get everything out the way so you have a good working space to place in the new motherboard,I all ways earth my self out with the anti static band and make sure the pc is not placed on a carpet surface ,all the guys here at HS take all measures to keep there hardware from being damaged.

When removing the motherboard i am going to clean out the case from dust and any fragments of anything that might be laying around in there.

The asus striker and all it wonders

More info on the board at Overclockers


Installing the Quad core Q6600 cpu

I always install the cpu before i place the motherboard into the case,I will all so have to mount the dangerden water block as well.

Allways consult the manual when installing new hardware,On this image i am pressing the load lever to my left so it releases from the retention tab then pulling it towards me until it sits in the 135° angle.

Then i make sure i line the cpu up with the notches and the gold triangle mark then remove the safety cap before i lock the load lever.


It seems i have been misinformed about the danger den cpu water block i have, it does not fit the Asus striker i will have to make a search for a new block before i mount the motherboard

nice write up mate. what you doing with the ddr memory??

Good to see you both upgrading, You really wont be dissapointed with the Q6600 they are fantastic chips, and you will both have the added benifit of the cooler 95w versions . Mine is going great running Vista x64 now not had any problems so far, system is 24hr prime stable @ 3.2Ghz and the last time i posted i was struggling with the temps abit, after the cpu was lapped and the new AS5 applied i was getting temps around 48c idle now though the AS5 has settled and i upgraded my pump to push more fluid it idle's @ 40c, so massive improvement.

Here's the pump upgrade i got :


Petra'sTech DDCT-01s
this is just a replacment top for my current (below) pump the Laing DDC- 1 as i was sure the pump was struggling abit pushing the water round as im now running 10/8 tubing, i needed more head pressure.

Well i got my new block on its way Swiftech Apogee Extreme Performance CPU Block


It has a universal installation design fits on almost all motherboards check back i will tell you if it leaks


When i receive it i will continue with the upgrade

Well the swiftech cpu block has been mounted and the computer has been finished sorry i have not been able to upload any images my digital cam has gone on the blink,I will show you some results from the new hardware i was able to get some amazing temperature reductions with the new swiftech cpu block and the Titan Nano Grease i used



When i 1st had the computer running up with a standard heatsink and fan the temps where in the 55° region now as you can see below the temps have dramatically lowered ,this is idle when the computer was running for around a hour just doing some web browsing i even checked the hardware monitoring in the BIOS and it was correct giving a cpu temp of around 19-20° .


The temps may change when the grease has more time to settle but so far its just staying idle at around 19-20°.

I am going to see the change when i apply load.

temps looking nice there, look around the same as mine at stock speeds. Mine are peaking at 45c load now @ 3.2Ghz. Seems weird though that all your cores are reading 30 odd degrees yet overall temp is reading just 19?. Mine for example with show 30-35 on all cores idle and the overall temp will usally be the average of all the of the core temps.

Perhaps its a difference of the new 95w q6600.

Heres my load temps again, so you can see what i mean.

Temps are lower today lol



Load temps are




I did wonder that why the top was lower, where does it state about it being 95w? I need to find out whats going on been getting cpu voltage warnings when i use everest with probe 2 software.

If it's a new Q6600 chances are it is a 95w and with temps like you have got it's what i would expect a 95w to reach. My Q6600 is 125w i think which is why it runs hotter, i cant understand your average temp though i makes no sense?, i seems to me it's most probably a bios issue, have you flashed to the latest bios?.

example of my temps and others ive seen :

CPU: 30
CORE 1 : 32
CORE 2 : 28
CORE 3 : 31
CORE 4 : 32

you can see how the reported cpu temp falls inline with the temps of the cores.
Voltage wise i run my Q6600 at 1.3v stock check you havent got bios voltage set to auto. you should be able to run your q6600 at 1.25v as it's most probably the energy efficient 95w version. Then check everest voltages to see if they match bios, in my case the bios undervolts which means 1.3v in bios is actually 1.25v or something like that.

Yup no what you mean ,I have flashed the bios from the asus utility.

Hi

Well after the site going down and other things it's time to get back to doing something.

Thanks to chill for getting the site up in the mean time i have had to get my pc up and running.

It came down to the point of my asus striker failing to boot due to a CPU INIT error ,unfortunately this has been a very common problem with the board you just need to google CPU INIT asus extreme and you will see what i mean.

If you have the patiences you can recover from this as i did myself but i found i could no longer use my pc2-9200 OCZ reaper that run around 1150 mhz i was using the correct voltages in the bios but it still gave me posting problems.

So after a lot of stress i decided to go for a new board the FOXCONN X38A



So far its been a great board with The Intel® X38 Express Chipset ,It supports ddr2 and ddr3 up to 1333MHz.