The World's First CPU Liquid Cooler Using Nanofluids

An anonymous reader writes "CPU water cooling may be more expensive than air cooling, but it is quieter and moves the bulk away from your CPU. It's also improving, as Zalman has just demonstrated with the announcement of the Reserator 3. Zalman is claiming that the Reserator 3 is the world's first liquid cooler to use nanofluids. What's that then? It involves adding refrigerant nanoparticles to the fluid that gets pumped around inside the cooler transporting the heat produced by a CPU to the radiator and fan where it is expelled. By using the so-called nanofluid, Zalman believes it can offer better cooling, and rates the Reserator 3 as offering up to 400W of cooling while remaining very quiet. The fluid and pump is supplemented by a dual copper radiator design and "quadro cooling path," which consists of two copper pipes sitting behind the fan and surrounded by the radiators. The heatsink sitting on top of the CPU is a micro-fin copper base allowing very quick transfer of heat to the nanofluid above."

Comments

Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Hartree]

We've been using Dihrdrogen Monoxide for cooling for decades. And it has angstrom size particles!

Is this guy claiming his way is better because he's tossing something the relative size of beach balls into his kiddie ball pit?

( ;) for the humor impaired.)

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[AliasMarlowe]

We've been using Dihrdrogen Monoxide for cooling for decades. And it has angstrom size particles!
Is this guy claiming his way is better because he's tossing something the relative size of beach balls into his kiddie ball pit?

It's just another slashvertisement. Presumably this sort of thing pays well enough.
Angstrom sized molecules do the cooling better, whether H2O or an actual refrigerant. Zalman don't even say what their "nano" particles are, other than being gigantic in comparison.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[girlintraining]

Is this guy claiming his way is better because he's tossing something the relative size of beach balls into his kiddie ball pit?

The word "believe" should have been a dead giveaway this is a scam. My mom has this special "vormag" water that has a sticker on the side that says "this vortex and magnetized water raises its energy to a higher level we believe is more beneficial." When you have the word 'believe' next to something that can be objectively measured, you should simply mentally add to the end "... according to the department of bullshit."

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Teun]

As proven by some windscreen liquids nano particles can wiggle themselves between a solid surface and water and make the rain run off easily, the question is if they can improve the transfer of heat compared to 'just' water.
It is a know fact that various alcohols that are used as anti-freeze lower the heat transfer of liquid cooled systems.

Mercury or Sodium work much better but have their own issues...

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Immerman]

They mention refrigerants, so probably they're talking about massive molecules like chlorofluorocarbons or something which do have some interesting properties and may actually be better coolants than water. A lot more chemical bonds = a lot more degrees of freedom in which thermal energy can be stored = much higher specific heat capacity. This is actually reasonably well understood, and the reason that the ideal gas law (PV=nRT) becomes increasingly inaccurate for anything beyond the most simple molecules

But yeah, sounds like "nano-particles" is just a way to sex-up the advertising campaign, and has nothing to do with the nano-engineered materials/mechanisms that "nano-whatsits" typically refer to.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Anonymous Coward]

He should have used Proton Vibration Alignment to enhance the properties of the "refrigerant nanoparticles". http://www.protonalignment.com/

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Anonymous Coward]

You call it "windscreen nanoparticles". Most of us call it "wax". Rain-X and similar products are just a wax for glass, giving the surface less friction so the water slides off.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Immerman]

Lies and slander! Vormag water clearly helps revitalize your seventh-dimensional astral being, leading to a better flow of vital essence through the 12th and 47th nodal extremities, enhancing both your sense of general well being and ability to channel positive outcomes into your daily life. That should be obvious to anyone with a ninth-level or higher consciousness.

The placebo effect is a strange thing - there is a reason that double-blind tests are used for drug trials even when the results can be objectively measured. The belief in a treatment's efficacy has a strong positive correlation with the actual outcome, to the point that the placebo effect can actually be *objectively* far more powerful than the effect of the drug itself. And that can be harnessed, though modern medicine is only just beginning to explore the possibilities - for example blue pills actually do work measurably better than yellow pills, regardless of the fact that they're actually both the same exact white pills with a thin layer of common food coloring over them.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[rahvin112]

CFC's are not miracle cooling agents. They work on vapor-compression cycle that takes advantage of thermodynamics to move heat from one place to another. If you put CFCs in a line like water cooling without the normal refrigeration cycle they will perform worse than water at heat removal.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[gl4ss]

yeah so what did they add? nanoparticles of gold?

it makes no sense whatsoever to add "nanoparticles of refrigants" into a liquid cooling system, even if they changed phase you would be fucked if that happened.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Immerman]

The point is
Refrigerants ~= large molecules ~= high per-molecule heat capacity
    ~= will absorb greater more wattage of heat for the same temperature change
    = a substantially greater wattage of heat can be transferred for a given flow rate and temperature differential.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Immerman]

Are you certain of that? You have consulted the data sheets for all common large-molecule refrigerants?

