This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. September 2007 @ 23:16

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This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 6. September 2007 @ 06:12

This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 6. September 2007 @ 07:53

(Hey sorry - I started this post, and off and on I was working on it all day, so I didn't see all that new information from you guys, especially your new posts, Kardson, which I might be asking you about in later posts.)

The reason for this long post (it got longer every time I came back to work on it some more) is to throw in my support for the stock Gecube cooler. People have been kind of taking a philosophical position against the peltier concept - "it's inefficient, never been done before, bad idea, etc. etc."

So I wanted to add my perspective to Kardson's thoughtful post of page 17 which kind of shocked all you guys who were flaming (with good reason I might add) the tec cooler:

But first, to directly answer the last post: (at least it was the last when I first started composing this "essay")

Dinc,

In terms of raving reviews for the nvidia, you can read the same thing for the gecube - just go to the newegg reviews: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814241049&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=100&SelectedRating=-1&Page

Look at the third review down, Hand76: "Fast, fast, fast. Way to go out with an AGP based motherboard. This will extend the life of my PC for an extra 2+ years. Was using an x800xt for 3 years prior." (That's my card now.)

Here it is:

...


And of course, many other reviews say "Don't buy this card!"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Kardson made some excellent points in defense of the gecube. And Sammorris made some good rebuttal points about extra heat in the case. Some of you guys were shocked speechless by Kardson, but having read the more positive newegg reviews, I really enjoyed hearing the pro side come out on this thread. As a former engineering student, my personal bias is toward new technology (yeah, I know what you're going to say - it's not exactly "new" - Peltier discovered the effect over 100 years ago.) It seems to me that this T.E.C. Peltier device, thermoelectric cooler, aka tec, or pelt, is innovative. Not completely unproven and untested, since they already use it in mini-fridges according to Sammorris, but at least innovative in terms of PC use, right Sam?

And the size seems about right for the Gecube application, since the Marlow web site says about 40mm, or just under 2" square, is about the max you want to make a single tec due to stresses on the solder joints from the cold side to the hot side - that's about right for the size of a gpu, isn't it?

.......


The fact that gecube is the first to use a tec to cool a graphics card certainly doesn't, to my mind, mean that they are wrong. Maybe they're right! Maybe this is an idea that could be good. Sure, none of us like the thought of adding extra heat to the inside of the case, but can't we deal with that? Just because no other board company has ever used a pelt - so what? Innovation is the spice of techie life!!

So without further ado, I want to contribute to this forum an analogy that some of you (maybe all of you) might think is crap, but I believe it applies very well :=)

Let's think about your car.

This tec cooler reminds me of AC on a car. I was driving around LA in this intense heat the other day, and even without AC, (my tank was low and I didn't want to gas up so I just opened all my windows) my car was on the verge of over-heating. What a giant, major piece of $x!$@x!! (No, I want to practice the Secret - be grateful - I'm glad it runs.) I don't even want to tell you how much money I've spent to get the AC working without the car overheating!

In a car you have two major hot spots that matter the most, the motor, and the passenger area. Right? We insist that they build cars with AC, which takes heat out of the passenger area, but in doing so loads down and adds heat to the motor. Lots of load and lots of heat! You drive around nice and cool, but, as I have discovered time and again, if you don't beef up your radiator, fan, etc. your car will overheat.

So are we all saying that AC is a bad invention? Prior to AC they had little car swamp coolers you could plug into a cigarette lighter. Better than nothing for those long road trips through the desert. Forget it - AC rulz!

...


In your PC, you have two main hot spots, your cpu and your gpu. Just like the way AC on a car loads up the engine, the tec, if it is properly installed, while it should cool the gpu just fine, (as you point out, Sammorris, they use it in mini-fridges so it must get cold) it is going to load up the case with more heat. In fact it throws a lot more heat into the case than is coming off the gpu, since the tec itself generates a bunch of additional heat in operation because - yes - it is an inefficient way to transfer heat.

Lets not forget that inefficient and ineffective are two different things. On the Gecube web site http://www.gecube.com/products-detail.php?prod_cat_pid=9&prod_cat_id=166&prod_id=65116 they claim they can maintain the card at 70C under full load with the tec. Kardson just posted that he is getting those results. That sounds effective to me. Maybe not efficient, but effective.

