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CPU Cooling with 15 Liters of Water
ninjagin writes "While not an OC-er, I do enjoy reading about the lengths people will go to on their way to a better CPU cooling solution. I ran across this very interesting article at overclockers.com about this guy's immense 15-liter water cooling rig for his home office PC. Might be just the kind of thing to have the contractors include when they pour your next garage slab."
I've been thinking of mking a rig like this, but there are reliability problems. Check out What Happened to Dan of Dan's Data.
:-(
Corrosion is a big problem for the uninitiated
I'm not Seth.
time & effort = nothing major, apparently.
why don't you spend that time making money to spend on a faster processor? If you're not overclocking why even bother? Just put the damn pc out in the garage if noise is the concern.
you'd have better cooling if you ran a bunch of pipe in the ground - the ground stays the same temp year 'round (within one degree F if you go more than about three feet down, 53F, about 12C) so just dig a one foot wide hole, about 5 feet down, and put a big coil of tubing down there. run water through it, and huzaah! cooler than this guy. or just adjust one of them new fangled air conditioner things so that instead of air running over the cooling coils, you run water over them, and run that water through a system like this guy's. then OVERCLOCK the thing and make it worthwhile.
you could save yourself a lot of money for a new processor if you ran some pipe up on your roof, and put that into your water heater. preheated water is FAR cheaper to keep hot, and you'll never run out of warm water at least, not on a sunny day anyway. use the money you save to power the air conditioner solution that no one has done yet, and keep your processor actively cool, not just passively cool. or, just stick the whole PC in the fridge. wrap it in plastic (or submerse it in a non-conductive liquid that doesn't freeze in the deep-freeze) to keep the bad moisture out and enjoy a pc that's colder yet.
ah forget it, you do what you want.
Many cooling systems do use oils instead of water. No cooling oil I've ever seen (Dowtherms etc.) can compare to water for heat transfer efficiency. Water has low viscosity, high heat capacity and is cheap.
The only liquid that really does much better is mercury, not something I would want flowing round my computer.
Already has been done: http://totl.net/Eunuch/
Now that's just damn creepy... I was thinking about doing something very similar just yesterday. I'll be building a house soon, and was thinking about what I'd do if I could build a cooling system directly into the house. The idea I came up with is similar to this one, but I think I have some improvements.
;)
The garage floor is at ground level, and concrete is an AWFUL conductor of heat. This presents two points of inefficiency; the temperature of the concrete will be affected by seasonal temperatures due to air temperature and proximity to heated surface earth along the edges. Depending on what part of the country you're in, the ground temperature below 24-36 inches is a constant temperature in the low sixties or upper fifties. SO, while the base of the garage floor's foundation is likely below this point of constant temperature, the poor conductivity of the concrete will likely render the system far less efficient than it could have been.
My server closet would be in the basement, preferably with the systems close to the ground. The system I envisioned is identical to his up until the heat exchanger. Rather than dumping heat straight to the concrete floor, I thought of getting a 18" x 18" steel plate and welding 1" thick, 24" long iron bars to it, perpendicular to the surface of the plate. 16 bars should do. You then sink the bars through holes in the wall straigt into the earth as close to the floor as possible, resulting in the deepest possible depth for the bars. Your heat is then dumped to the very cold, constantly cooled earth at a depth of anywhere from four to five feet.
On a practicality scale of 0 to 10, 10 being as practical as brushing your teeth and 0 being as practical as replacing your teeth with screw-on ceramic chompers that you can toss in the dishwasher, I give this solution about a two. Nobody in their right mind is going to go to all of that trouble to cool a few CPUs. Or drill holes in their foundation, for that matter. But it would still be cool.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
I was impressed by the engineering that went into this system. Certainly going a lot further than buying a watercooling kit from Popular Discount Computer Mod Store. I liked the switch and relay box that turned the pump on when the computer was switched on, saving a walk to the garage. The only question I had was this: He has a water transport loop a good deal longer than your average watercooling rig. Would the delay in getting the water circulating cause an undesireable or even dangerous heat build up at the processor before the water system was ramped up enough to deal with it? Would it be better to build in a timer that starts the pump when the machine's power button is pressed, and then starts the computer after a suitable delay?