I'm not discussing using them as refrigerants, I'm saying that at least some of them likely have a high specific heat, meaning heating/cooling it by X degrees requires significantly more energy transfer, and they can thus transfer a substantially greater wattage of heat for a given flow rate and temperature differential.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Anonymous Coward]

Two points:

1. Not bothering with punctuation or capital letters is enough to make one think that you're either lying about your past employment or you were one of the custodial staff. If you were a professional, and that's a big "if" you'd know that presentation counts.

2. Telling people not to mod you down, and to call such an act "taking the piss" is at best counter-productive.

Moving on, no-one is going to use mercury as a coolant in consumer equipment. Public health organisations are antsy enough as it is with the tiny amounts used in fluorescent lights; they'd raise pluperfect hell if you wanted to use more than a teaspoonful. You might get away with making the whole computer a sealed unit, but Zalman are in the after-market and DIY business.

Neither is anyone going to use sodium, for the simple reason that you have to go much higher than processors' rated temperature maxima before it melts, which is to say nothing of the unpleasant consequences of introducing molten sodium to moist air. Both, incidentally, are non-trivial to pump compared to water or phase-change refrigerants.

tl;dr You're full of it, and you're not very good at hiding the fact either.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[mjwalshe]

Yesss....Ignore the general point I was making of course i wasn't suggesting Hg as a coolant for a pc The organization was on the campus of a university that thought that top universities (ox-bridge Stanford Harvard etc) where all right for your "first degree" I think you will find that organizations genuinely ranked 1 or 2 do look down on the hoi poli certainly some of the guys doing their PHD would have been far more blunt with you than I was.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[gl4ss]

all large molecule refrigerants are vapor in room temp/pressure and liquid cooling systems aren't pressurized.. if it's a refrigerant it would be lost quite quickly.

water is pretty darn good, that's why it's used in cars(with additives) even if they could go to synthetic waterless mixes which would offer less problems with freezing, boiling and corrosion.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Anonymous Coward]

A word of advice to you: never write something you've only heard said, especially when you're doing it to try and appear erudite. Oh, and don't put quotation marks around something that isn't a quote either. The words you should have been able to spell correctly had you encountered in context who's just found something shiny) are:

Oxbridge.

Hoi polloi.

PhD.

You'll have to forgive me for missing your supposed point - whatever it was - as it apparently had nothing to do with the futility of adding CFCs to water in an attempt to bump up the specific heat capacity.

A thought occurs. Since you're such an expert on thermofluids perhaps you can answer a simple question: why is pump work neglected when modelling closed-loop turbines? If that's too tough, then I have a simpler one: why does the value for gamma tend toward seven fifths for air?

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Immerman]

>all large molecule refrigerants are vapor in room temp/pressure

Which is irrelevant if dissolved in liquid, or if this new gadget is a pressurized closed-cycle system (I'm guessing not)

Suppose R9876 has 50x the heat capacity of water when liquid, and can be stably dissolved to a 2% solution in water at operating temperatures. You now have a liquid solution that can reasonably be expected to have around .98*1 + .02*50 = 1.98x the heat capacity of pure water.

Not that I'm discounting that they created a solution that barely managed 1.0001x just so they could slap "more effective" and "nanoparticles" on the box, but I see no reason for that to be the default assumption.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid me for not using preview.

The words you should have been able to spell correctly had you encountered in context who's just found something shiny) are:

...should read...

The words you should have been able to spell correctly had you encountered them in context (rather than using them like a magpie who's just found something shiny) are:

Mea culpa. There's another little something to add to your repertoire.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[VortexCortex]

btw my first job was at the worlds premier rnd organization for thermofluids

Induction v0.2.17a
Commenter tagged and text filed under: Blow Jobs

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[msobkow]

Exactly. Cooling effectiveness can be empirically tested.

In fact there seem to be a lot of people in the "modding" market that do exactly that.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's adding more bonds or specific heat capacity. It may be doing two things. 1. Messing with llaminar flow, as to decrease the boundry effect. 2. Provinding a better internal channel for heat than water to water bouncing. Think of mixing steel wool with sand.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[BLKMGK]

Rain-X isn't wax although it does appear to close up the pores of glass and shed water VERY well until it begins to wear. No wax I've ever seen is carried by an alcohol base. ;-)

There are similar fluids for water to improve heat dissipation by breaking down surface tension. You use one in your dishwasher most likely and it's supposed to reduce water spots by making the water shed off. In the automotive world there's Water Wetter from Redline and now some others. It's benefits are controversial but in my personal testing I did see a reduction in the temps of my car and I use it in my computer cooling system. It has the added benefit of not allowing algae to grow and if I spring a leak (my rad has a pinhole) this stuff turns waxy as the water evaps from it and seals the leak.