(By the way, Dinc, the main picture they show is for the PCI version of the card - they are still using the double purple fan tec cooler on the agp version - and so is a new card company - Sparkle. Sparkle probably buys the tec from gecube on puts it on nvidia cards. Wasn't it you that told us about Sparkle? Yeah, I think it was you.)

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Inefficient is more of an engineering term, meaning of course that while the tec might work very well at cooling the gpu, the actual percentage of conversion of electricity into movement of heat may, in fact, be quite low, like Sammorris says. Don't forget, in terms of thermal efficiency, a gasoline engine doesn't rate that high. Radiant electrical heating (like from a hair dryer) is 1/3 as efficient as a heat pump (AC running backward.) If you live in a cold area and don't have natural gas, you might want to invest in a costly heat pump, not cheap radiant heating - you will use 1/3 the amount of electricity. But radiant heating is more effective if you want to warm up a cold room quickly. Not efficient, but effective. Just crank up the burners until they glow red hot, and your room will be toasty quick, inefficiently burning a lot of electricity. A heat pump, three times more efficient through the phase state change of freon from liquid to gas, has to work on the differential between outside cold, and hopefully even colder outside evaporator temperature. The result is that you get a lot of mildly warm air coming in fast with a strong air handler, the whole thing taking friggin forever to warm up the room. I know. I have a heat pump. They suck.

So, back to the pelt, yes, it is inefficient. A high percentage of the extra electricity to run the pelt goes to the hot side of the pelt turning into heat thrown right into your case. So what? That sounds bad, but let's look at it - does that make it a bad idea? Not necessarily, in my opinion. Back to your car. As long as you are driving around comfortably, with the AC blowing, and the car not over-heating, do you really care that you are guzzling more gas? (Well at today's gas prices, we are starting to care. Hello hybrids.)

So my point is, that inefficiency doesn't automatically make something bad - it depends on the alternatives. Waymon's water cooler is undoubtedly the best, I would agree. But then you have to pony up that extra cash!

...

So it's all a matter of compromise. I'm thinking, if I can make the tec work, for zero additional cash outlay, I'm happy. (Like Waymon with the omega drivers. Hey Waymon, are they still working for you?) Plus the techie in me says - "Hey, this is a cool, innovative, technological trick they're trying to do, these clever Chinese engineers at Gecube - let's see if I can actually get the damn thing to work." The website states, under load, with the tec working, the gpu shouldn't get above 70 degrees C, as I mentioned above. I'm going to hold them to that, or RMA back to newegg.

So, using that car analogy, thinking about how Air Conditioning cools the inside but forces me to spend money ensuring that my car doesn't overheat while it's cooling me off, the big question is: Just like AC, can I get the stock tec cooler to work and do its job so I sit here cool, calm and collected, carefree gaming away (and pooning all you guys on multiplayer? :=)

As Kardson pointed out: It comes down to 2 things:

0. Well, three things - this comes before the 2 things: First, of course, you have to make sure you have an adequate power supply, or you won't have enough power to run the tec, right? (If the tec isn't running, you are sitting there with a big sandwich of tec ceramic filled with silicon, not doing anything but marginally absorbing the gpu heat - way inferior to a high density copper baffle on a good cooler. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...T&ih=020[/url])

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Powerwise, I was disappointed to read several people quoting from the user manual addendum that indicates you need 30 amps on the 12 volt rail. I don't have those amps. But I felt better when somebody else said that's for crossfire with two cards, which I hope means that my 500 watt Allied with 20 amps on the 12 volt rail will work - understandably more than one crossfire card, because I will be running a tec, and crossfire cards don't run a tec. (The website says 450 watts minimum. One of the newegg guys says his 460 Antec is working fine. In fact it's the same guy in the quote on top - read the quote.)

So for those of you worried by the user documentation, remember, as I do, that in making the big translation to English, the Chinese sometimes write confusing documentation. To prove that to yourself, just go to the Gecube web site and look up the x1950xt agp, here: http://www.gecube.com/products-detail.php?prod_cat_pid=9&prod_cat_id=166&prod_id=65116

This is what you'll see:
...........


