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

This Manometer should complete the DIY project ...

[xmas2003]

For those Do-It-Yourselfer's that want to measure the water pressure for PC cooling, take a look at this manometer which, while it doesn't look that dandy, works quite well as the principals of pressure are pretty simple.

What About?

[seaniqua]

skipping the pump and hooking directly into a low-flow water line? This would be the most expensive option (water bill), but eliminates the possibility of pump failure, and isn't reliable on ambient roomj temp (my water is quite cold when it comes out of the faucet, regardless of how hot the house is). Of course, if a hose leaks, a self-contained system would stop dripping when the reservoir was empty, while this would flood the whole house! Anyway, something to think about

Re:What About?

[Enigma_Man]

We actually heated / cooled our apartment at school like this. We had a Saab radiator I scavenged hooked up to the kitchen sink. We rigged up some cardboard ducting, and strapped a few fans in pusher-configuration behind the radiator blowing outwards. The hot water flowed from the bottom of the radiator to the top, so it remained in the radiator for longer, to throw off as much heat as possible. The water going in was hot hot hot, the water coming out was lukewarm (we'd run it at a trickle to extract as much heat from the water as possible). If we cranked it, we could get the entire apartment up to a balmy 75 degrees. It also worked "ok" to cool the house when it was hot, but much less well than heating the house.

-Jesse

Why use Water?!?

[Zarniwoop_Editor]

Why not use something like the 3M product.

I saw a color tv floating in a tank of this at a trade show years ago, something about a running color tv floating in liquid is just wrong.

But I'm sure It would be much better than water for many many reason.

"Fluorinert FC-77, a specialty fluid from 3M, to cool the laser tube. It is a colorless, odorless liquid (just like water) and if you get some of it on your fingers, it is harmless, just wash your hands with clean water (according to 3M).

Here is the description from 3M web site:

"Heat Transfer Fluids
The wide liquid range of Fluorinert liquid FC-77 (-110C to 97C) makes it ideal for use in automated test equipment (ATE) and other semiconductor process equipment. Its high dielectric strength means it will not damage electronic equipment or semiconductor wafers, chips or packages in the event of a leak or other failure. In addition, FC-77 liquid is chemically stable, nonflammable and practically non-toxic".

new way of water cooling?

[LiquidMind]

A few months ago, i saw this clip which had some folks at Good Morning America showing off a liquid that doesn't get things wet. they had a tank of this stuff and put some (powered) electronics in them (laptop, LCD TV) and they operated just fine underwater. They put a book in this stuff and none of the pages got wet as they pulled it out. Check it out

anyway, it would be cool to find out if you can just put your whole computer in this stuff. cooling problem solved, right?

Re:watercooling

[Greyfox]

Why not use heat pipes to duct the heat into a passive resivoir? Sure, it might take some work to get the heat pipes bent the way you want 'em to fit in the case, but once that's out of the way it should be pretty smooth sailing. You won't have to worry about moving parts breaking, and you won't have to have running water in close proximity to your electronic components.

State of the art CPU cooling

[freelunch]

The Cray X1 employs Phase Change cooling in one of the more extreme power densities publicly known.

Check it out in this video.

Cray's phase change uses Fluorinert, while the average PC uses Freon.

I went with an XP-90 to air cool my new Athlon 64. The heatpipes arguably make it passive phase change cooling.

Air conditioning in computer room instead

[BestNicksRTaken]

Water can only cool to the ambient temperature of the room, and not below as some people seem to think - which is why it is no better than air/fan solutions, except for lower noise.

You'd be better off cooling your room with AC, and getting the benefit of cooling yourself, not just your processor!

Re:oh man

[nossid]

Stylish, stylish? I'll give you some nonstylish.

Close up

Test installation

It's a nasty hack that I put together during an exam period if I recall correctly. And no, I'm not using it today.

Re:Are we done watercooling yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

This is slashdot. What did you think this was, a geek/technical enthusiast website?

It is a common misconception that every "socially inept" teenager is a bright and capable geek. Some are actually just dull, lazy, stupid kids that additionally can't relate to people. My guess is that your ultimatum is not going to turn many kiddies into hackers.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Watercooling advantages...

[SHiVa0]

While most of the poeple using watercooling does so to gain performance (ie overclock) It wasn't why I did it.

You see, my computer is located inside a closet. While being the quietest computer around, I can dry my clothes with that brand new Prescott 2.8E.

I needed a way to remove the heat from that closet, So I drilled holes in the walls and installed the pump / radiator in stair room going to the basement.

I do miss wearing those warm clothes on cold winter days... :(

My PC

[FiveRings]

My PC at home has been watercooled for about a year now. I would definitely say it's more for tinkering than performance. I haven't read the article because it's been slashdotted, but watercooling isn't really anything new. (Consider Sony and Alienware's prebuilt systems with watercooling.) I've had one spill and that was really my fault and all my hardware survived (but it was a good excuse to buy new stuff anyways). Pros: It did allow me to overclock a bit more. It was much quieter. Fun to tinker with. Cons: I have to be paranoid about leaks. I have to check water levels once in awhile. I brought it to a LAN once and it wouldn't boot up because with the pump, it sucked more amperage than they allowed per socket.

It works great

[Zackbass]

I've been doing my own water cooling systems for a few years now and have come to the conclusion that if you aren't a complete idiot you'll never have any trouble.

Here's my first project:
http://www.overclockers.com/tips1009/index.asp

I finished my second last September and have been using it since. I built the whole case from stainless steel tubing. One side of the case is pressurized for water distribution and the other side is a reservior. Here's a pic:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/zackbass1/IMG_0023compr essed.jpg
The great thing about is that I'm able to run my little 2.4C at over 3.4Ghz (I built it in Sept 2003, so it was a big deal) completely silently. The radiator is large enough that it doesn't need any fans. The only noise that comes from the case is the hard disks spinning.

Re:I'm past thinking about water-cooling

[silverdr]

Water-cooling has a few kinks like electricity near water

So what? What kind of kink is in that? We are talking about water. Not salted water nor mineral water - just pure water (H2O). As pure as possible.

and corrosion

What corrosion? We are talking about water. Not salted water nor mineral water - just pure water (H2O). As pure as possible. This one is non-corrosive, non-electrolythic and as cheap as coke. If you chose tap water (which is far from being a pure H2O) as your coolant - it's your own choice, risk and kink.

[...]but you still are at the mercy of the ambient room temperature.

So what? What is the "mercy"? Isn't the same "mercy" valid when air-dust-noise cooling?

It's finicky enough that you couldn't build a machine with water cooling and leave it in a room for 3 years so

I wouldn't leave a fan-cooled machine for three years without attention either. Your fans can get stuck, worn out etc., can't they? What's so finicky here?

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.

Huh... at least water is a well-known fire extiguishing medium. Your pc can have it's own, automatic extinguishing system when it starts to burn. The same can't be said about broken fans... :-)

No. There is no hole unless you choose the wrong coolant and/or cooling block. Choose wisely (the same as with CPU fans), install with proper care and attention to detiails and there is no higher risk at all. I keep my machines running all the time, doing intensive computing and server activities. That's why I chose water-cooling: to cut the noise. All I do is add a little water (you know, which one) every couple of months...

Peltier cool the air intake

[leon.gandalf]

Why not peltier cool the air being drawn into the system.... much in the same way those 12v travel coolers keep things cool.

You might want to re-state that...

[Svartalf]

This would depend entirely on whether you exceed the heat-pumping capacity of the refrigerator. If you don't exceed the amount being pumped out of the space, it will cool down, the rate being dependent on the rate of thermal transfer above and beyond the heat source's generation of heat.

I've seen active refrigeration systems coupled with water cooling that were based off of mini-fridges (There was one that won a case-mod prize at QuakeCon 2003...). The CPU was cooled down below ambient and he was able to keep Bawls and Cokes cold in the thing.

Fluorinert

[Visaris]

You can buy Fluorinert it in 250cc or 1L bottles here:

http://www.parallax-tech.com/fluorine.htm

Re:watercooling

[sadomikeyism]

Being an engineer, I have to ask: Why not turn the motherboard upside down, so the heat sink dips into the coolant BELOW the processor. Ergo, no leaks to drip onto the board, because the coolant is at a lower gravity potential.

Air cooled boards have the fins going up because hot air rises so you want to separate that hot air from the board as quickly as possible. With a liquid coolant, you only have to be concerned that sufficient coolant is flowing through the fins.

Ergo, you are back to a single point of failure: the pump/fan device. Maybe I need to get into developing one of these things to show how it's done...

Mineral oil

[nelsonal]

Why couldn't you run mineral oil instead of water in an enclosed system. I ran the numbers and it looked like it should be able to pump about 200W using a 2 Gpm pump. Copper block and radiator sufficent to dispose the heat to ambient (assumes a 10C differential in temp). Has anyone ever tried to run mineral oil through a pump intended for water does the increased viscosity shorten the life, or will it handle it alright? Seems like most of the mineral oil set ups I've seen discribed use immersion which seems like considerable overkill. Mineral oil seems like a fine solution until processor power goes considerably higher. The heat transfer class I took was an aweful long time ago so please point out any errors in my back of the envelope calcs.