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."

Comments

I'm past thinking about water-cooling

[stecoop]

I once thought peltiers would be great with water cooling but we read on /. the other day that these devices are 5% efficient so that's a no.

Water-cooling has a few kinks like electricity near water and corrosion - at least a few years ago that may be solved no days with Antifreeze but you still are at the mercy of the ambient room temperature. It's finicky enough that you couldn't build a machine with water cooling and leave it in a room for 3 years so that leaves a hole in reliability as I couldn't leave my machines on while going away for two weeks on vacation unless I didn't mind rolling the dice to seeing fire trucks at my home.

Considering Water-cooling Your PC? This was the leader I was until I saw a home made active cooling system. I first saw active cooling systems from http://www.vapochill.com/ (website down?) and have been waiting for someone to take an AC compressor and attach it to a computer case. It seems that were just on the verge of DIYers of achieving satisfactory results in active cooling systems; therefore, I will hang on to old reliable (the passive radiators) until I can muscle up the nerve to go the active cooling route.

Why water?

[BeerCat]

OK, so water is cheap, but why not go for materials with better cooling properties (like in a fridge), which would be more efficient?

Something that is non-destructive to PCBs if it leaks would also be a bonus.

watercooling

[Large Bogon Collider]

The major hangup I have about watercooling systems is fault tolerance. How the the whole system handle 1) pump failure, 2) water leak, 3) coolant loss, etc without destroying the PC, or worse, starting a fire.

Re:watercooling

[Large Bogon Collider]

Semi-true. In many newer processors, if the fan gives out, the CPU on-die heat sensor throttles back power consumption to prevent overheating. However, with a HS+fan, there is only one point of failure, the fan. With watercooling (which I have thought long and hard about), the fan can fail, the tubes can crack/leak/break, the connectors and fail, the pump can fail, corrosion can block the waterblock, etc. These are not just hypothetical situation - they have happened. The scariest part is if the water leaks and shorts out something expensive - esp. the CPU and graphics card (which is usually sitting directly below the CPU). I would be upset if the cooling system caused a fire, but would be even more so if insurance decided not to cover it because of my modifications.

This isn't something to encourage.

[pclminion]

Water cooling, I think, isn't something we should be encouraging. It's just one more excuse for chip makers to ignore their chips' power requirements. The real solution is for the chips to run cooler, not to slap bigger and more complicated cooling systems on them.

If you're using water cooling for noise-reduction purposes, okay. But if you literally need it in order to keep your chip cool, there's something very wrong.

We should NOT be encouraging chip makers to continue avoiding power problems. It's environmentally irresponsible.

Are we done watercooling yet?

[karlandtanya]

Reminds me of a 16 year old that bolts the entire Summit Racing catalog onto his mustang and thinks now he's a gearhead.

Go invent something. Go build something. Heck, even go break something while learning about it. Join you local tesla coil or ham radio club and learn something. Contribute a patch to an open-source project. build a watercooling system out of parts from Lowe's. Be proud of that.

Go buy something? Something that's largely non-functional, and unreliable? And bolt it on to your computer? Oh, yeah! You da man!