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Watercooling Made Easy
Ronny writes: "'Overclockers are always looking for a better way to keep their processors cooler. If you've found the best heatsink and best fan, but that still isn't cooling your processor enough, you may want to look in to water cooling.' You can build your own water cooling system out of scrap parts such as a radiator from an ATV and a water block made out of a 4" PVC cap. However, if your like myself and have no creative skills whatsoever, then you may be interested in this new water cooling kit that is available on the Internet. The kit includes everything you need to start water cooling your CPU, at a very reasonable price. Full review of the water-cooling kit found at OverclockersClub"
I hereby claim prior art on a Water Cooled webserver to overcome the slashdot effect!
/.'ed... Think watercooling will be able to put out the fire that's started at the datacenter where that site's hosted? :)
Article was posted less than 5 minutes ago, and it's already
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This looks like a lot of fun. I bet the "not responsible for damage to your equipment" part of their documentation is humongous, but they could probably sum it up with: "Duh!!"
Fit a Pizza-oven to it as well and we'll never need to go out again...
Rich
Kits like these have been around for a while...Do we really need to put up with stories that are just big ads now too?
SPAM
If I had the latest in cpu's, motherboards and graphics cards for my computer I wouldn't need a water cooler cause I'd be drooling all over it.
I'm not one to begrudge a nice review, but on 1 water cooling kit with nothing special?
:)
The water cooling phenomenon is pretty common right now- I'd love to go on about my current issues around a ground-phase loop (i unplug the pump, the computer reboots) but that isn't relevant.
Now if this was an informative article about a number of different water cooling kits, then yes, I think that would deserve a large posting. (yes, the server is slashdotted already).
However, I'd say this is more like direct marketing. There isn't even a link to the manufacturer's link in the slashdot posting, making it impossible to even review the that.
Water cooling is very expensive- pumps run 40$, blocks run 30$, tubing and fittings run 20$, radiators run 50$......
Anyway... thanks for the direct markting blurb, but i think there are more professional ways to advertise a product
Attempt to disguise an ad I've ever seen. Really, a review for the "best" water cooling thing out there, and "if" you are haiving problems, etc, etc...
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
But, she is my grammar not your grammar :-)
How hot is considered too hot? I'm not overclocking, so I guess I am very likely OK. But how hot is too hot of a 1.3Ghz Celeron? Intel only seems to care about ambient case temp.
Spencer Ogden
Instead of wasting money on a water cooling unit, why don't people just spend that money on a faster processor!?!?!
silly overclockers!
</sarcasm>
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
I actually bought the $300 system from Innovatek for my gaming rig. It keeps the proc around 32 degrees C. They are kind of expensive and for most people completely over the top useless. In my situation it was perfect because my computer sits in a dead air section of my apt. and just kept recycling the hot air pumping the cpu temp up to about 60....which is too warm for my tastes.
The install hassles for a system like this are too much for most people. You have to drill and clean your case and you have to remove and reinstall all the equipment from it. Then you have to spend the time to connect all the hoses and bleed air out of the system. Then...about 7 hours later (yeah...if you do it right...it can take that long) when you finally boot the PC, you get your just rewards....a nice water cooled system that now is about 10lbs. heavier than it was the day before and has about zero functionality added to it.
Like I said...its a little too much of an ornate system for most people.
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
I built my latest system with one and it's been running like a champ. Dumps a lot of heat into the room though. I recommend them if you're interested in having a quieter system. Especially if you can build your own system, but don't feel up to doing your own water system.
The Math Maestro Tutoring Services in Seattle
VERY good tutorial, and for a GF4 too on DeviantPC but it seems thre site is offline right now :(
. sh tml
http://www.deviantpc.com/articles/gf4wcp1/index
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I mean c'mon - not only is the review that of only one watercooler & not a head-to-head watercooler vs. watercooler reveiw, but there's no real difference between the watercooler and a Volcano 9 heatsink!!
If you're gonna post reviews, from now on, can they at least be something worth reviewing?
Most be a slow Nerds News day, because i don't think this article matters.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Once, small computers were totally silent. Think of the CBM64, the Mac and others. Even when they got harddrives, it was just a faint whirr in the background. Today, a modern desktop sounds like a passenger plane taking off next to you. In my machine I have five fans and two drives, and that's nothing unusual. At work it's bad enough that I sometimes wear earplugs just to get away from the noise.
