Silent Water Cooling on the SLI

Doggie Fizzle writes "Overclockers with a serious SLI gaming system don't have to deal with the drone of double the fans to get the extreme performance. A review of a customized Zalman Reserator 1+ water cooling system shows a well overclocked SLI system offering solid temperatures on the CPU, but an impressive drop of 20 degrees C on both video cards during full load operation... And the unique cooling tower of the Reserator 1+ does it all without a single fan to cool these hot components."

Comments

ooh

[Neophus]

I bet this is making the gamers all wet!

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Re:Even better than water cooling

[winkydink]

Flourinert would be a better pick, but the stuff is very expensive.

Re:My SLI / Linux experience

[TelJanin]

Or maybe just open the graphical installer, type "quake 3" into the search box, and then click "install".

Doesn't seem that hard to me. But then, I'm not an idiot.

My experience with reserator

[etymxris]

It's enough two keep a dual CPU rig cool, and is indeed quite silent. Of course, the effect will be ruined if your motherboard has a chipset fan, which are inevitably noisy. Most PCIEx boards have their chipset right under the video card, making water block placement problematic. I found a waterblock that fit, but I had to fashion my own fastener to give the video card room to fit in the slot. If anyone is interested, here are some pics of my own setup, back when the choices were blue or blue.

I should also mention that the reserator is highly sensitive to room temperature changes. If the room increases temp by a few degrees celcius, so will your water.

Re:Even better than water cooling

[Kaboom13]

I have seen refrigerated cases before,there was even a company that specialized in them, but I cant remember the name. The problem I see with using freon is freon refrigeration a. Uses a compressor to force the freon to a liquid state, which is more complicated and expensive then the simple water pump, and b. reaches a temperature low enough to make condensation a serious concern. Water cooling is more then adequate for CPU cooling, even with heavy overclocking. Using a freon system would only have benefits in the "because I could" category, and like I said, it's been done before.

Re:Even better than water cooling

[merreborn]

How come nobody's thought of using FREON as the coolant, like in air conditioning units?

I thought we use freon in AC and fridges because they're compressor-based cooling systems? Not becuase it's got some magical better-than-water specific heat...

Water cooling is completely different from compression cooling. One uses a pump, and keeps the coolant at a constant pressure, one uses a compressor and varies the presure of the coolant. I think freon would be a shitty coolant at room temperature, used in a water cooling-style aparatus.

I mean, yeah, if you're gonna install a compressor in your PC, then freon makes sense...

Re:Even better than water cooling

[denissmith]

Quite possibly because it is suspected of destroying the ozone layer, and its use is banned.

Silent water? Reminds me of a song ...

[spellraiser]

Letting the days go by
Let the water cool it down
Letting the days go by
Water flowing in my box
Into the CPU
In the silent water
Inside the tower yes,
There is water cooling it.

(With apologies to The Talking Heads)

Re:Silent water? Reminds me of a song ...

[dynamo]

That's the same as it ever was.

Wow, the trolls REALLY are out tonight

[$RANDOMLUSER]

They're having so much fun, I almost hate to post on-topic.

I looked the first generation of this unit over pretty carefully when it first came out. I'm really glad they changed the color of the tower from that awful blue, the black would match my tower really well. The problem is, this thing doesn't cool that much better than a good fan-equipped CPU heat sink. Essentially, it's a fish tank pump, some tubing, and a big aluminum tank with sme percolation. The check-valves and flow indicators are nifty, and the thing is quiet, but it's not really overclockers gear, more like something for a total silence freak.

Hope this helps, you can go back to your regularly scheduled trolling now.

There are.

[PAPPP]

While a freon-style coolant based system running with no compressor (as implied in the parent) wouldnt be very effective, there are some compressor based systems. Most notably is the asetek vapochill which is a compressor-driven phase change cooler hooked up to a CPU pad. The same company makes widgets that are essencally case-sized airconditioners. These are NOT low-noise solutions like water cooling though, as compressors (think of a refridgerator or airconditioner) are loud.
As for using another liquid in a compressorless system, there really isnt anything practical that would work better. Of sane materials, water is best, the only liquid (at room temperature) more thermally conductive than water is Mercury, and that would be very heavy, and pose a substantal health risk. Koolance provides a good explination of this situation from the perspective of computer cooling. The coolest ones are that inert 3M material they show that is ALLMOST as thermally conductive as water, and completely inert (safe if it gets on your system, and even for submersion cooling, unfortunately the stuff costs about $500/gallon).

Re:There are.

[NormalVisual]

The coolest ones are that inert 3M material they show that is ALLMOST as thermally conductive as water, and completely inert (safe if it gets on your system, and even for submersion cooling, unfortunately the stuff costs about $500/gallon).

