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Pentium 4 @ 4.44GHz

After killing off a CPU at 4.2GHz, we are back with a fresh processor, two VapoChills, water cooling, all stuffed in one box and cranking out 4.44GHz.

The things you will do for a few extra MHz……Part II.

Introduction:

As you all know, our first Pentium 4 3GHz CPU met an untimely death at 4.2GHz. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read the story, it is worth the few minutes it will take to look over. Our processor died in such a way that Intel expressed a great interest in the dead CPU, so we sent our dead 3.06GHz Pentium 4 off to the engineers at Intel for evaluation. Even though we mourn the loss of our processor, there was a strange sort of satisfaction in knowing that we killed a processor in a way no one else has. So then after a couple hours of begging, we were back off to the races with a trusty new Pentium 4 in hand.

Our hats are off to our readers and the community who, like us, are generally just a bunch of "enthusiasts" that like to have a good time with computer hardware. This one is for all you guys that don't get the opportunity to play around with all of this high dollar hardware that we are so lucky to have.

This article is not a guide, nor a “how-to” and certainly not some lame attempt of some sorts at bragging rights to a “world record”. It is far more impressive to see you guys on a limited budget get a rock solid OC with a Pentium4 1.6A or AthlonXP system like most of you do everyday, than what we are about to do here. That being said, we figured that since we DO have access to all of this stuff, you guys would want to see just what it can do…right? It almost feels like a crime NOT to go balls out when you have this kind of hardware at your disposal.

Thanks to Intel, asetek, ATI, Asus, Vantec, Swiftech, and Corsair for backing our little experiment, although we never told them what we were doing with their stuff.

Our goal with the system we are putting together is for it to be as fast as it can possibly be, while it also is 100% stable. We decided against short term cooling solutions like LN2 because even though the cooling properties are phenomenal, it isn’t a long term solution. We recently reviewed the VapoChill PE and decided that we would use the VapoChill PE as our starting point, and work from there. With a little searching, we dug out one of our original VapoChill units, and did a little brainstorming. Finally, we decided that a dual VapoChill unit housed completely inside one case would be an extremely fun, and challenging project. Originally the idea was to use a VapoChill on the CPU as well the Radeon 9700Pro GPU.

This is what we had initially pictured for the video card, but as our project progressed, we realized that the Swiftech MCW50-T waterblock could provide enough cooling for the GPU leaving the second VapoChill unit available for cooling elsewhere.

We used the Tyan Tachyon Radeon 9700 Pro coupled with the MCW50-T for the review knowing that we would now have to incorporate a water cooling system into the case that is already housing two full VapoChill systems. This should get interesting to say the least.

System Specs:

Intel P4 3.06GHz HT processor, ASUS, P4PE & ASUS, P4G8X, Corsair XMS3500 Cas2, ATi Radeon 9700 Pro, Vantec 520w PSU Dual VapoChill PE Units, Swiftech MCW50-T VGA cooler, Swiftech 300GPH Pump, Innovatek Radiator.

It took a little bit of creative thinking to get everything inside the VapoChill PE case without any serious modifications. We decided it would be fairly easy to remove the two pop rivets that hold the 3.5” drive rail support beam and simply bend the far side rail out to make room for the second VapoChill unit.

It may not be pretty, but it certainly serves the purpose, and with a little effort this can be done with very professional results.

Speaking of professional results, this is the part where I make a huge *GENERAL DISCLAIMER*, this is not a case mod article, and my case modding skills are generally lacking. You will see many things that can certainly be given more attention or basically done better. As long as this project is completed successfully and the end result is functional, then my objective is complete.

Now that I have the second VapoChill unit installed into the case, I need to make sure that there are no clearance issues and find a way to attach the cooling head to the P4G8X northbridge. As most of you know the northbridge heatsink is attached via small wire hooks attached to the mainboard.

I made special hooks to attach the cooling head to the mainboard, at the same time using a gutted copper orb cooler as a coldplate. After assembly, I insulated the whole she-bang and attached it to the mainboard.

After making sure the secondary Vapochill unit was free of obstructions, we then went ahead with plotting the layout of the water cooling components. We mounted the radiator in the top of the case just behind the primary VapoChill unit. The 120mm fan was attached to the outside of the case to help save room as well as act as an anchor for the radiator.

I decided to mount the Swiftech pump in the open space just below the Radeon 9700 Pro, slightly behind the control unit on the secondary VapoChill. You will notice we have removed the retention screw on the control unit and positioned it sideways to make it easier to access the video card and components. We ran the power cord of the AC powered pump out an empty slot in the rear of the case. This empty slot will be used again later to run more power cords in and out of the system.

As you can see, there is a surprising amount of room in this case, even with everything installed there is still room to work freely inside the system.

We did something a little different with the VapoChill hold down mechanism. Instead of using the two spring loaded screws that are came with the kit, we used two screws threaded backwards through the retention rods making it easier to install the cooling head onto the CPU.

Now that everything is attached and we have given you a basic idea how we have the system set up, here is a few more pictures of the system.

We decided to power both VapoChill units with a 13.8v, 23A continuous power supply that we normally use for powering our TEC’s. This allows us to use our 520W Vantec power supply to power up just the mainboard, video card and drives. The heavy power drain that a VapoChill can put on your system can rob just enough power from your system to compromise the systems overclockability.