Notice at the bottom where it says "Unite the power of two graphics cards to accelerate your games even further with CrossFire." It doesn't make sense for them to have that there, because nobody makes a mobo with two agp slots, right? So they carelessly left in advertising language from the pci express card which doesn't apply. I am betting that's what they did in the user manual addendum - they left in language pertaining to a 2 card crossfire rig.

So with that little intro on the power supply, here is my restatement of Kardson's two points:

1. Make sure there is good tight contact - under pressure - between the tec and the gpu.

(Google tecs in general - there has to be pressure!) This means yes, you might have to fix the poor job done at the factory - I've ordered a 5 oz syringe of arctic silver 5 ($6 on ebay with shipping) to get ready to redo this card when I get it. I also ordered an $18 piece of thermattach 412 tape that somebody on the hardforums mod forum recommended. (They were talking 411 but that looks extra heavy duty and from the web site it looked like 412 is better - am I wrong somebody?) I might have to do the hardforums mod here: famous hardforums mod.

...

As regards that particular mod, I think it was Kardson who said, don't use electrical tape, use the thermal tape, yes Kardson 29 August: Kardson modifies the famous mod. There is another mod you might have to do, having to do with the 4 rubber gaskets surrounding the pressure nub. Go to this forum page 13 or open the url. At the top of the page you see Waymon's beautiful water cooler, then scroll down to MaccerM 9 August: MaccerM rubber gaskets tape mod

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Hey, I started this huge post this morning, now as I am finishing it, there are a bunch of posts ahead of it. I notice that Kardson found extra rubber washers on his Gecube. Way to go dude, I hope that's the board I get! (But if not, then what MaccerM found will be helpful.) MaccerM used duct tape, but probably the thermattach 412 will work better there too. And finally as Kardson said, when you reassemble everything, make sure you put the tec back on right side up - maybe label it before you take it apart - or, if not, you will be heating up your gpu! (Wouldn't that be lovely!)

(If that all sounds like a giant pain, for $40 plus shipping, get a thermaltake cooler. Thermaltake again

....................................

But you'll have to razor blade off the pelt.)

The techie in me says, "I'm staying with the pelt." All of you guys have taught me what to do - thanks dudes. I might have to RMA it back to newegg if it is obviously defective, but I am confident from this forum and others that I can fix it, within reason.

Ok, so the first part was, after making sure you have at least a 450 watt power supply, then make sure the cooler is on properly - fits tight, under pressure, maybe with arctic silver 5. Two major mods help you do that - all kinds of great ideas for doing Gecube's job better than they did.

2. So the only thing left is the next step: Vent your case. No kidding! VENT YOUR CASE!!

I hear you, Sammoris, you have convinced me that I'm going to have a boatload of heat inside my case. But if I can get it out of there, I'm in business. If the radiator on my car can keep the motor cool, I'm turning on the AC!

First of all, I'm looking at all my fans. I found a really slow one. I am using a utility called speedfan, which is found here http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php and which tries to locate every control point on the motherboard. It found two fans - one of them obviously the cpu fan, and another running at 1241 rpm whose speed I can't change. I think this must be the one just under my power supply, which I call my #1 case vent fan (in addition to #2. the cpu fan, and #3. the power supply vent fan.) I will probably replace that 1241 rpm quiet fan with something else - I have a couple of fans around the office here I might try. I bought some extra molex y-splitters to run all this stuff - the quiet fan plugs into the mobo and doesn't free up a molex.

...

My #2. cpu fan is thermal controlled - speedfan shows it running in thermal cruise mode, which is what I set it back to after I was done playing with it. It's noisy when it revs up. Speed fan gave me a way to manually control it, the same way that Ati Tool Tray allows me to manually control the gpu fan. In the picture I've got both utilities open - you're looking at speedfan and the advanced configure tab, with the ATT overclocking window on the lower right, running the 3d renderer to load up my PC.