This may be a complete non-issue. The water in the system may be sufficient to transfer heat for the couple of seconds before the pump is moving things along completely. The processor may take more time to heat up than I'm assuming. It's just something that bothered me a little, and none of my Mech-E friends are around for an impromptu consultation.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
He could have done a little more testing. I mean, aside from the image manipulation, office apps are pretty light on the CPU. He put all this work into flow rate equations and graphs, and then at the end he doesn't even play any games to show a system under REAL load. No idle temps either. What gives?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I have three PCs and two laptops in my 9x12 office.
Every PC has the powersupply fan, the CPU can, and a fan on the front of the case to suck air either in or out. Two of the PCs are PowerEdge servers by Dell (a 500sc and a 600sc) and the 600sc fans are particularly loud, enough that I can't hold a speakerphone conversation when that machine is on.
Yea, I know - servers are not built to the same creature comfort levels as 'desktop' machines, but this thing is a jet engine compared to the rest of my gear and spends most of its time off unless I need the additional horsepower of a third machine.
I would LOVE a way to silence this machine.
-:-
Personally I think if the guy had passed on the whole 'run lots of copper pipe in the garage' and just put a 30 gallon (112 liter) fishtank in his office, threw some fake fish in there and used that as his water reserve he could have plopped it in his office as decoration and water cooled with that - perhaps have a overflow that routed excess water down his drain and a way to turn on water at a source to add water (thus adding cold water and having warm water overflow down the drain) in the event the water ever exceeded operating temperature.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Water Cooling, is in most cases just not practical. I'm not trying to advocate *against* water cooling, I am however giving any other readers not versed in water cooling a bit of anecdotal experience.
1. Water Cooling is entirely unreliable. Sadly, Unless on eis prepared to design a water cooling system with redundant water pumps, and alarms to alert the user when the pumps fail, then I would absolutely NOT recommend water cooling to anyone who leaves there computer on while not home. Almost all pumps that I have found are rated for less than 5000-8000 hrs. (around 9mo - 1yr) You need to worry about pumps, reservoirs, tubing, radiators, corrosion, seals, coolants, and everything else holding together the entire system.
2.) Water Cooling is not particularly portable. I can say from experience, and also from the experience of most of my friends, that water cooled systems are NOT portable. I mean damn, just look at the guy with the garage, He would have to worry about cutting new tubing if he just wanted to move his computer out of the family room and into his office. Friends of mine with water cooled computers always worry about leaks, the reservoir, and altogether moving around an extra 3/4 -1 gallon of water with them. Simply put, they are not good for LAN parties.
3.) Water Cooling is not that much more Colder. Really people, you can't get colder than room temp with plain H20. In fact, you can't even get to room temperature. Unless you invest in more equipment to actively cool your coolant, then you are bound to never get any colder than what, 76-80F degrees. (Unless you run some plumbing through your wall, and into an underground concrete slab.) Water Cooling will not cut it for extreme OC'ing. I just look at it this way, if all you are really after is quiet, then save yourself the $200 and get yourself a quality fan, and some foam to sound proof your case.
4.) Water Cooling aint that much quieter. Water cooling is Quieter that most Fan/Heatsink combinations. Fine. So why not get Fan-less heat sinks? Pelltier Heat Pumps? Sound proof the case, or better yet do a combination thereof. Seriously though, I can't think of any reason why Water Cooling would be the only/best quiet cooling method.
In my opinion, the only reason to have a water cooled box, is because of the cool factor. And frankly, it ain't even that cool. I mean really, most people I know use water only to show off the inside of their box, (UV lighted water, etc) Granted it looks neato, however most of the people I know made these custom computers to show them off (normally at LAN parties), and now they can't even bring the computer with them to the LAN parties because the whole thing becomes to delicate, and too complicated to bother with.
I say that water cooling, as most people are familiar with, is only suitable for a hobbyist who just wants to build something cool.... who wants to say that he has a computer that is water cooled. But don't get me wrong, it is fun to build one, and even more fun to tell people that you have a water cooled box. IMHO, I think it is even MORE fun to tell people that you cpu's are below freezing.
Simply put, Water Cooling works for some people, and it can be a satisfying build project. And yes, it can look pretty awesome. But for me, I would rather spend my money on other cooling methods.
I enjoy my loud ass dual 1.64ghz Tualatin OC'd box heat pumped, and running at a very cool 2 degrees Fahrenheit. I *like* to pretend I am sitting on a flight deck.
Don't be a tool. http://insight.matrixflux.com [matrixflux.com]