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Water Cooling With A Car Radiator

Posted by timothy on from the then-he's-gonna-kill-us dept.

sH4RD writes "Why go out and buy a water cooling system when you can do it with an old car radiator? That's exactly what One of The Twelve figured when he used the radiator from his brother's 1979 Toyota Corolla to cool his system. His Athlon64 3000+ can hit 2.5GHz smoothly now. Check out the original forum post complete with benchmarks."

6 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Antifreeze by dykofone · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I really appreciate that he still used a glycol/water mixture. Pretty unnecessary, but certainly a nice touch.

    Radiators were made to have a flow of air over them, so putting a fan blowing over that thing would greatly increase its cooling abilities. Of course, he's still stuck with old shitty car parts under his desk...

    1. Re:Antifreeze by Bilestoad · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't think you really understand. A fan can only help a radiator bring coolant to ambient temperature. If this radiator already provide 200 times the required cooling then adding a fan isn't going to make it "much" cooler, probably not "any" cooler.

  2. And? by MightyPez · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hate to sound like an elitist, but this is fairly common practice for water cooled PC's. Except most people tend to use smaller heater cores. That, and tend to buy them new and clean.

  3. Would a five gallon bucket been easier? by MyNameIsFred · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With the amount of coolant in the radiator, would it have been easier to use a five gallon bucket? It's not like he's really using the radiator's fins.

  4. nuke cool by twitter · · Score: 4, Insightful
    why not use whatever they use to cool nuclear reactor cores to cool your computer

    It's water, but it's too expensive and hot for you. It's de ionized and monitored for purity so that nothing plates out and it does not eat your cladding, that's the costly part. But, under pressure, it's hot enough to light paper on fire. That's a little too hot for your little cpu.

    I'm not a car mechanic. Duh.

    Do not, learn not. Your loss. Ask yourself what's the worst thing that can happen. If you can live with that, go for it. If not take steps to mitigate the worst. If that's not enough, then you might not do it.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  5. Re:I'll give someone $5... by david.given · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Can it be the "New" Beetle? Those are liquid-cooled and have radiators.

    They're not Beetles. They're bastardised abominations from the land of marketing. They're just VW Golfs with a funky shell on top --- decent enough cars in their own way, but if you want a Golf, just buy one.

    It ain't a Beetle if it ain't rear-engine air-cooled.