Ati Tray Tool, aka ATT, is great - set a hotkey and view your gpu temp, fan speed, clocks, and framerate any time you want. Use the hot key (I use Ctrl + num pad -) two keys on opposite corners of the keyboard, to turn it on, and turn it off. You get it right here: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=733

Yesterday I took off the side cover while I was testing speedfan. When I revved up the cpu fan to about 3750 rpm, I was really surprised at how strong it blows. No kidding, I am convinced it does a great job of venting the entire case as it cools the cpu.

The weird thing was that prior to yesterday, I actually thought it sucked! :=) I thought it was pulling air into the case! With the side cover on, the side cover vent holes reduce the cfm down to almost nothing - even under full noisy load, and I actually thought air was being pulled in to cool the cpu chip. I held my wet fingers there and felt the slightest bit of cooling. I was writing notes to myself: "cpu fan pulls in air, weak case exhaust fan, strong psu exhaust fan."

Why is the case reducing the airflow, for noise reduction? But since I game with a pair of 5.1 Medusa headsets, who cares about that! Wait a second. These pictures are very similar to my black case. Hmmm. I see I am missing the conical piece that fits over the cpu fan, and mates to the cylindrical piece attached to the side of the case. I sort of remember Mo starting to put that on, and having a hard time with it, and saying "Oh you don't need this." That's probably why I don't feel the air coming out. Another good reason to visit my friend, Mo.
...

Tomorrow I'm going to go visit my PC builder friend Mo, at PC Trade in El Toro, and take the side panel with me. I'm going to lean on him to get me another conical piece like the one I sort of remember him tossing out two years ago when he built the computer for me. And I want to see if he has any old power supplies lying around that he hasn't already tossed. It might be necessary to hacksaw out the 2" opening, eliminating those restrictive vent holes, and solder on the type of unrestrictive, very open, circular venting like on the back of my power supply, which allows my #3. power supply vent fan to blow lots of hot air out the back.

I'll do whatever I have to do to get major case venting! After all, I have to prove Sammoris wrong, right Sam? Just kidding. (I'll keep the piece I hack out in case there was a hidden benefit I don't understand now - but I doubt it!)
...

So yes, the Gecube throws all the heat into the case. But I wonder if, in doing that, they also have another thing in mind, because I see a lot of other cards designed to do the same thing. Versus trying to touch and cool all parts of the card, and then vent out the back, is it possible that they can't really do that effectively, and cheaply, so they are touching and cooling only the most critical parts, and for the rest of the parts they figure that if they blow a lot of air everywhere (even if, as Sammorris says, it's hot air) everything else will be cooled, like the large Rialto pci-x to agp bridge chip?

Again, if the big square vent at the bottom of my side panel is sufficiently unrestrictive to let a lot of air in, (and if it's not big enough I have my hack saw) then my three powerful (replacing the weak one) exhaust vent fans should give me lots of case venting. Add to that 5 more fans inside the case - a fan card with 2, 2 on the gecube, and one inlet fan on the power supply - 8 total - I believe I will have case temperature under control.

Just to make sure, the speedfan program allows me to monitor 4 temperature points on the mobo, two of them for my cpus (p4 3.2 multi-threading) and two for the case. When the gecube goes in, I'll be watching those temps closely in addition to the ATT temps on the graphic card.
.....................

Anyway, like all you other guys, I just want to get by for the next year or two until I really need DX10 and shader 4. Then I'll move over to PCI Express. Waymon's water cooler idea is great! We'll all stop arguing about tecs, and in my case I'll pick up 2 toxic sapphire x2950 crossfire cards, or whatever is out at that time, with the water pump assembly taking up a hard drive slot, with enough capacity to water cool my cpu too. I won't have to be so worried about venting the case. (You still have to get the heat from the water cooler out of the disk drive slot - but I would hope they sapphire would vent it straight out the front of the computer. Right?)

In the meantime, hello Gecube monster with tec cooler on straight and tight, and I'm going to vent the hell out of my case. I'll let you know how it goes, Sam.

This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 11. September 2007 @ 15:26

Afterdawn Addict // Silent PC enthusiast // PC Build advisor // LANGamer Alias:Ratmanscoop
PC Specs page -- http://my.afterdawn.com/sammorris/blog_entry.cfm/11247
updated 10-Dec-13

This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 7. September 2007 @ 05:25