I too saw the ad for this latest closed circuit cooling system and wondered WTF was in it. I have pondered using other chemicals in my cooling system to try and get temps to fall but putting something like alcohol, which is flammable and corrosive, in there seemed stupid. If these guys have found something better than purified water and Water Wetter I'd like to know what it is. Frankly I think they're full of it but am waiting to see some tests done...

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they don't. The advantage of refrigerant compounds is in their phase change between liquid and gas accomplished with a compessor Those are used in phasechange cpu coolers, like the old Kryotech boxes that intel used to demo 1GHz Pentium IIIs.

There are some fluorocarbon "coolants" that are better than water at room temp, but they have a high viscosity and are expensive.

It's probably a straight up lie fabricated around a Silver Nitrate + Distilled Water solution.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the skepticism is base on the history of HSF suppliers. We used to have a few really good suppliers that had pride in their engineering and didn't just make shit up. Alpha went back to transformer cooling, I believe. Thermalright sells direct now.

Zalman, Thermaltake, and the like have made their fortune on crap designs, with LEDs attatched to the cheap sleevebearing fans so that 12 year olds can make their PCs bling out like a drifter's Skyline. When I look at that design, I note several things.

It has an integrated liquid pump. Bad.
It has a tiny radiator. Bad.
It uses small diameter hoses. Bad.
We're judging before anyone has tested it. RIP Dan's Data. Bad and Bad.

It better have magic juice in it, or it's going to perform like a $30 heatpipe HSF.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Immerman]

Hmm, hadn't thought of flow properties, that is an interesting possibility. Any significant disruption of laminar flow would increase mixing and boost the thermal absorption rate, yes?

Not quite sure what you mean by (2), thermal conduction rates between laminar layers? Once the heat is in the flowing fluid transfer between molecules would seem to be irrelevant, if not counter-productive. All I'm getting on steel wool and sand is "mars sand" recipes.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[edibobb]

I agree! Aren't all fluids nanofluids? What are these mysterious nanoparticles, anyway, and why aren't they named? Why is this pseudo BS here?

Re: Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[Anonymous Coward]

"If it has a heartbeat then it's alive." The bullshit department is where everything starts, sorry to say ... here have a well fertilized tomatoe : )

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[LoRdTAW]

Exactly, the idea being that a refrigerant like R134a (used in just about every auto air conditioner and other systems) has a high rate of heat rejection and absorption. R134 is compressed and liquified in the high pressure side of the system which causes it to rapidly dump its heat (the condenser coil or "hot coil".) From there it is allowed to bleed into the low pressure side through an expansion valve or orifice tube where it vaporizes and rapidly absorbs heat (the evaporator coil or "cold coil".) Liquid R134 by itself is a poor cooling fluid.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[RockDoctor]

Neither is anyone going to use sodium, for the simple reason that you have to go much higher than processors' rated temperature maxima before it melts,

Isn't there as sodium-potassium eutectic with a melting point down in the low-double-digits of centigrade?

Uh, yeah, more or less : "The eutectic mixture consists of 77% potassium and 23% sodium, is liquid from â'12.6 to 785degC, and has a density of 866kg/m3 at 21degC and 855kg/m3 at 100degC."

Still not the sort of material that I'd want Joe Soap buggering around with if I lived above him. I'd be pretty chary about working with it, but I could conceive of it in a sealed unit with really BIG "return to manufacturer ; do not dispose of to trash or regular recycling" stickers. It'll still be thrown into the trash, but you've got to be seen to make an effort.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[RockDoctor]

Rain-X isn't wax although it does appear to close up the pores of glass

Your glass should have a porosity several orders of magnitude lower than 1% v/v.

I've not heard- of this "Rain-X" stuff before, and I suffer greatly from rain and fog adhering to my spectacles when I'm hill-walking in the driving rain, or caving, or bicycling. I've looked at lots of different alleged "keep glass usable" materials over the years, and found it to be a field full, just absolutely full, of sheer unadulterated bullshit.

Googles ... "It is a hydrophobic silicone polymer that forces water to bead and roll off of the car" ... oh, another one of those. Might work at driving speeds ; WOMBAT at walking/ cycling speeds. Even their advertising shows that it still leaves myriads of spherical droplets on the screen/ spectacles to distort vision.

At least someone can spell "silicone" when they mean "silicone" ; a rarity that.

Re: Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[BLKMGK]

Rain-X does what it's meant to and it wasn't designed for glasses so no it may not meet your needs. They do make an anti-fog product but I've not found it nearly as useful. Rain-X causes water to bead extremely well which when used in aircraft (original application) or on surfaces of cars that receive wind (not my back window) it's terrific. I seldom have need of my wipers at anything past a crawl. At slower speeds I simply focus past the droplets if its not raining hard enough to clear.