Watercooling can help in two ways. First, with a larger, efficient radiator, you don't need a high-rpm fan - and elliminating just one fan does a lot to reduce noise pollution. Second, and for the future, I can envision a water-cooling system that can collect heat from several heat sources in the machine, and cool them all using one radiator and one fan. And when you have that, you could enclose the machine far better than today, getting rid of the noise from the drives as well.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
...AMD 1Ghz processors in a span of two weeks trying to overclock them using water cooling. (The UPS is only so fast.) The water dripping on his mobo was an added bonus.
It's cheaper just to pay more for a faster chip, IMHO.
help fill in hidden movie endings @ End of the Credits
site looks a bit sketchy already, so here you go:
Cached Version
Is it just me or are do-it-yourself water-cooled PCs just an electrical fire waiting to happen? Unless you have some pretty high grade(expensive) seals, it seems to me the potential for leaks is way too high. I'll definitely think twice before running a partially conductive water through my PC.
when did /. start doing product placement? At the very least, we deserve a disclaimer....
must be having to stretch to meet payroll....
Like im gonna junk the spud gun and the 4 wheeler to cool down the dern CPU thingybob.
Right now i got the 4 wheeler turnin bout 50 fans to beat the friggin heat and the spud gun is launchin empty beer cans a good 150 feet onto the neighbors lawn. Besides what do I need to cool er off for. Unless the Porn is steaming up the computer as much as it does me : )
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
I know this may be a tempting thought, but it simply isn't true.
It's inevitable given the nature of Slashdot that we will mention products, made by companies. This rig is one such. No special conspiracy required.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
your really like myself
Really? Is it ground-breaking? Is it "New"? Is it a blatantly free advertising spoof for a over priced water cooling system?
NO! NO! and YES!
If you want to learn about water cooling, odds are you know of someone who is doing it, or heard about it from a friend, or are at a site which sells the units. This isn't needed on a site like this.
Besides, the systems they sell at these overclocker sites are way over-priced any way.
My cooling system, which I bought the radiator on ebay automotive was brand new, 3 to 4 times the size you will find at a overclocking site and only $23, thats including shipping.
The water pumps are for the most part the same ones used within pond fountains or those fancy worthless desk-top rock fountains, which again can be bought for much less through the proper channels.
My pump is rated over 500+ gallons an hour and again I got it for $26 including shipping.
All in all, my cooling system was about $80.
Go and recruit your goombas somewhere else... were trying to read interesting articles here.
*whew* ok.. rant done...
I have yet to notice a water cooling system for having a (nearly) silent PC. All the ones I seen have been to cool CPU only, mainly to overclock it.
What I'd like is a complete water cooling solution, ie: water cool CPU, GPU, Disk/CD drive, and Case/MB. Thus having NO fans inside at all.
A problem I see with this is condensation, with just CPU cooling u insulate it all so only CPU is exposed to the coolness of the water, so condensation can be controled. But with a water cooling system for all the parts in your box I think this may become more of a problem.
like, you could have this kinda headline on slashdot every gddamn week. there's at least 20+ kits available, and few(at least several) that sell cases with ready wc stuff.
and even some that will cough up the dough if the block fails(in intended use, correctly installed) and your gfx+mobo gets screwed.
me, i've been watercooling for ~2+ years.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Didn't we see this one a little while ago, thus making it 'redundant'?
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Won't the water inside the system cause water in the air outside to condensate and drip onto your system? I was told this was the case by my Operations and Maintenance professor in High School.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
The human brain burns, by calculation, about 20 watts of power.
The Pentium 4 does 75 watts. W.T.F.
For cryin' out loud--instead of some water cooling, why don't take advantage of the inferno and add a damn Easy-Bake Oven as an upgrade? I can make some brownies while I'm blowing the brownies out of some fragbait in Unreal Tournament.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
I would like a water cooling system which could cool down HD, Power Supply, Video GPU etc. and be able to put the pump/radiator/fan far away. ;-)
Or don't use radiator/fan, just pump the water from the swimming pool and put it back in so that we start crunching numbers and get an heated swimming pool
delete free(system.gc);
I realize that the hot side of a peltier device puts out quite a bit of heat which has to be gotten rid of -- is this why people end up resorting to water cooling?
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
It's one of the worst kits I ghave seen recently. The waterblock is inefficient, the radiator is too small, and overall it's not worth the money. Just get an slk-800 + vantec tornado for $68 if you want decent value, or the swiftech kit if you want decent performance. Best of all, build one yourself, it's really not much harder than assembling the premade stuff.
However, if your like myself and have no creative skills whatsoever...
