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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 :)"
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just cover your hardware in saran wrap and dump ice in the box. works like a charm to keep it cool.
This looks reliable!
http://www.eimod.com/overclocking/rob/wc_2_ok/p
Also, look how dusty the case is. This guy must live in a barn!
These are the sorts of instructions I don't like to see in a mod! At least it doesn't mention chewing gum...
Believe nothing -- Buddha
Sure, for the ten minutes that the article mentions that the pump runs before overheating.
...but the rubber bands on the tubes just scares the hell out of me. Did this guy graduate from the Russian Navy or something? I think the shrink tubing would have worked if he'd have gotten the kind with the mastick (glue type substance) in it. That would have sealed it off great and it's still inexpensive enough not to break him.
quod me nutrit me destruit
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.
Why go to all this trouble? This is obviously the way of the future.
The words 'cheap', 'water' and 'computer' used in close proximity do not inspire confidence or an incentive to try this mod out.
Then I read about the cotton...!
"Information wants to be paid"
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Does anyone else think it would have been infinitely cooler
if he had used dental floss to hold the heatsink on instead of plain ol' string?
C-X C-S
I'm waiting for the DIY liquid nitrogen version...
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Okay, so his water pump is only designed to run for a max of 10 minutes before overheating. Since overclocked CPUs generate heat, an underclocked CPU must be able to absorb heat, right? RIGHT? Why not slap an old 286 onto the pump, underclock it to run at, oh, say, 2 Hz (not mHz, but plain ol' Hz) and the 286 will absorb all the excess heat off the pump! Voila! :-)
:-P
Or should he just get a water cooler to put on the pump, which would in turn need a water cooler for ITS pump, which would need a water cooler for ITS pump, which would . . . oh, wait, this is infinite nesting, isn't it?
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...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Water conducts electrisity. Well, pure water doesn't, but pure water will eat metal until it does conduct. That means you have to keep your water carefully sererate from everything else.
By contrast, oil doesn't conduct, doesn't disolve metal. Fill your case with oil, and you have better cooling than air, and much easier to deal with. (Note, oil isn't as good as water for heat capacity, but it is still better than air and has all the other advantages)
Why water? Why not mineral oil or something that's certain not to conduct electricity? It might not take heat away quite as fast as water does but it should still be a lot better than air.
I wonder whether liquid nitrogen is feasible. That would be a great cooling system for a Beowulf cluster: remove the cases, hard disks etc and just stack motherboards really close together in a big bathtub filled with cold liquid.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Did anyone else read the part that the thing only runs for 10 minutes? Oh what a bargain. Buy all the watercooling stuff and have it work for 10 minutes at 1ghz. Woohoo.
Water cooling requires that the water, passing nearby a heat source, absorbs the heat and carries in on to a place where it can be safely transferred into the surrounding environment. The old Second Law, Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, etc etc.
So why would we opt for water, which would be a less than optimal coolant? Because hot water makes *coffee*. Imagine! You could have a water-cooled server *and a coffee machine* all in the same rackmount!
The possibilities are endless.
As someone who has built his own homemade watercooler, this setup is very jury-rigged and definately not recommended for any sort of serious long term cooling. The copper-tube inlets need to be replaced w/ brass fittings to avoid leakage, and the rubber bands should be replaced with cheap and much more effective band clamps. This waterblock design is not effective water-distrobution wise either as the water is not forced to flow through out the entire design. This would let the side furthest the inlets get hot due to poor water flow. An open chamber is only good for small waterblocks. Lastly, using thread to attach a waterblock to the cpu is ghetto as hell. Either quickly engineer a heatsink clamp yourself, or just look up a guide on the net for this, its pretty simple. Watercooling is one of those things that can be done many different ways, but this particular method is a little more 'amature' than is recommended to put on any piece of equipment that you value. If you are going to take the time to make your own watercooling, also take the time to make sure its engineered right.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
I run a watercooled machine as my primary work box. It's great, and the noise savings were incredible. No more whirrrrrr. Fits snugly into a standard mid tower case.
I have a page up with all the details of contsruction for you who are interested. I've been running it for a few months, 24/7, and there have been no problems whatsoever. I took a few additional precautions, but the system as been moved around several times without any difficulties whatsoever and I highly recommend it to others who are interested.
..don't panic
my friend had me mill one for him for a science experiment. actually , ended up about 5 of them. he bought 2x2x1" aluminum blocks. i milled two holes through (one end to the other), side by side. he tapped them, and attached plumbing devices to the newly threaded areas. The other method was to bore four holes - two holes one one side that went 80% through, and 2 holes on the adjacent side that also went 80% through. tapped, and attached appropriate connectors. no leaks to patch. since the tops were flat, he also took the old heat sink + fan, removed the fan, and used that to dissipate evem more heat.
i never got the results back, but if anyone's interested, i can get the data to you, along with pics and more details.
moox. for a new generation.
http://www.crazypc.com/articles/watercool.htm
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
These guys have some time on their hands.
That's cool though- they are just thinking up ideas and trying them out. They are not worrying too much about convention apparently.
How many great ideas started that way?
More than I could name.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Rubber bands? You gotta be kidding!
A much better way to mate the hose to the copper tubing is to use a hose clamp. These can be obtained from any DIY or auto parts store, and cost less than a dollar each.
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
After trying many different Peltier solutions, I became frustrated at how cumbersome they are and how painful they are to install.
Finally I came up with a water cooling solution that was easy, simple, and , best of all, completely free!
