Dell U2711 Part 2 (Calibration)

I can't believe I just did this.

I borrowed a calibrator yesterday. A datacolor Spyder 3 Pro. So that my nice new monitor would display its colors properly. And also that the colors on the monitor would match those on the TV.

Everything went well. I calibrated the monitor, I calibrated the TV, I calibrated the TV to my HTPC. All the colors looked about the same. The grays on the monitor finally looked correct. The TV and the Monitor matched. But I wanted more...

I wanted to see how my monitor fares and the "Pro" software didn't offer the info I wanted. So for the purpose of this blog, I shelled out a tidy 75€ to buy the Spyder3Elite 4.0 software. Talk about stupid...

Well, since I paid the money, here are the results of 120 nit 6500K calibration:

Gamut:

The red triangle is my monitor, the purple one is Adobe RGB.

A simple calculation shows that my monitor covers about 86% of Adobe RGB gamut. The excessive coverage not defined by Adobe RGB would cover some 92% of the gamut.

Gamma:

Gamma looks OK. It isn't on the target curve, but it doesn't stray far from it either. A minor correction in the profile covers this just fine.

Screen backlight uniformity for 100% white:

The maximum deviance is 10% in the upper right corner.

The graph looks far worse than reality I'm happy to say. I can't say the difference is bothering to me.

The actual contrast ratio has been found at 400:1. This figure is quite disappointing, especially after reading the Anandtech review which suggested I'd have at least 800:1.

After shelling out the money and getting the results I wish I hadn't done so. I was aiming for a total bragging piece. The reviews suggested 95+% Adobe RGB, superior contrast ratios and superb viewing angles. Backlight uniformity also wasn't bad. Instead I only got a good gamut, an average contrast and a pretty poor screen uniformity. I can't say I feel bad about purchasing this monitor, but it sure isn't what it's advertized to be.

No more to say, I'm afraid.

Dell U2711

Update: please also view part 2 of my Dell U2711 coverage.

As I already wrote, I was quite set on getting me a new monitor. Not that the old one died on me, but I wanted a bit more resolution and maybe a bit more color goodness. Gaming features would rock too, but as it turns out - there is such a thing as wishing too much...

So off I go and get my mind set for the Dell U2711. Reviews are good, folks are praising it all over the place and whatnot. But the price is a killing 850€, which is a bit high for me. It's not that I can't save up this kind of money, rather that I'm reluctant to spent so much money on one piece of hardware.

However, this is a monitor after all, a piece of HW that is far less likely to go obsolete within a year than my Powercolor Radeon 5870 LCS. Still, a lot of money it is, so I started looking around:

The usual suspects like German eTailers didn't give much joy: the lowest offer was for 750€ so while I might save 100€ on the monitor, I'd spend this money again on the postage :( Same for British, Swiss and Austrian...

It turns out that solution offered itself in the least likely of places: right next-door, in Croatia that is. The monitor costs just about 5000 HRK over there, which is about 680€ (all taxes included). That's about 200€ savings just from looking around a bit. Naturally, I got suspicious because I really didn't expect price to be lower in Croatia. If anything, they are usually a bit more expensive...

So off to forums I went. Turns out, the U2711 on sale in Croatia seems to be some other variant. All monitors have model number U2711b. Many users complained about some non uniform yellow tint in random monitor sections. Impossible to calibrate away, naturally.

So before I decided to take the plunge, I had to make sure the monitor I bought would actually be what I set out to buy: a superb monitor with excellent viewing angles and color reproduction. So I called the Slovenian Dell support and told them exactly what I was about to do. I explained how I bought the monitor outside Slovenia because of price. I also mentioned that the monitor I bought was defective and asked whether I would receive support in Slovenia despite the fact that it wasn't bought here. Note the use of past tense. Anyway, I immediately received replies from two distributors that I can bring the monitor to them and I need the monitor itself and the foreign invoice. That was all. No complications, no fuss.

So off to shop I went and got myself a nice monitor of dreams :)

Naturally, I got a b variant so the issue of yellow tint remained open until the relevant tests would be performed. The included color calibration sheet showed no apparent problems with colors. DeltaE was way below 2 for all but 3 colors and even with those it barely topped 3.