...or language skills, apparently. The contraction of "you are" is "you're."
I think we overclocked overclockersclub
> You can build your own water cooling system out of scrap parts such as a radiator from an ATV
like any motorcycle or ATV parts, this sounds expensive to me.
Why not try an aftermarket automatic transmission cooler like This one at Jegs?
This one is kinda big since its made for race-cars, but I think you could find one at a Napa store for like 30 bucks.
A heater core might be better suited but you would need to adapt to garden-hose sized tubing.
Actually, I wouldn'y be surprised if PC noise generation actually peaked around the days of the IBM XT and AT in the mid-80's, and have been steadily delclining since then.
True, we have more motors running inside our CPU cases now than we did when 8-bit processors were king, but those motors just keep getting quieter.
The trend in the late 90's of moving from desktop boxes to mini-towers that can be stowed under a desk, away from the ears, also helps reduce perceived noise levels.
dropped on top of the cabinet will work as well and be hella cheap. just remember to vent the gas every once in a while
My ASUS_a7v/amd_1.7 gig will crash-to-bios at a CPU temp of 170_F if I don't blast my room AC to 60_F. And THAT'S a MT-box sitting on a floor anti-static mat, with 2-lbs of copper heat-sink and 4-fans. With the room at 60_F the CPU stabilizes at 120_F. It's hell on electricity, but up here in Spokane power comes with the rent (0.01$/kw) ... and screws Bay-Area hot tub lusrs.
Just spray water from a garden hose into your system every couple of days.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I bought a case from Koolance a couple of weeks ago because my new dual Athlon MP 2000+ was so noisy (I could hear it from everywhere in the house). The high-rpm fans on the CPUs made a lot of noise, and I had to leave the case open because the temperature inside got so high it caused a hard drive to fail after one night of operation (apparently heat makes hard disk failures more likely).
Koolance systems have a large radiator on top of the case, where three large fans blow the air out of the case through it. Accessories include CPU coolers, chipset coolers (for motherboard and graphics card), and hard drive coolers so that you don't need additional fans in your case in addition to the radiator fans and the power supply fans.
I took me several hours to assemble the system (in particular because you have to apply some kind of gap filler to your hard drive's PCB and let it dry - scary at first but apparently quite efficient and innocuous), but I can now say that it was worth it: the machine looks great, is quiet and cold. It's on the expensive side though, about $350 for the case with accessories (2 CPU coolers, 1 drive cooler, 1 second hard drive kit) without a power supply.
The water tank is too small. Whats that like? A cup of water? No wonder it cooled to inefficiently. Also mounting the radiator in the case certainly wouldn't be as good as mounting it outside the case. Think about it.. There is still a lot of heat from all the other stuff in the case. Hard drives, video card, PSU... so really you are absorbing a lot of that heat back into the radiator. If you blow air in, you raise the overall internal temp but cool the radiator. If you blow air out, you don't cool the radiator as well.
I think someone needs to come up with something like a small air conditioner that can mount to the radiator or something to keep it cool. Even an air dehumidifier could fit the bill because it basically is a small AC unit anyway.
Included in the box, was some very bad instructions. These instructions had no real pictures only diagrams, and the instructions were very hard to follow because the grammar was horrible. I do understand that these instructions were written by someone in Korea, but geez get someone better to translate it :/ Luckily I figured out what goes where, by trial and error.
There's also the Koolance and Sen Fu product lines at Plycon Computers
Those are the ones I knew about. A Google search turned up a whole bunch more. Man, I'm glad I don't subscribe -- ads are unavoidable, it seems.
And the brethren went away edified.
Around the top of this gray hole is a specially designed water proof plug. The plug simply tightens down very hard on the power cable so that no water can escape.
Let's all hope he's mistaken about running water through the power cable.
I poured in about a half a cup of antifreeze to help the algae down, and I also used distilled water.
Well, of course, and you don't want the computer refusing to start on those cold mornings.
Would you PLEASE stop posting this stuff? When you've got an alcohol (preferably gin and dry vermouth, shaken, not stirred) cooled sytem, then I'll be interested.
Anyone thought that it would be cheaper to buy a faster processor than overcocking a cheaper one and buying and expensive cooling system?
Uhhh, ok, let me get this straight... the article links to a review for a cooling system.
At the bottom of the "review"/ad, it says one of the Cons was: did not meet my cooling requirements...
So the point of this was what, exactly?
If you are trying to market your product, you might want to actually READ the review first...
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
Silly question. Why H20? Is there another legal liquid substance that would provide more efficient cooling?