Water can be made pretty damn close to inert if you have a de-ionization filter somewhere in the loop. The dual-loop chillers for the laser systems I used to work with ran water directly over a 130VDC arc lamp drawing 60 amps (and was directly in contact with both electrodes at all times) but because it was DI it wouldn't conduct electricity to any real degree. Having said that, it's still possible that the crap that might be on your motherboard would dissolve in your nice, clean water and make it conductive if you spilled some on the CPU.

Ultimate Case Mod!

[sarge apone]

Blacklight + Irradiated Sea Monkeys = mobile LEDs in tubes

Water Cooling? Great, but expensive

[Thilo2]

I had a Geforce4 once but that one just broke down exactly 2 years after buying it, there was so much dust in there the fan wouldn't rotate anymore and i didn't notice. And blowing through the ribs of the processor cooler i regularly managed to have dust clouds shoot out at least 5 meters.
The fan for the processor broke twice, luckily the amd thunderbirds seem to be able to withstand extreme temperatures. I live downtown, so there really is alot of dust.
That's when I decided to switch to water cooling. I just couldn't be arsed anymore to do all this cleaning stuff every 3 months and fearing the next component will die the death of heat because i fail to notice a fan is broken.

I am having water cooling for over half a year now.
I cool my cpu, and AMD64 3200, mainboard chip and GT6600 card on an Asus A8N-SLI board with water. This means, i effectively got rid of three noisy fans and replaced them with two big and quiet ones for the radiator. Combined with a good power supply, it is simply amazing how quiet the system is compared to the earlier setup, if I don't look at the LEDs I frequently fail to notice the system is running at all. No cleaning anymore of the fans and coolers, which is a huge relief for me (better than switching from ball mouse to optical mouse) and I have a handwarmer now in wintertimes (got to play some 3d heavy stuff though ;) by just touching the radiator.
The downside is that it can turn out expensive and you can spend much money on it. If you buy the right things, it is very unlikely water leaks out, the biggest danger comes from a broken pump. Considering that I had many failing fans in my environment before and already broken hardware as a result I'm willing to take that risk, so yes, I would do it again if I had the choice.

Zalman reserator product great but has a flaw

[jjr23]

Kinda like the iPod Nano and its scratchable screen, the Zalman reserator is a great product with an annoying flaw. The reserator does give near silent cooling....for a while... After a few months, you might start to hear a quiet rattling.... then it gets louder. After 3 or 4 months, the reserator can making a full-on loud rattling that can get unbearable. The problem is with the pump that comes with it. It has a soft bearing that extended high heat and constant use can wear down and cause the pump's impeller to rattle. Zalman knows about this and offers free replacements for the pump (I'm on my third after 9 months). The real solution is to spend another $20 on getting a better pump though. Note that this is only a problem if you have a really hot system, such as a dual cpu + gpu + northbridge cooled system. Here is the forum thread on the subject. http://www.zalmanforums.com/showthread.php?t=48&pp =10 Ok. With full knowledge of this problem though, I have to say that I love the product. My computer used to sound like a jet engine with all the fans, and now is REALLY REALLY quiet (with a good pump). Sure, I found myself in an aquarium looking for a part to fix my computer, but I think that it is worth it (and it only cost me an extra 20 bucks).

Coolant is toxic, avoid if you have pets/kids

[bigtrike]

The ethylene glycol coolant included with this is very toxic. It tastes sweet and is highly toxic to small children and pets. It is toxic in both liquid and vapor forms. I would either avoid this product or safely dispose the included coolant and replace it instead with propylene glycol which is only toxic in very large quantities. It also does not taste sweet, so your animals/children are far less likely to ingest it in the case of a leak.

Re:Coolant is toxic, avoid if you have pets/kids

[ProZachar]

Antifreeze bottled up in your garage usually isn't cycling through a pump for better parts of (or all of) the day. Most modern gasoline pumps can't be operated by children; at least one button required to start the pump is far too high for someone under 5 years old to push.

You *might* be able to teach a two year old that water from the reserator is a no-no. I doubt it, but you might. Good luck with trying to teach that to a dog or cat.

I don't know myself, but I suspect that propylene glycol is very similar to ethylene glycol in all relevant respects (price, cooling ability, etc.) except toxicity. So why would you belittle someone for advocating a solution that gets most (if not all) of the benefits of the original one but carries much less risk? That's called "making a good decision" and it's an important part of that thing called "the real world".

Meh....its overrated

[BalaClavaChord]

Traded in my 'Zalman Reserator 1+' for a 'PSU of Arctic Chill +4' last week to an elven mage.

Never looked back....

Re:Even better than water cooling

[DJCacophony]

The company is asetek. http://www.asetek.com/

Re:If recent history is any indicator

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

It's just running in SLI mode with another article for maximum efficiency. Duh.