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Considering Watercooling Your PC?
An anonymous reader writes "Thinking of taking the plunge into water cooling your PC? These guys have rounded up three systems ranging from cheap and cheerful, to stylish and pricey."
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Water has excellent heat transfer properties, (better than the refrigrants in your fridge), is easy to handle, unlike some of the better heat transfer fluids such as liquid metals, and is non toxic.
If you want to immerse your computer, Flourinert has been around forever, though now probably banned.
I have some experience with watercooling. With proper care, it's safe and a quiet way to cool your machine. For those of you who move your computers around though, becareful what materials you use. I built my computer in a warm dorm room which meant that my copper block to plastic piping worked fine. Then I took it home to my freezing basement and water went everywhere. I think the metal shrank while the plastic didn't, and water came out of the connections.
Other than that I never had any problems. I don't use it anymore because it's too heavy to carry around all of the time.
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
You would probably be better off..
the heat transfer equation H=h*a*(delta T)
H=heat
h=heat transfer coefficient
a=surface area available for cooling
delta T=diff between temperature of device to be cooled and surrounding cooling fluid
shows that the easiest way to cool something is to reduce the temperature of the fluid that cools it..
If you lower the air temp in your computer case by 10c, the processer temp drops by 10c, assuming the fans all stay at the same speed.
Increasing "a" is limited by fin efficiency (which is what these water cooling systems are trying to get around, but a sealed evaporator/condenser would be smaller and more efficient, there is a metric buttload of patents now on sealed passive boilers/condensers), and as air speed increases, "h" rises less and less in proportion)
If you want more info, look at the free download of the heat transfer textbook I list in my journal.
From the second page you listed:
;-)
The best candidate seems to be an eutectic solution of sodium and potassium, (NaK). The melting point is as low as -12 C. Its density and viscosity are similar to water but it has a lower specific heat and a much higher thermal conductivity. NaK can be used with nickel, chrome and steel but it is aggressive to cadmium, antimony, bismuth, copper, lead, silicon, tin, and magnesium. It also reacts violently with air and water. It is apparent that this alloy is associated with several material and handling problems. Liquid sodium has nevertheless been used as a coolant for nuclear reactors, which shows that these drawbacks can be managed.
Sure, but do we want to manage flammable liquids that combust when exposed to air in our home? Pumped through our computer? Not to mention that it eats away at silicon and most likely the PCB itself.
I can see why no one considers this.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Last time I tried water cooling my computer, the pipe started leaking, there was a short circuit and I accidentally set my computer on fire, which needless to say was neither cooling nor cool... After that accident I gave up altogether and do you know what I did? Instead of overclocking my CPUs, I started to underclock them. I noticed that in many cases even a 15-20% lower c;ock speed may eliminate the need of having any fan at all, as long as there is a large radiator with good contact and a reasonable air flow in the case. Sacrificing those few percents of megahertzes might sound very "not elite" but guess what? It still can display websites faster than I can read.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
"cheap & cheerful" is a common British phrase which basically means "not expensive or fancy but it does the job".
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
The Peltiers we tested in the lab needed the same amount of electrical power as the amount of heat they moved..So much better than 5 %, but it doubles the thermal load on your heatsink.
The EER rating on air conditioners (a common heat pump) tell you the ratio of heat moved to power expended to move it. The units of EER are messed up though, it is BTU/HOUR divided by Watts, multiplied by some factor of 10.
Corrosion should not happen. Not in the lifetime of your system anyways. Distilled water + anti-corrosion type additive should see to that in closed loop system.
These systems must have UL approval right? If so, I don't think your insurance company would be able to say jack if you didn't just grossly mis-install it. But, since it involves water + electronics, I wonder about requirements of a GFCI circuit.
Vapor-phase cooling can cool a CPU below the ambient temperature, and it's not "5% efficent".
There is a 12V Vapochill system that requires only 6.6A, and it is quite effective at cooling even the P4 Prescott (not nearly as effective as the AC versions of the same product, though).
A sealed chamber with only water and water vapor in it (all air and other non-condensible gasses have been removed) will boil water at the hot end and recondense it at the cold end, at any temp above freezing for the water.
If the chamber is a vertical tube with the water and the heat source at the bottom, and fins and cooling air at the top end, the vapor from the hot end will recondense at the top cold end and run back down. (It's really a heat pipe without the porous media to move the condesed fluid back to the hot side.)
I had the same concerns alot of people on here seem to have about watercooling. I shelled out around $900 for a Koolance case a little over 3 years ago and popped in a Intel MB w/ P4 1.7. I also have my 6 300GB HDs and GF FX Video card water cooled as well. I have been in the case quite a few times, and even upgraded it to a P4 3Ghz, new Intel MB, and new Vid card. I even had to replace my old socket 423 cooler for a socket 478 cooler and no probs. To this day (3+ years later) I have NEVER had a single problem with my case. No leaks, no overheating, no problems period. Yes, it only cools as much as the ambient temp in the room, but on a really hot day that is only 100degrees F. As I type this I am running at 92f.. during intense gaming (ie. Doom 3) The temp never exceeds 110f on the CPU (which is where the temp probes are). I have never been able to get my heatsink/fan CPUs to cool nearly this good under intense loads. Just thought I would share my personal experience with watercooling.
I wanted to chime in here. My friend and I put together HIS Zalman Reserator (not mine -- got no extra money for these things) and Antec Aria SFF PC a few weeks ago with tremendous results. The Zalman Reserator retails for $250 at Frys. Most online vendors charge more for it.
It's basically a 2.5' tall heatsink/radiator with a submerged pump. It includes a waterblock for your processor (Intel and AMD) and all the tubing/hardware you need.
You lose the ability to easily bleed the thing, although clamping off hoses and pouring nearly 3 liters of water out the top of a Reserator doesn't really seem all that troublesome to me.
Bottom line -- he dropped his idle temps by 20C and his load temps by a similar amount. This was a few weeks ago when it was slightly warmer here in Georgia. He now idles (running a P4 Prescott) at about 27C. It's pretty amazing.
For more information, see here:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=783557
IronChefMorimoto