"That's no moon"... Obi-Wan Kenobi
TechTV had a segment a while back about a submerged liquid cooled system. They placed the mobo and all components in what ammounted to a short, wide fish tank with 2 halves with a small air gap between them. The half with the computer in it was filled with this liquid made by 3M which is apparently completely inert and non-conductive, and can reach sub-zero C temps without freezing. The other half of the box contained a radiator, and was filled with alcohol and dry ice, if i remember correctly. The liquid was pumped through the radiator and into the computer half of the box, with an outlet directly above the CPU, and Athlon sans heatsink, and one to circulate the liquid around the rest of the components. The whole setup was then closed in. A properly sealed version would run without needing new liquid, though theirs was evaporating since the top was not locked down. The dry ice/alcohol would need changing regularly of course. The got the whole system, including CPU temp, down to -30 C, when it stopped working. 3M markets the liquid for cooling super computers. Wonder how fast you could overclock the system like this? They didn't try, although when the turned the pump off, the Athlon started boiling the coolant! Maybe when I have more money than god, or at least CowboyNeal...
"Navi, connect to the Wired."
I don't understand; I can't seem to figure out where you put the fish...
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
First off, I've posted my experiments with watercooling about a half dozen times on slashdot. It's old. It's been done. Nobody has considered any safety issues whatsoever. I am not an expert, so don't sue me if your machine, home, signifigant other, cat, and car erupt into flames. None of the commerical kits really detail how to do a professional installation. For most people, it is more work than you want to even THINK about. It took me a solid day of testing and another solid day of construction to get my kit installed.
http://www.nyx.net/~smanley/watercool
You need to install a GFCI to protect against a ground loop. If there is a short to ground, this will kill the power instantly. You MUST have one if you connect liquid to a mains supply, as most systems do.
Secondly, pure water is a insulator. Aren't YOU smart. Put it in an average watercooler for 15 minutes and you now have a very good conductor. Hella good, probably. In a few months, even better. Water isn't called the "universal solvent" for anything - it will pick up enough ions to be conductive from just about anything. Hint; you're running it though copper blocks in most cases, and the other surfaces aren't pristine.
There are many other precautions. I've run for almost a year without a problem, but I took my time. I am looking to watercoool my home games machine now, as I believe you can probably get away without any fan on the system whatsoever. The noise reduction IS worth it when the girlfriend gets bitchy that your desk is whining like a supercharged honda when she's trying to sleep - and it's down the hall! Heh.
Other experiments I'm thinking about include using a convection system that might stabilize at mid-50's C with no pump or fans whatsoever.
My $0.02..
..don't panic
In the mainframe world, everybody was very happy when the water cooling era finally ended. Having spent years dealing with the cooling problems of mainframes (bad memories of crawling under a building late at night looking for a leak in a chilled water return line), I am very down on water cooling as a solution. It's more like a problem.
it's commonly known around the overclocking community that the Peltier CPU Cooler you linked to is completely worthless.
Not only does it not cool the CPU, but it actually heats up the CPU because the heat sink is not effective enough dissipate all the heat the peltier creates, so it's no suprise they put that little disclaimer there.
Why not go for some different coolant. There is an easily available chemical called "Galden". It is a nonconductive and nontoxic coolant medium used for high voltage equipment. In a company where I worked, we used it to cool high voltage switches. The switches were mounted in a tank, together with all the necessary electronics, including a standard fan which just happened to be mounted to one PCB. Of course, it run slower in the liquid, but was well cooled :-). None of the PCBs or boards or components were sealed. Just dump you complete mainboard into a tank with Galden in it and it will run very cool. Of course, leave all your drives out.
This will be a very cool PC in a bucket.
Check this guy out !
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Moderator's essentials
Not if the water cooling the system is at the ambient temperature (room temp). The radiator's purpose is to equalize the temp of the coolant with that of the surrounding environment. Condensation wouldn't be a problem unless you were actively refrigerating the coolant.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
My computers to loud, my computers to loud! Bitch'n and a moaning. Well buy a damn Imac then.
Computers are supposed to make noise, the louder the better. Hell, my damn CPU fan make more noise than a hairdryer. Lets me know the fucker is running. I got 6 fans in my computer, move some fucking air it will. Powered the damn thing up, sucked all the fur off the god damn cat. That's okay, I like my pussy bald anyway.
Dude next door was complaining though, couldn't hear his chain saw. Got a problem with the cops too. The airport down the road keeps calling about the noise...
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification