The Zalman Reserator 2 is a water cooling kit to build a silent PC. After three years of good work, the pump had problems and the security was activated regularly stoping the pump and making the computer unusable. Indead, this is not new that Zalman has used a very weak pump...
Zalman Reserator 2
The Zalman pump is a 220V merged pump. Changing it is really not easy. Instead, I found that it was easier to add another pump in the cooling system. The two pumps are just serialized. The original Zalman pump still works but the second new pump really does the job.
Bad luck or bad choice
First, I tried some Swiftech pump. It was an emergency I just needed my PC to work again. It was a really bad choice, not for the cooling but for the noise. After two months, I decided to get a new pump, a silent one. Yes, it exists for those who are searching!
Alphacool Ehiem 600 to the rescue
After investigating forums, reading many articles, studying noise (getting back to some old logarithmic computations...), I came to the conclusion that the merged pumps are the most silent ones. I bought the AGB-Eheim 600 Station II pump. This pump comes in two versions, a 12V version and a 220V version. The 12V version pump needs a small electronic board to create the alternating current that is required for the pump. The pump itself is within the reservoir.
To plug the new pump, find a location in the PC case and cut the input tube (the one connected to the CPU and the reserator output). Connect the pump to the reserator and the CPU tube to the new pump. Plug the board and connect the 12V cable on it. The pump is using alternative current so there is no order for the pump cable connection.
Verify everything, put distilled water and the coollant and switch on the computer.
At first, the pump creates some noise due to the air. Quite soon, the air is replaced by water and the pump becomes silent. Look at the Reserator flow indicator, it should move very quickly now (Indeed, I was impressed how fast it was running).
Lessons learnt
The Zalman Reserator 2 pump was (and is) very very slow and weak. Watch the Zalman Reserator 2 - flow control failing video.
The Zalman Reserator 2 gave me some signs several months ago. The pump had not enough pressure and the security was sometimes activated. By slaping the reserator, it was working again. I stayed too much time in this situation. I should have tried to find a good pump before the real problem happen.
A pump is always making noise. Be very careful when you choose one.
Add a comment
To add a comment, you must be connected. Login3 comments
Hi Stephane,
Great article, my reserator 1 plus seems to not pump correctly so I'm gonna buy the Alphacool Ehiem 600.
Are you still happy with this configuration, one year later ?
Did you bought extra connector ?
Thanks !
Thanks a lot for your answer, Stephane. In 1994 I made myself an EPROM programmer to be attached to the extension port of a ZX Spectrum computer clone. But the software I wrote (in Z80 assembly) was extremely basic, I was only able to write images which I had previously loaded in memory. Today, I need to write 512k x 8 EPROMS, and fiddling with hardwired upper addresses while writing 32k at a time is no fun. Your programmer implements 15 address lines, so I'll add anyway an extra 74LS253 and intend to modify the software to drive it and to be able to program larger PROM's in one go. The software is the difficult part since I never got much beyond assembly for Z80. But I hope I will manage and learn something along the way. In any case, your design is much more elegant to anything else I've seen on the Internet - others are using shift registers to set the addresses, by loading them 8 bits at a time will require simpler, cleaner code in the software.
Hi Stephane,
Great article, I'm sure it not only blown new life in an older reserator, but made it work much better than new !
I have a question regarding one of your older projects, the Linux EPROM Programmer (wrote to the email address I found there, but I don't know if is still in use). I would like to use the software under 2.6 kernel, do you know if is there any cance to work if I rename linux-2.4 dir in linux-2.6 dir and run configure/make ?
Thanks a lot,
George Done
The Netherlands