PCI-E question

I've thought about a case, but what I'm looking to do is take a good 2-3 year old desktop (should be plenty powerful enough), upgrade the processor to max supported, upgrade RAM to max supported then install whatever video card I want.

Are there any PCs 2-3 years old that still have a regular PCI slot or are they all PCI-E?

Reason I ask is I have a perfectly good PCI sound card that does 24 bit 192KHz in the current PC that I would love to keep using in a new PC.

I may do the following.

1. Go ahead and finish the liquid cooling then better video card for now.
2. Car is paid off so I can put at least half of the $620 a month payment towards saving for a new PC once I pay off two phones I have.
3. Will swap hard drives between current game PC and stream PC as that's the easiest way to do it.
4. Current stream PC will be used elsewheres possibly in more of a server role. Perhaps a media server and storage for a complete image of each PC so that if one drive fails I just plug in a new drive to the PC then clone the image to the drive and the PC is up and running again with only losing up to a week's worth of data as I would set it to where each PC is backed up weekly. That would include storing an image of other drives in a PC that aren't the main drive.

Will the new PC be liquid cooled?

I don't know yet. The current PC being liquid cooled will be the test as to whether I use liquid cooling for the new PC.

The Aero Cool Shark fans I used for the Xbox cooling system were chosen due to the red color and number of blades, but they turned out to be an excellent choice performance wise as they have no problem pulling air through the radiator and looking good while doing it.

In fact the cooling system worked so well for the 360 that the fans rarely were on any speed other than the lowest speed the auto fan control made them run at.

I first tried the Aero Cool fan I have on the game PC on the fan controller of the liquid cooling system and it would barely run on the lowest speed setting, whereas the other one ran just fine so I used the fan splitter from the PC and with the fan that runs good connected with the fan that didn't, both fans ran fine. The Aero Cool on the game PC is maybe a year old, whereas the other is several years old so perhaps the newer one is slightly different in some way.
 
Finding a board today with a PCI slot might be difficult. I have not noticed but then I'm not looking either. I'm sure you can get an older board with PCI slots on Ebay......Although you probably could get a PCIe audio card for what you could get a vintage motherboard for anyway. Then you won't have to worry about finding old stuff to fit your old stuff.
Check These Cards Out
PC Part Picker has choices too:
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/sound-card/
 
For now I use it to send audio to the stream PC which has the same card in it (the HDMI USB capture card has lower audio and it's mono) and I use balanced cables to go between both cards.

Not to mention the card doesn't affect how the audio sounds.

Is there anything that can convert a PCI card to USB or is that something that is not possible?
 
You mean somthin' like this? (PCIe to PCI adapter)
41UkkdrZ4-L._AC_.jpg

https://www.amazon.com/Express-Dual-Adapter-Router-Riser/dp/B018Z48DIS
*You'll still need an open PCIe slot
 
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The water block was supposed to be here Friday, but now it's delayed until Monday.

So far with the pump running with just the pump and radiator connected to each other there has not been any coolant leaks from the pump.

Now when I had the cooling system connected to my 360 I had a flow meter (mostly for the LED lighting it has and that it could flash the LED with the pulses from the flow sensor), the radiator, pump and the water block in the 360.

Problem is I am missing two nuts that go on two fittings. I know they were there when I took the system apart earlier in the week, but they must have grown legs and walked away.

One issue I do have is this.

I have two 120mm Aero Cool Shark fans on the radiator. One is several years old while the other is maybe 1 1/2 years old.

When I run the fans at anything other than full speed the newer fan is slower than the older fan. I'm not sure how the board for the temperature display controls the fans, but it has 10 manual speed steps and an auto mode.

Not sure what would cause that as the fans are the same model with the same exact specs.

The other three fans that originally were on the radiator got repurposed for another project .

I'm fairly sure the slower fan speed of the one fan won't affect cooling that much.
 
The water block and tubing came in today.

I'll post pictures later.

And here I am dumbfounded wondering why I didn't liquid cool this processor sooner instead of getting a noisy blower.

I'm running Fortnite and the processor temp is a steady 102F while the liquid temperature went from 77F to 81F and that's with the fans on the lowest speed the controller runs them at.

I'll do a much longer proper test after I eat.

Also I think I figured out why the speed sensor of the 5" fan didn't work. I'm pretty sure the controller uses some sort of pulse width modulation on the power wire to the fan. I'll connect my scope up to it after dinner to verify.

I have the pump tach connected to the CPU fan connector so that in the event of a pump failure the PC will shut down.

Now to power the pump initially while I filled the system with coolant and check for leaks without risking damage to the motherboard I connected a 4 pin molex extension cable I made to my other PC. Once I verified it was full and no leaks I connected it to the PC and turned it on. Reason I do that is because I had an Xbox360 motherboard damaged by a small coolant leak as it was powered on at the time so I take all precautions to ensure it is safe to power up before applying power.

I'll turn the PC off while I eat as I don't want to risk something happening when I'm not in front of it. I'm sure nothing will, but I got money invested in this PC and I want to be careful.

To get the water block to fit I had to cut off about around 1/4" from the end of each mounting ear and I used the screws from the heat sink to secure it with.

Now I have a good 12 volt blower that I can use for something else.

Concerning the liquid cooling does the flow rate of the coolant determine how much heat it takes away from the water block?

Currently the pump is at max speed but if slower would be better I could figure out some way to lower the pump speed.

11.jpg

22.jpg

33.jpg


EDIT:

It indeed uses PWM to control the fan speed which explains why I couldn't get a tach reading at anything other than full speed.

Also could explain why the one fan runs slightly slower.

I did try a diode and 1uF capacitor in the B+ line right before the fans.

That worked to give me a tach signal, but the fans spun faster than they do at the lowest speed without the diode and capacitor.

So my solution is to just not monitor the speed of one radiator fan.

44.jpg
 
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This is how it looks in the dark only the reservoir is more of a blue green.

11.jpg

I tried different things with the LEDs, but found they worked best in series connected to the fan power which means they will change brightness as the fan speed increases, however with the way things are now I doubt very seriously the fan speed will ever increase.

Also since I'm just running the ole water block should the coolant temperature match the processor temperature as in if I reduced the coolant flow would it cool the processor even more.
 
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