Introduction

[NukeHaze]

I am Richard, or NukeHaze and am an experienced electronics and telecommunications technician with almost a degree in Physics and working on completing one in Network and Communications Management. I love to tinker and do, in fact, spend a lot of time shopping for pc parts and constantly building computers and designing cooling systems on paper and even make some of them come to life. I have certifications in A+, CCNA, CCNP, Network+, Low Voltage, several telecommunications specific certs, and know a lot of Jeopardy type bologna. Having a love for Physics brings with it a knowledge and even love, in my case, of chemistry as well which makes me very interested in cooling, pushing hardware to its limits, and understanding how things work like when i took apart my first X-Wing fighter when I was a kid to see how the electronics and mechanics worked inside.

I learned binary code from my father when i was in the 4th grade who programmed computers for one of the bigger airlines before the keyboard was used in computers back when you only saw them in typewriters. Of course, they eventually migrated from punch cards to keyboards on the mainframes and i have been fascinated with computers ever since beginning with my Commodore 64 and its 300 baud modem and even the Atari 2600 that I took apart as well.

My siblings all work in similar professions including one who is an engineer for Intel motherboards so maybe you all can see the enthusiasm. It is funny, knowing that, however, to see how much I just buy any brand, not just Intel which I do like and trust but use ATI, AMD, Asus, anything I can get well versed on and take a good enough look at and "choose wisely" as the knight in The Last Crusade so elegantly puts it.

I look forward to interacting with you all and have really enjoyed reading the reviews I have seen so far over the last few years.

I am currently building a quad crossfire liquid cooled set up with a Phenom quad core CPU using liquid cooling but nothing fancy, just the normal blocks and standard routing methods for now. I am thinking through some "chiller" ideas I have and believe there are much better ways to do things that are currently being done which is how we can hope to improve ourselves and ideas leading to better solutions to our problems. Heck, even the cascade cooling world is something i would love to tinker around with in time just like building a "BattleBot" (LOL).

It is good to be here,

See you all in the forums!

Richard
NukeHaze

[DaIceMan]

Welcome to the Forums!!

[Alathald]

Welcome to the forums! Sounds like you have a lot of experience to add...

[martini161]

welcome! any reason your going with the phenom instead of an intel quad core?

[stopthekilling77]

Welcome Richard!
I see you're lightyears ahead of me, but that's what makes the LR forums awesome: the levels of experience we all share
Good to see another person join up!

[DMB2000uk]

Thanks for taking the time out to introduce yourself properly, it's nice when you know the background of people you are talking to.

Been in the watercooling game long? Be sure to post pictures (even if it's nothing special by your standards) as everyone here loves pictures

Dan

[NukeHaze]

welcome! any reason your going with the phenom instead of an intel quad core?

Actually, that is a good question. I have a laptop with a Intel Core 2 Duo Socket P T7200 at 2.0 gig on my laptop which is over a year old now and for the sake of just knowing my way around the market and having experience with other brands I decided to go with the AMD Phenom X4 which was a little faster for the price, the motherboards ran a little cheaper and there was an Asus motherboard option with 4 slot crossfire that was under $200 so with all that considered and the fact it included Creative Soundblaster EAX built in at that price, it seemed to be a sweet deal to me. I am building it now and adding in my watercooling components now which is nothing special yet but will be a work in progress for a few months hopefully building up to making my own TEC chiller built into a dual loop water system usinf some readily available components that likely were not meant for that partivular purpose. You ever look at something and think that "hey that would be peret to use in my little frankenstein experiment"? Well, I did and have my plans, hehe. I loved the Intel motherboards and the 775, honestly from everything I have seen with them even the Intel motherboards which I have always felt were well built even if not designed for the overclocking enthuciast necessarily. I have been tinkering with a 478 HT P4 on an older system which ran me $60 for the cpu and $60 for the D865PERL motherboard at the time I bought it. When my Sempron motherboard, socket 754 and 64 bit of course, died due to brown out problems we tend to have in the area necessitating a good UPS for a steady power supply feed, I moved my X1950 AGP card over to it and with some mild overclocking, a few good Zalman high quality air cooled parts, Arctic Silver, and even, yes a PhysX card with a Zalman VF 100 cooler added to it even though their documentation says nothing about supporting it. I am getting better benchmarks on that set up than I did with the socket 754 Sempron 3500 overclocked with the X1950. No water cooling there but a decent air set up. I would love to try a good TEC under the CNPS 9500 if I could figure a way to fit it in there. I always add in BGA heat sinks and heat spreaders when I can, too, as are on the X1950 and BFG PhysX card. It also has a SB Audigy X Gamer card in it which of course is a bit old by now but still works very well. The syste, runs all the games I have just fine on the highest settings I have even though it is dated. I look forward to seeing what my new system build will be able to do as well.

Bottom line on choosing the Phenom over the Intel Quad is probably just the features of the motherboards I was looking at and interestingly enough, it was Intel architecture on the board that made it possible for the 4 xfire and AMD owned ATI cards to be set up in that array as well as using the AMD cpu. I do have a lot of respect for Intel for participating in their competitor markets as they do and see it is a good tactical business decision but only hope that PhysX technology that is now proprietary to Nvidia is going to be used in a similar manner as I am sure the supply of the PhysX cards is dwindling and we are not likely to see it on a card by itself again anyway especially since putting the math from it into the bandwidth in the PCI Express fast lane would be much better for the overall speed of the Physics triangle as Ageia described it.

Special note to all...when it says to remove the heat spreaders carefully to allow you to use the special memory cooling system provided with the motherboard you are trying to build with and 3 of the BGA RAM chips from the module come off with the thermal tape, it may be a bad sign like the one that caused Xbox to have to RMA and repair all those Xbox 360's. This happened to me while removeing the heat spreaders carefully and I was dumbstruck to see that soldered chips would come off with such gentle removing of just a heat spreader attached by tape. That is crazy. Anyway, I have OCZ to thank for the cold solder connections on the special "Fatal1ty" pc2 8500 RAM. I now get to try and find some new RAM preferrable without a heat spreader to remove. I will be happy to provide pictures of the system when complete. Heck I would be tickled to death to share them.

[Sporg]

Please share the pics, we love pictures! Welcome to LR!

[Darkstar]

Welcome!

[martini161]

You ever look at something and think that "hey that would be peret to use in my little frankenstein experiment"?

i know exactly what you mean been wanting to try and use a window ac unit i have to chill water in my loop for a while now

[vicaphit]

Welcome! I'm sure you will be answering my questions in no time!