Direct2Dell

Going to a cooling system such as the H2C may be the break through needed to open new vistas of speed.  However, the problem of corruption of data using electro magnetic means of saving, moving data still remains a major stumbling block.  I have heard that the Japanese are experimenting with porcelian as a means of saving, moving and processing data sounds promising.  However, I have reservations to both approacheses, as the speed and stability are nearing the simple laws of physics limitations and are becoming increasingly apparent.  I do not wish to be a spoiler, but these factors remain, and there is no readily availble solutions seen on the horrizon and therefore, must conclude that we are approaching the limits of computer data processing.  Hopefully, I am dead wrong.

yes its about time someone from dell gave a straight answer on how to get a H2C unit, especially for those of us who got the xps720 upgrade kit without it

part numbers for the xps 720  includes the H2c unit

Heatsinks, Fans and Accessories

I'm curious about the pressure within the cooling system as well as the liquid composition used for cooling.  Also the delta T between the heated and cooled liquid if you would please.

Thanks

Lionel - does a European user who overclocks the CPU void any of the warranty, guarantee, etc?

What if the Corsair memory is overclocked via the BIOS? 

Quote:Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager said:
Noel: Know that you're getting some conflicting information about whether we shipped the H2C processor overclocked in Europe. Regardless, we ship the same version of the BIOS in other regions, and it enables a user to overclock the QX6700 processor in the BIOS.

You can also use NVIDIA's nTune utility to overclock other components of the H2C.

Wow!  Other manufacturers and sellers could take a lesson from Dell.  Chuck Hill takes a complex process and makes it understandable and believeable.  What a way to build trust with customers.  I now can make an informed decision regarding water cooled.  Ignoring price, the only issues I need to think about are whether I am prepared to live with permeation and possible condensation. 

Thanks Dell and Chuck.

I read and watch with interest. I won a H2C heer in the UK. I need a full lengh PCI slot so I can use a scsi card so the only option is to water cool so I can make use of the PCI slots filled by the 8800GTX's. At the mo I have removed the PhysX card to install the SCSI card, not ideal as My guess this would make Half Life 2 look EVEN better :)

 Giz

Edgar,

You have hit upon the key variables for permeation loss:  The key factors are the fluid temperature inside the system, and the relative humidity of the surrounding air.  We had to make some simplifying assumptions about the fluid temperature and usage profile.  I cannot disclose the details of these, but we think we chose some assumptions that are pretty much corner case.  We define the end of useful life as a reduction in thermal performance of ~%10, or a certain level of increased noise (due to air in the mixed with the fluid).  Since our CPU fan speed is controlled such that it targets a cpu temperature, hotter ambient or increased utilization don't really increase the loss rate in the way you might predict.  At higher ambient, our system actually increases the idle fan speed to protect other components besides the cpu, so surprisingly, a hotter ambient environment may lead to lower permeation loss, (but more fan noise). 

We did not expect that someone would ever need to add fluid so we really did not provide a provision for the typical customer to do this.  A home-made rig for doing this can be made, but it is sure beyond the scope of what we would expect our customers to do.

I've read about this new feature for CPU performance, and even quotated a system, but this is where the problems stomps: it appears that this feature is not available for Mexico (not sure for rest of LA). The same XPS710 pc system for MX doesn't offers the choice of adding h2c and even talking to selling assitant (for this area) either. Is it planed to expand or not in the near future this option for MX? What's keeping it not abailable at this tme?

The video has been quite informative... dumb questions, if there's a minimum loss by permeability and a reservoir for this matter, for a location where temp in summer is 110f and winter 5f and huminity of 30% average and pc usage for 8hr daily (60% 3dmax rendering/animation and 40% CAD dwg/ms office), what's the loss rate? should be of concern in how many years? Will nead refill or replace? (this cause I'm looking at a minimum of 6 years usage)

Thanks and congrats for stepping ahead.

Kevin: Thanks for the comment. The H2C liquid cooling system in the XPS 710 is dedicated to the CPU, and focused on delivering the best possible performance for CPU cooling.  We do recognize the potential advantage of liquid cooling graphics but there are a few technical and logistical challenges there. 

Upgradability is a major challenge for liquid-cooled graphics right now.  For the CPU, there are some standards for heat sink attachment that have been very stable across several platform generations.  This helps us to make a cpu cooling system that can remain compatible with future cpus and motherboards.  For graphics cards however, the cooling interface has not remained consistent from generation to generation hence it is pretty difficult to make a really effective system that can be transferred to a new card or pair of cards in the future.  

There are also some technical challenges that would require some performance trade off in order to share a pump and radiator between the CPU and multiple graphics processors .  For example, the Intel CPU has a max "case" temperature spec around 60 C while the graphics processors can typically accept a case temperature of around 100C.  This makes it difficult to optimize the cold plates for both the cpu and graphics components, and to effectively manage the fan speed for low noise and optimal performance of both graphics and the CPU. 

With the investment in all this bulky cooling gear,is it also able to cool nvidia 8800 gtx cards as well. If people are going to make the investment in advanced cooling systems, it should also be capable of cooling graphic cards. There is no mention of this capability on Dell's XPS page or on any forum. Customers are going to expect this capability!

Lionel,

Why have liquid cooling on offer in european market, if there is no performance gains? (The XPS710H2C in europe does not come with the quad core factory overclocked to 3.2GHz. While it may be possible to do this manually via the BIOS, it may invalidate your warranty if it doesnt come like that from the factory.) Its baffling to me...

Regards,

Noel

I'm impressed to learn that Dell has invested into liquid cooling.

I myself spent months and months planning my near-silence custom water cooling rig that I nickname B.L.O.N.D.I.E. - Beyond Logical Operation because of Negated and Disturbed Ironic Engineering

 http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=345384

And I am still at 1200 FSB and 4.2 Ghz 2.5 years later. :)

I found this video very informative.

Thanks

Colin