The picture isn't so good (it's a little hard to make out the details of the PC), but I'm sure everyone can do this mod too!
"1 - 3 grams of solder should be enough, but it's always best to buy excessive amount just to cover yourself."
Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't covering yourself with solder hurt like hell?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I find this mod really pathetic, mainly due to how he attached the cooling system to the processor.
:)
And how is there a benefit? My Celeron-2 600 sits at 36 degrees celcius and it is only cooled by a fan on the processor and two fans in the case. If attaching a water cooling system like his to mine only causes a 10 degrees difference in temperature, why should I care? Unless it got to the point of being 15 or 20 degrees cooler, I can give a rat's ass about it.
Yet putting my system in liquid freon would be an option. How does a non-conductive cold liquid sound for cooling a system?
Besides the "it's cool!" factor (which it really isn't anymore, since everyone's been there and done that by now), why on earth would anyone water-cool their system nowadays? The difference between an Athlong XP 1500 and an Athlon XP 1800 is $14, and even the fastest Pentium 4 CPUs are reasonably affordable (to say nothing of the absolute cheap asking price for the fastest Athlons.)
I guess what I'm getting at is this: why bother with any of this overclocking nonsense anymore? What on earth can it possibly buy you nowadays, other than a voided warranty and a fried CPU?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Water is the optimal coolant, when only physical properties are considered. It's reasonably low viscosity (easy to pump), and has an extremely high heat capacity. The only problems are that it is rather corrosive and electrically conductive, so leaks are really bad news, but the heat capacity is so much higher than most non-conductive fluids that engineers will often pick it anyhow. Other choices: Oil will take a stronger pump, thicker tubing, and bigger radiator, because you have to move more fluid at higher viscosity. Certain chloroflourocarbons are good enough at cooling and entirely safe to spill on live electronics, but they're also pretty much illegal nowadays. And distilled water is much cheaper than any alternative fluid...
He didn't really mention how many different pieces of hardware he ruined during this experiment, or what happens to his system at 11 minutes (when the cooling system fails), or my favorite question of all -- WHY? There are several water-cooling solutions on the market now, plus dozens of any other kind of cooling solution (Peltier, massive fans, etc). I understand the need to tinker and constantly tweak the equipment, but this guy must be really obsessive... Already noted here several times, but any cooling solution that works only for ten minutes at a time doesn't seem that great/newsworthy. BTW, won't cotton thread burn, create a lot of smoke, catch fire, and melt the entire lot of hardware -- oh, yeah -- it is water cooled, so you also have an internal fire-suppressant system.... Now I understand -- kewl!!
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
The way it's currently implemented there is really no point. Good air heat sinks remain close to room temperature so they'll cool just as well as this water cooler. To actually improve the cooling you need so either cool the water or utilize a peltor with the water cooler to drop the temp below room temperature.
Willy
...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.
I take drugs seriously.
This might be a silly idea, but ... Why not buy a mini fridge, large enought to hold a computer, and a few choise beverages. Cut some holes for cables. And you are good to go.
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.
This story actually teaches a lot about how not to build a water-cooling system for a CPU.
Some specific observations:
- The low delta T (temperature difference) for the water going through the system is a sure indication of low efficiency. The most likely culprit is poor contact between the block and the CPU. Thin sheeting was used, and ripples are clearly visible in the pictures. The block is probably only touching in a few places and there is no mention of using thermal grease. A stiffer bottom plate was clearly called for.
- As mentioned elsewhere, hose clamps should have been used. (String? Let's not go there...)
- There is no radiator to dump the heat back to the environment. The heat transfer from the surface of the tank is probably not sufficient to keep the temperatures low. The radiator should be after the pump, to dump the heat from the pump also.
Perhaps the story should have been posted with the "laugh, it's funny" icon.BTW, I prefer Indium foil as the thermal gasket between the CPU and heat sink, not thermal grease. Unfortunately, Indium is usually as expensive as gold.
Fluorinert liquids are a family of clear, odourless perfluorinated fluids that were developed to meet the demanding and diversified requirements of direct contact electronic applications.
Fluorinert liquids have a number of important properties:
Very high dielectric strength
Wide range of boiling points
Thermally and chemically stable
Compatible with sensitive materials
Very low toxicity
Non-flammable
Zero Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP)
It's really cool stuff, and it's starting to find applications all over the place. For example, it turns out that fluorocarbons absorb oxygen really well, so a colloid of fluorinert is used as an artificial blood. It really is the ideal solution for the problem of processor cooling, but I can't for the life of me figure out from the web how to get some and how much it would cost. There shouldn't be any problems with overclockers getting their hands on it, since with the non-toxicity and inertness, it's not particularly hazardous stuff.
You know, I thought a CPU was a pretty inefficient way to cool water too!
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
The guy's got the right idea, there's no reason his basic idea isn't good (I was considering doing the same thing myself) but it looks like it was implemented by Bob Vila - totally hacked together without even any real attempt to think of the best way to do it. It looks like he walked into a hardware store and grabbed the first thing that looked like it might work.
Where did you find the aluminum blocks and how much did they cost?
This might work well in a desert, but the majority of live close to water, hence the ice balls in the no-defrost fridge. So, when you reach for that beer the air gets in and sees the cool bits of your PC. "Ahh," says the air, "that just what I wanted," as it cools off and looses its water. When those little beads of condensation hit your traces, or your 120V power supply, snap crackle pop goes your computer. Chances are you can dry it out and start again, but that's not the kind of chance I like to take. Beer in fridge, good. PC in fridge, bad.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.