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Water Cooling Computers With A Swimming Pool
guzugi writes "This is a project I have been working for several months and been hypothesizing for much longer. The basic idea is to shortcut the need for an air conditioner when cooling multiple computers. Swimming pool water is pumped into the house and through several waterblocks to effectively cool these hot machines. This greatly reduces noise cooling requirements."
Because I always choose clorinated water to ensure the maximum corrosion in my computer's cooling system.
Watch out for condensation if your coolant (swimming pool water) is colder than room temperature! You don't need crazy temp differentials to cool a CPU. If you pull water from outside, odds are it will be colder than the air around your water block. This can cause all sorts of problems. Room temperature water is even easier to deal with than cold water. If you are just looking for quiet operation rather than crazy overclocks, you won't need the pool.
Plan for a bit of condensation. Flip your motherboards around so if drops of water (*god forbid*) were to form, they drop away from the mainboard. Water from condensation tends to be pure enough that it won't short out your system as easy as one might think. Still... bad things can happen.
Also, you will want some sort of anti-crap mixed into your water, or you can get all sorts of funky growth. More of an issue for closed systems than water from a swimming pool (with all the CL, etc). Be sure your piping can handle that. I've seen folks use hose that did deteriorate over time. Not pretty. A clogged 'artery' on a heat sink will kill your system dead. Non-conductive anti-crap additive is a really good idea.
Lastly, if the water pump dies, everything else will die. Make sure you have some sort of kill switch so all your hardware shuts down if you lose water flow.
Check out the overclockers forums out there. While you don't need the extreme lower temperatures, a big radiator and large low RPM fan in another room make for a very quite office environment.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Well, according to TFA, he already corroded the aluminum blocks and replaced them with acrylic. He doesn't seem to have learned, though, as he's talking about submerging his houses A/C condenser coil (typically copper tubes, aluminum fins). Guess it'll take a little longer for him to find out about other incompatibilities.
This is a neat idea, but as pointed out in other posts, there are some serious drawbacks as far as corrosion and other contaminants in the water. Have you considered using a heat exchanger? This would isolate you from pool water and you could fill the lines with clean water to avoid all of these issues.
Depending on temperature conditions the heat would build up in the box also, cutting the lifespan of the motor down. Since he has a pool to begin with I would assume he lives in a area with hot summer temperatures. Just my two cents(probably not even worth that).
"The universe is my dwelling place and my house is my only clothes! Why are you entering into my pants?" - Liu Ling
Heat Exchanger
Just because you're using the pool as a heat sink doesn't mean you have to run the actual pool water through your computer.
Now, this guy doesn't seem to have caught on to that, but it's not a totally implausible solution. Keeping the heat in water, even through an exchanger, is still more efficient than trying to dump the heat directly to the air, at least until you build a radiator the size of your pool.
To avoid the problems with chlorinated pool water corroding the waterblocks and other hardware, he really needs to install a water-to-water heat exchanger in the system. Pool water would run in the primary side of the exchanger, with distilled water or glycol on the computer side. A second circulating pump would also be needed.
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That reminds me of a friend who was quite proud of his fanless water cooling solution which worked with several litres of water as heat dump in a container sitting under his desk.
When one of the main pipes got loose somehow, it not only fried some hardware, but majorely pissed of his landlord...
Problems:
The right way to do this is with a heat exchanger that is robust on the swimming-pool side and has conditioned water in a closed circuit on the other side. Requires two pumps, but has a change of working longer than a few (if that) months.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
REally? because I bet you could not raise the temperature to more than 85 deg if the ambient is 70 deg in a 6 gallon tank with your computer.
6 gallons of water is a LOT of thermal mass, putting in into a cooling tank with an open top is a really big thermal release.
Althoguh most of you here know incredibly litte about physics and chemistry so it's no suprise there.
Your "uber PC" could be easily coold with probably 3 gallons of water in a open tank as the only cooling vessel. evaporation is far more efficient of a cooling system than anything you can buy... Yes even the uber watercooling systems for sale SUCK compared to the 10X more efficient evaporation systems.
Which is why they have been in use for hundreds of years. News for Nerds, stuff from ancient times.
No it's not like that AT ALL. I'd much rather climb a mountain actually - you can gain a lot from it (read what some of the folks who climbed the everest a few times and such have to say about it). Whereas installing piping that'll likely ruin my computers or house, costing lots of money (and wasting time) in the process just doesn't seem to benefit me in any way, shape or form.
/. and no I ain't new here). Going visit my relatives. Going on trips (long and short - went to a museum just today). Watch some good movies with the wife or in family. Playing guitar. Sometimes I like to volunteer for some stuff (help others). You name it!
Yes, one has to do something with their time. I chose to spend most of my free time with my kids and wife (yes, I know this is
But wasting my time with this thing? No way. Life's too short to waste time on that.
Instead of "funny" I would have modded this as insightful.
Well said.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
You like climbing mountains, the other guy may not find it interesting at all.
factor 966971: 966971
put your CPU into a separate room.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
What I think you guys are confused about is what they put into pools. The chlorine of choice nowadays is calcium hypochlorite
No, I'm not. I've owned a pool for years. The most commonly used form of chlorine is Trichloro-S-Triazinetrione (or Trichloroisocyanuric acid or simply, trichlor). Calcium hypochlorite breaks down very quickly in sun light (uv light) and requires the use of a stablizer (usually cyanuric acid). Trichlor already contains a stablizer, making it much more economical to use.
Anonymous Cowards suck.