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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.
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.
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.
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