I unpacked as fast as possible, drooling like a waterfall every second of it :D

Here it is, placed in my corner of Zen and peace:

I guess it's immediately noticeable that this monitor is *HUGE*. Yes, it's size warrants the extra emphasis :) Note that from wall to left-side plank there's 70 cm of space. All used up! My old Samsung 215TW looks a midget compared with this beast! I also apologize for image colors, I wasn't exactly playing around with camera white balance ;)

The second issue I had with this monitor was that I had to rearrange the desktop icons completely. The extra 1000 pixels horizontal are simply too much to ignore. Some rearranging was needed so that they no longer cramped in one corner of the new monitor.

There was an unexpected positive side effect as well: the built-in USB hub allowed me to move my mouse charging cable, the Logitech Unifying receiver and the wireless gamepad receiver to the monitor, which reduced the cable clutter a bit.

Immediately after that I went checking for the infamous yellow tint of the b variant. I fired up all the monitor test patterns I could find. I also wanted to run Nokia monitor test, but unfortunately that seems to be a 16 bit app and didn't work on my 64 bit Win7. I promise to make a similar freeware app shortly, just as soon as I get tired of looking at the colors of this beauty :D

Naturally, all my fears were directed to uniform grey and white patterns where any color uniformity problems would be immediately visible. Turns out my vision is definitely bad. Where all those forum users saw yellow tint, all I saw was perfect white, perfect gray. How lucky I am to have bad eyes :)

Additionally, I'm also lucky to see all the vibrant colors and other goodies this excellent monitor has to offer. Compared to my old MVA monitor, the colors are quite a bit better, though not explodingly so. Turns out my old Samsung had excellent colors to begin with and that gamut can only do so much for your colors. The friend who bought the old monitor praised it quite a bit. I also got the confirmation that the old monitor had quite a bit of lag. Turns out lag is much easier to detect when you have multiple monitors at your disposal :) Promise #2: I'll grab an old CRT at work and test the lag as well. Expect an update shortly.

Off to the bad - (bored): yes, I do have one issue with the monitor. Here are the pics. Comment will follow, but I guess the pics will be enough for you to recognise my issue:

From left to right, these are all pictures of Word 2007 and a document in different viewing modes (page size A4):

1. 3 pages side by side, print layout

2. 2 pages side by side, print layout

3. 2 pages side by side, full screen reading preview

4. 1 page, print layout, portrait mode

Just so that there's no misunderstanding: the resolution is high enough for each of these viewing modes to be perfectly readable. And also - this monitor with its stand does not support pivot mode. I'm still waiting for my wall mount arm to arrive which will enable pivot goodness for me. Pivot was one of the reasons I wanted an IPS panel.

This said, there isn't a good layout I can choose to read / edit two pages at one time on this monitor. This was a lot easier on the old monitor (16:10) which fit the 2 pages perfectly on the available screen. I also hoped for pivot to allow me single page reading, but even that one is too high. I guess it never occurred to me to do some simple math before I ordered the monitor :) To be honest, doing the math beforehand would not affect my purchase decision. I wanted 2560 and this was the smallest monitor that provided it. 24" would be better but...

Well, there is one thing this aspect ratio is good for: games!!!

Running older games, the downside is that low res textures really do show on this monitor. One tends to notice that if the rendered object went from 60x60px to 150x150px :)

Newer games like Civ5 or Oblivion (with texture pack mod, naturally) however look gorgeous. Naturally, after firing up Dirt2, I had to turn down AA from 8x to 2x (ouch, that hurt!), but boy, does the game look good.

Every vibrant pixel of it!

Zalman Reserator 2 - final solution

This one was long overdue.
See Solving Zalman Reserator 2 problems and Zalman Reserator 2 (review ?) for background.

Anyway, fixing problems one after the other didn't seem to have much effect. It seemed as though every solution gave way to yet another problem.
It seems just about every moving part on the radiator unit was faulty in some way or another.

Therefore I undertook a general overhaul of the unit.
I did this for a couple of reasons:
1. I like the Reserator as such. I find the design beautiful
2. Buying 3 of these (for passive cooling) would set me back €180, not to mention the trouble I'd have to go through to mount them on the wall behind the monitor.

So I decided to remove the flow indicator, the pump and the quick couplings that started leaking.

Again I had to open the unit, but this time I paid special attention to the flimsy screws as to not ruin them. Naturally even being extremely careful, I managed to totally ruin two of them.
Removal of the flow indicator was easy since I already have done that before and knew exactly what to do with it. I just removed the indicator, but kept the casing so that I don't have a hole in the unit :) The pump posed no problem either. I just unscrewed the block at the bottom that holds it and then dismounted the pump.
Removing the quick couplings from the unit was easy, but the coils inside the coupling / pump block were full of this strange white stuff. This white stuff was very effectively restricting water flow and thus also had to be removed. I guess the original intent of the stuff was to prevent water leaks. It was rather easy to peel off too, so no problem there.

I managed to find quick coupling replacement in form of some hydraulic valves, rated for 100 bar pressure :) But hey, can't look a gift horse in the mouth, can I? Originally I almost gave up on the whole thing and almost went for normal non-detachable couplings since I couldn't find anything on the net. Funny how the stuff was to be found in a store almost next door...

Anyway, here's a pic of the new couplings:

Note that this setup is a lot bigger than the original couplings. Each of these beasts measures some 8 cm in length and is about 2,5 cm thick. But it does the job. I now have non-leaking quick couplings instead of the old leaking ones.

Don't pay too much attention to the color of cooling liquid in the tubes. This is a direct result of using AT Protect UV Green (which is just about the only cooling liquid obtainable in Slovenia) and using a car anti freeze liquid, which I was only able to obtain in red. I used a green AT Protect because at the time I didn't know that the liquid itself doesn't suppress algae growth. I saw a blue anti freeze liquid a few months later, but by then it was already too late...

The water flow is now handled by one single pump, placed inside the computer as it was before. Since the Eheim in the unit was not powerful enough I just figured there was no need to even keep it there any more.

So, for the third time I can say than now I finally have a water cooling setup that I wanted in the first place.

In the mean time I also replaced my 8800 GTS with a Powercolor Radeon HD 5870 LCS which is also getting cooled just fine.

Happy again.

Until the radiator itself starts leaking...

Solving Zalman Reserator 2 problems

See here for the introduction.

Sure enough, it wasn't even a month before my little corner of peace turned first into a little nuisance and after a while into a nightmare:

Problems #1 and #2 - flow indicator
First I began having problems with cricket-like sounds that the flow indicator was making. I contacted my reseller and asked them for help. Aside from a bit of mumbling I overheard ("customer sucks" style), they said they would check with Zalman and get back to me. Well, in the three weeks it took them to get back to me, I started getting the second problem - the flow indicator stopped spinning which caused the unit to shut down the pump and start beeping violently. And that's not something you want with your water cooling. If the water stops flowing, it's a matter of minutes before the water in the blocks is too hot to provide any cooling for the components.
At this point I just took the unit to the retailer and hoped that it would be fixed ASAP. Naturally, it took them more than a month to actually give up and give me a new unit.
Problems #3 and #4 - service level
Since the retailer's service personnel was so helpful, I received the new unit alone. Having used all the coolant for the previous setup, I naturally complained. So I was given some of my original solution from the first unit plus a bit of coolant from the second package. And to top it all off, they poured the stuff into tap water washed plastic flasks (originally a sweet beverage). No amount of complaining made any difference. Together with this I was also given a lecture on how the coolant is too thick and that the instructions were wrong to suggest a 1:4 mixture. This supposedly caused the original indicator failures. A 1:10 mixture was more than enough. Blah blah. Naturally I also couldn't convince them to give me a new degassing tube. So much for customer service... :(
Problem #5 - pump too weak
I tried to remove the plugs from the tubes to make myself a new degassing tube, but that's impossible without cutting the tubes themselves. Of course, having no degassing tube made degassing even harder. The pump in the Reserator unit is simply too weak and after 4 hours of trying I had to give up. The pump simply couldn't push the water down the tubes and no amount of shaking, raising / lowering of both the unit and computer helped. Calling service again had no effect. Also writing mails to Zalman support also bore no fruit. So in the end I simply decided to buy a second pump. I chose the Laing DDC-1T and it arrived in two days. The Laing pump has similar properties as the Eheim in the Reserator. While also being a quiet pump, it has a rather nasty problem of vibrating alot. Only using lots of foam around it made it quiet. Two pumps in the loop finally managed to push the water through.
Having solved the problem, I also assembled the rest of the loop with the NB block and VGA block. After the system was degassed properly, the Zalman pump alone was able to push water through the system, but I rather kept the second pump in operation since the flow indicator turned spookily slow in comparison.
Problem #6 - very high flow resistance
At this point I should mention that the entire system offers significant water flow resistance. If you wish to empty the tubing, both the computer loop subsystem as well as the Reserator unit subsystem offer such resistance that one has to blow really hard into the tubes to make the water go through. I mean *really* hard. My wife saw me a few days ago when I was making the final cleanup / repairs and she yelled at me to stop as she thought I would have a stroke :) My face was just so red from all the blowing. }:-)) This kind of resistance certainly demands a pump with much higher head pressure than the Zalman integrated pump provides.
Let's put it this way:
Initially when I assembled the original CPU only loop I calculated the water flow and it was only 27 l/h (a very generous calculation) instead of the pump rated 300 l/h. Completing the loop with three elements didn't much change this. Maybe the flow fell to 25 l/h. In any case, the flow indicator spins really slow with Zalman pump alone.
Adding the Laing pump into the loop increases the flow to approx 60 l/h (also a generous calculation).
Problem #7 - flow indicator again After a month of bliss, problems started again. The flow indicator was stopping again and I couldn't figure out why. The reseller service refused to help me any further and they directed me to Zalman support, which I already knew to be quiet.
Zalman USA
So I turned to online forums, asking my peers for help. I received some great feedback as well as phone numbers of Zalman USA office. Naturally I called them and spoke to a nice guy named Keith and he agreed for me to send him an email with description of the problem. So I did and I got a reply the next day. This was great: finally some support. We exchanged questions and answers three times all of them within a single week and Keith was kind enough to give me all the requested info. He even promised to ask the Koreans to send me a replacement pump, flow indicator, degassing tube and coolant. This was truly a pleasant experience and I was really happy with Keith. To be more precise - I still am.
Well, to be sure, Zalman support was once again quiet. After waiting for two months I finally gave up on the replacement parts and proceeded to fix the unit following instructions by Keith and the forums folks. In order to do that I had to order some coolant, but unfortunately it was unavailable in Slovenia. Yep, both our distributors sell Zalman's water cooling kit, but none of them provide replacement parts of any kind. So I ordered from Germany, paying 13€ for coolant and 17€ for delivery :P
Problem #8 - Algae buildup
Having such a weak coolant solution predictably led to algae buildup in the system. While I was discussing things with Zalman USA and waiting for replacement parts that were never to come, algae started growing in the system. Fortunately for me, the buildup was slow enough that the system wasn't clogged by the time I started fixing things. But a thin film was clearly visible on surface of the coolant solution.
Problem #9 - Screw quality
Disassembling the unit revealed a few more faults with the unit. The screws used are extremely low quality. Even with a proper screwdriver I simply ruined a few of them. They are so soft that any force will damage them. One would think they are made of alluminum, that's how soft they are. But they react to magnets so I guess they are some iron alloy after all.
Problem #10 - Flow indicator materials
The flow indicator itself is made of clear plastic and the centerpiece (the spinning gauge) some blue plastic. Here's a pic of what I pulled out:

Note the two metal weights and the plastic around them. One weight is some iron alloy with good magnetic properties so that the sensor can detect the indicator spinning. The other doesn't have magnetic properties (and is also not affected by rust).
I cleaned up the metals and re-glued them into the plastic. To prevent further corrosion, I painted the whole thing with some water resistant paint. Excess plastic was cut off.
Since at the time I still didn't know what causes the indicator to stop spinning, I performed multiple tests for spin resistance. The indicator spinned no matter how low a water flow I generated, so I left it at that and proceeded with fixing the rest of the unit.
Problem #11 - Sharp tubing turns in the unit
Here they are:

I should mention that these imaged don't do the actual situation justice. Both tubes were bent so badly that the internal tube dimensions were at most 2mm x 8mm, thus severely restricting water flow. The springs that are supposed to prevent this bending don't quite do their job.
Having bought a couple of L joints beforehand, I was able to fix this problem like this:

The bottom joint was particulary problematic since there wasn't enough space and I definitely wanted to keep at least two of the sealing rings. Not being able to cut the L joint to optimum length left me with a bit of an angle which surely creates some turbulence, but I'm still betting this solution is a lot better than the original one.
Problem #12 - Air buildup
During all the time having these problems, I've had two occasions where air would start building up in the tubing. Initially I attributed this to algae, but it also happened again even after I had already used the new coolant. I'm guessing I just didn't make a strong enough solution which led to the original algae colony not being completely killed off. I have in the mean time cleaned the system again, also by using quite a lot of alcohol and I'm now using a much stronger coolant solution (1:3).
Anyway, I have also determined that this air buildup was responsible for the flow indicator failures. While I could certainly see the air in the computer loop tubing, I could never see it in the unit tubing. However I am now sure that air buildup was in both cases present also in the unit tubing itself.

So, this is it. After all the troubles and work fixing them I now have what I originally purchased. The conclusions from the previous post are still valid and I'm also happy that I managed to fix a problem where lots of things were working against me.

I still / again believe this is a very good piece of equipment and I think it's a shame Zalman removed it from their portfolio instead of fixing it. Its thermal properties are no doubt much better than Reserator 1's which stays in the portfolio, probably due to much simpler design which lacks many of the shortcomings of this unit.

Zalman Reserator 2 (review ?)

Well, seems I can't keep my own schedules, but still it's time to start on the promised reviews.
The Zalman Reserator post will be in two parts, first about the product and then about all the issues I've been having with it. Yes, you've read this correctly - even Zalman sometimes makes mistakes. Having used their products for some years now, I thought that nearly impossible, but this particular product has quite a few shortcomings I will describe in the second article (hopefully also done today). For now I will focus on the good side since after all the modifications I made this product now does what it was intended to do, I just had to work a bit for it:

I've bought Zalman Reserator 2 last July. You see, I have my computer set up in a corner of my living room with the box under the desk and the rest of stuff on it. Since I like to squeeze every ounce of power from my computers, naturally that also means I have a 150W oven under my desk. So, off to the first online store I went and ordered me a nice watercooling setup. The general idea was of course to move the heat source from under my desk to above it.

Just a few days later, the postman rang with a nice little package:

Well, OK, not so little. The box itself was actually quite big :)

Trembling with excitement, I went ahead and opened it:
First thing inside was the radiator / reservoir unit itself. I must admit, I didn't expect to see such quality of workmanship. All corners are nicely rounded, so there's no chance of you cutting yourself. The transitions between various parts are smooth and any screws holding the whole thing together blend superbly into the design of the unit.
The paint finish is superb with silver and matte black adding a high quality touch to the overall unit impression.
Here's a snapshot the other parts in the package although I'm sure you've seen all of this in all the proper reviews around on the net. There's two stands, an expansion slot tube bracket, the CPU and VGA cooling blocks, a degassing tube, 4 meters of tubing and a flask of coolant liquid. Naturally, a manual too.
Following instructions in the manual, I could have the unit assembled in a few minutes, but I decided to enjoy the process and took a good hour to assemble the basic CPU loop, turning and marvelling at every component in the process. This was after all my most expensive needless computer component bought to date.

The degassing process didn't go as well as I expected. I spent a good half hour before I couldn't hear any bubbles any more. Today, almost a year later I know exactly what to do to degass the unit, but back then I was obviously too much of a n00b. In case you're wondering: you have to tilt the unit clockwize (observed from the front) until you hear the bubbles. Then tilt it some more and just wait until the bubbling stops. The entire procedure can be completed in a couple of minutes with a maximum of one reset necessary. My original problem was that I was tilting and shaking the unit to both sides, as was described in the manual...
Having degassed the unit, I plugged it into the simple CPU loop I made and let it run overnight to check for leaks. Naturally, there were no leaks whatsoever so I finished up and closed the computer. Here's how the original loop looked like inside my Antec P182 case:


The VGA block was of course useless for my 8800GTS so I immediately went online and ordered the appropriate block for that as well. What would be the point of buying a component to move the heat when I wouldn't even apply it to the hottest component in the computer?

A few days later I received a small box with my 8800GTS cooler:
Again, a high quality looking component, nicely presented in two brushed alluminum shades. Attached were instructions and all the required parts to assemble the beast onto my gfx card.

Having had to buy a new VGA cooler, I was left with the original block which now suddenly got the appeal of becoming a nice chipset block, even though it originally wasn't designed for that function. Oh well, if the designers only knew what folks do with the stuff they worked so hard to design }:-))

So, here's the snapshot of the final, three-block loop i assembled. The order of components is CPU - Chipset - VGA. I figured the temperature delta is the largest on the CPU so it seemed to be the best candidate for the cold water. VGA on the other hand can take temperatures higher than CPU so it doesn't matter it the water pouring into its water block is already at 70 degrees centigrade.... :D OK, OK, I admit, the order was suggested by gurus on the numerous forums I read before even going for the setup.
I did have to clip one of the mount holes on the "chipset" block in order to be able to fit it next to the CPU socket, but otherwise the installation went easy. You will also notice that I removed the heat sink from the power regulation modules on my Asus P5K-E WiFi. I figured since the top row didn't have any, the back ones also don't need it. For this reason I didn't want to cut the NB / modules heatpipe in case I'd ever need to go back to air cooling. Until today, almost a year later, there have been no adverse effects due to this decision although I must admit that initially I feared it a bit.

After completing the modifications, I went ahead and started testing the whole system. I must say I'm very impressed with the results:
The cpu (E8400 @ 3,44GHz) went from 40 / 65 (idle / load) to 40 / 55 degrees centigrade.
I never had any numbers for the NB, so I cant give any, but it works, so I guess it's cooled sufficiently.
The VGA, however, was the biggest jump: Initially it was 55 / 80 degrees. Now it's 50 / 55. No matter how much I work it out, the temperature difference won't go higher than that. And I'm running it overclocked to the max 650 (core) / 2000 (RAM).

You probably noticed the relatively high idle temperatures. Well, I can also explain that: I'm running this computer 24/7 and at this moment the room temperature is 29 degrees centigrade. Yes, we're having quite a hot week here in Slovenia and no, I have no air conditioning installed.

What I did notice was that the Reserator unit manages to cool all three components and even with the computer constantly running, the water will go no higher than 10 degrees above ambient, the CPU will have water temperature at idle and max +15 degrees when running prime over night. The graphics card always has water temperature +10 - 15 degrees, depending on load.

I even managed to push my E8400 to 4.6GHz, but that required some insane voltage - if I remember correctly, I had to use 1.65V or something like that. And it also got to 65 degrees after a good night of prime so that was a bit too high for my personal taste.
Now I just have it overclocked to 3.44GHz which is the highest it will go with the lowest voltage the MB suports (1.1V). In case you're wondering, my particular CPU overclocks a bit strangely - if I want to go even to 1.85GHz, I already need 1.35V so I just figured a measly 12% increase in performance isn't worth it.

Obviously, now I have the heat all placed above the desk with practically none of it coming from the box below. Which was my initial purpose for this little beast. And it worked :)
Also this setup is practically completely silent. The pump in the Reserator unit is practically inaudible and I only have two very low RPM fans left in the case to cool the other components. I guess the only quiter PC I ever had was my first 286 AT which had no hard drive and no fans. And even it lost the quietest status the moment I installed my first second-hand 10MB IBM double height MFM disk :)

Overall, an excellent product, unfortunately removed from market due to its many shortcomings. See the next post, I'm guessing I had to solve pretty much all of them to make the unit work properly.

Another snapshot of it installed in my corner of zen and peace :) :