Working at [H]ard|OCP has definitely had a serious impact on me and the way I think. I no longer see things the way they were intended, I can't just look at the original design of something without thinking..." I wonder how that comes apart??" I can longer look at something without wondering "Is that really as fast it will go??" 

Mind you, this is not a bad thing, this is just the natural chain of progression in an overclockers lifecycle I guess. Most people I know would love to have an Abit KT7-RAID with a 1GHz Thunderbird and 256mb SDRAM. Most people would even be happy with the fans and stock cooling system that comes on all PC's now-a-days. Not me. . . I've been bitten by the watercooling bug.

I have taken my personal 1GHz Thunderbird on a KT7-RAID board and added watercooling to every facet of the system, CPU, Chipset, video card. . . . you name it, it's watercooled...almost. Then one day...I was having a long lingering look at my watercooled Hercules GeForce 2 GTS, and I got to thinking. 

Now, one could surely argue the effects of RAM cooling, and I am not here to make a performance statement, I am here to make a "design" statement. We are all aware that a good running watercooled system will outperform a good running air cooled system, by a margin of a few degrees. It can be argued that those few degrees are not significant enough to help in any overclocking attempts. Some may say different. I am going for sheer "WOW" effect today, no big performance benchmarks or the like, just a simple cooling idea that really adds to the look of your watercooled rig.

I started out with a "standard" Hercules GeForce 2 GTS. Although you can use any videocard you'd like, I chose the GTS simply because it was blue. I had to strip the HSF and RAM sinks off, the HSF was straight forward enough, undo the clips, pop off the heatsink. The RAM sinks were another story. . . 

I have found that the easiest way for me to remove the heatsinks from the RAM was to use Quake 3: Team Arena. . . . .seriously. The easiest way to get the heatsinks off the RAM was by heating up the card a bit first. So I hit a couple rounds of Q3:TA, powered down the machine, and simply pulled the warm heatsinks off. Some needed a little encouragement, so OUT CAME the X-acto knife and the wife's lighter :^). Heat the X-acto knifes blade a little and the heatsinks pop right off. 

I used the CPU Cleaning kit from CPUfx.com. They designed this stuff to remove thermal grease ( specifically their Silver / Copper paste ) and it works fantastic. 

I use a lot of stuff from Overclockers Hideout and CPUfx simply because they have fantastic stuff. I have been around the block ( heh...water-block ) a few times, I have been very impressed by the quality of their products. There are some pretty cool alternative watercooling set ups out there, but if your looking for "professional" these guys are the way to go. First of all, the new RAM sinks are HUGE compared to anything else, plus they had the nifty little holes in them that GAVE me the idea to do RAM watercooling. Check em out:

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