Do-it-yourself CPU Water Cooler

Foss writes "This article on EIMod.com shows a (very) cheap and effective way of getting that usually-expensive water cooling system that many of us have thought about. There are some pretty pictures too :)"

Comments

one of the better ones that i've seen....

[SGDarkKnight]

was at the London Smackdown tournament that I went to. This guy had to carry around an extra cooling pouch with all the stuff built into it. There are 3 pics of it here, here, and here. The third pic is the best view of the pouch and the first two show you the in'erds on the computer.

Liquid Nitrogen Cooling

[Davak]

Why go to all this trouble? This is obviously the way of the future. :)

Has anyone just stuck the board in the fridge?

[sdo1]

Just sticking the CPU board into a mini-fridge would be cheap and would probably work pretty well. Plus any extra space could be used to keep your beer cold.

-S

Geez

[mcrbids]

With the money he spent on this "cheap" water-cooler, he couldv'e PURCHASED A 1GHZ CPU!

Oh, and it'd work for more than 10 minutes too!

The things a guy will do...

Hydroponic CPU's

[muerte24]

i built a water CPU cooler for $20 out of pocket costs. of course, that doesn't count the stuff i stole from work. :) it's a machined copper slug, a reservoir, and a $20 aquarium pump.

if you turn the thing on with a cool reservoir, the CPU temp stays below 76F. but after being on for 10 hours, the reservoir temperature raises to about 113F due to my lack of money to buy a real radiator. so my equilibrium CPU temp with an Athlon XP 1600 is 123F, when the fan it came with ran it at 145F.

you can see pictures and stuff here.

granted, copper slugs and machining equipment and "free" swagelock (and peltiers!) is not something everyone has, but use what you got, right?

hope someone finds it useful or interesting.

muerte

You don't need a radiator...

[Exedore]

...to shed heat from the coolant. Just run the water coming from the cpu to a shower head (or similar) suspended above an open reservior. The water is dispersed by the shower head (increasing surface area) and cooled by the air as it falls into the container below.

Granted, this approach requires an open reservoir outside of the case, but it's simple, effective, and cheap.

Bonus: it can also replace those stupid "Sounds of Nature" tapes that people use for background noise at bedtime.

Re:You don't need a radiator...

[Muerte23]

the problem with evaporative cooling is the increased hardening of the water. you would indeed lose lots of heat to evaporation, and the CPU would run super cool, but as more of the water evaporates and leaves behind all of its minerals, the think would start to get really crusty.

then you would have to clean out the whole thing with CLR or some crap, and it would be a huge pain. and good system should be as closed as possible while still allowing for some thermal expansion of trapped air.

the trick is to find a good radiator, CHEAP. or free. maybe a heater core from a car from a junkyard? maybe the heat exchanger from a junked air conditioner?

the hard part is not getting the heat from the CPU to the water, but getting the heat from the water into the air.

muerte

Re:What's the point?

[xtal]

Watercooling can completely eliminate system noise. In addition, in my experience, my system was much more stable when watercooled than when it wasn't. I run simulations that can run for a day or more, and stability issues can present themselves - no more with the watercooler.

There's two reasons for you right there :). And, you can usually overclock to as high as the motherboard will allow as a side benefit.

Snipes

[John Guilt]

1.) Don't heat the solder. heat the metal (with a small blowtorch). Maybe some acid flux first.

2.) Use caulk to seal the hose to the piping.

3.) Look around (larger Chinese groceries are good) for pre-formed metal trays, some of which have mtal lids that could be caulked shut.