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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
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
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.
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.
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.
However, if your like myself and have no creative skills whatsoever...
...or language skills, apparently. The contraction of "you are" is "you're."
> 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
The lesson here: If everything you know about pumbing you read on the internet, do not make a high precision mixing of electonics and water your first project.
Generally, the people who look into these fancy overclocking rigs are the people who already bought the fastest chip on the market. People with way more money than common sense who feel the need to proclaim that they have the fastest PC in the world.
I read the internet for the articles.
Just spray water from a garden hose into your system every couple of days.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
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.
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.
Check this guy out !
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Wouldn't it be cheaper really to just buy a faster CPU? By the time you go through all that cost and effort to squeeze a few more cycles out of the cpu you could've spent less (time and $) on a faster one by design that doesn't have to sit in a bucket of goo to run.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
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