Sorry this might not work for your specific needs but it's a good product used properly. Maybe check out their anti-fog and hope for better success than I enjoyed...

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[uninformedLuddite]

it makes no sense whatsoever to add "nanoparticles of refrigants" into a liquid cooling system

It makes a heap of sense from a marketing viewpoint.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[uninformedLuddite]

If that's too tough, then I have a simpler one: why does the value for gamma tend toward seven fifths for air?

I would like to answer that for him if you don't mind.

because;, your mum.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[uninformedLuddite]

Do you mean an Australian Magpie?

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[uninformedLuddite]

If I hadn't already commented in this thread I would have modded you up. It's very fscking refreshing to see someone say they don't really understand something and to actually try to find out for themself before requesting clarification from above. You should win at least three Internets.

Re: Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[RockDoctor]

The way that I read the advertising for most of the recurring "great new discoveries" is that they help the water to disperse, not to form droplets. I realise that this is because copy-writers are generally at best language or arts graduates, not science graduates, but I still find it disappointing.

What I'd look for, which may be possible, is something that altered the surface tension between the coating and water such that the droplets sink down into a thin (few 10s of microns) film of rain water and then flow off the bottom of the glasses. It should be do-able, but no-one seems to do it. For the optical effects ... look at the effect of anti-reflection coatings etc on optical quality ; they're well within the range of optical tolerance of people.

Re:Nanoparticles? Pshaw, son:

[cwsumner]

Water is not that small a molecule. If it was, it would be a gas like carbon dioxide. The simple three atoms bond to others, by the thousands, so the resulting macro-molecule is quite large.

That is why water behaves so unlike other compounds, having multiple solid states and characteristics at different temperatures and pressures.

I love Slashdort!

[For a Free Internet]

I like reading articles that are actually paid advertisements! Whithout Slashdort, which I like to call the "Facebook of the Internet," how would I know what to buy? Dice Holdings is my GOD!

Re:I love Slashdort!

[fustakrakich]

Heh, you got that right. 'Nanofluids'?? Somebody just graduated from Buzzword Marketing 101..

Re:I love Slashdort!

[mjwalshe]

well you didn't graduate in thermofluids did you or even plumbing trade school hint look up specific heat on wikipedia

Re:I love Slashdort!

[Spottywot]

Yea well I'm going to make one with cyber-nano-fluids. Unfortunately the use of the word cyber has meant that various Governments are trying to legislate for the cyber-fluid threat.

Why not wait until there is actually a review of this thing before it gets to the front page of Slashdot, the article contains zero useful information, If this nano-fluid is any good it will compare favourably with the H80 etc. If it does then I'll be interested.

Re:I love Slashdort!

[gman003]

Hey! Those nanofluids clearly increase their cloud synergy via outside-the-box thinking!

Re:I love Slashdort!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut down on the porn. And you won't have a problem with cyber nano fluids...

Re:I love Slashdort!

[Anonymous Coward]

Next up, HP realizes they can raise the price of their inks to roughly 20x the price of its weight in unobtainium by stating it contains nanofluids.
Also, Gilette goes for five perpendicular nanofluids.
Nano is the new gluten.

Re:I love Slashdort!

[sexconker]

Heh, you got that right. 'Nanofluids'?? Somebody just graduated from Buzzword Marketing 101..

No, nanofluids come from Rob Malda's micro penis.

HAHA !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fulton's Foley all over again !!

Nanobots

[captain_dope_pants]

Wait till we get nanobots into our nano-coolant. They'd be there for maintenance if a component starts going wrong.

However, I do see problems...

"Sorry teacher, my computer had a coolant leak and the nanobots ate my homework. They also disassembled my dog and turned my roller skates into a tiny death star."

Why?

[Great Big Bird]

What purpose would a 400W cooler serve? Shouldn't we be trying to keep the heat down in the cpus themselves?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if trolling or serious...
400W is presumably the amount of heat the cooling system can shift away from the CPU, not the power consumption of the cooling system itself. (which is likely only a few Watts)

Re:Why?

[MarioMax]

They are claiming that their coolers are suitable for CPUs with a TDP of 400W, at least that is how I interpret it. Which would mean that something that generates less heat than 400W (like pretty much every AMD and Intel CPU) would benefit from the additional cooling headroom.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

To cool an FX-9590 processor with, my dear.

Re:Why?

[BLKMGK]

Prior to some additional tweaking and slowing down the clock on my CPU I was seeing extended temps as high as 90C on my computer. That's with water cooling :-) If these guys can shed heat better I'm all ears! that said I suspect this is marketing or some sort of water tension reducing chemical which I already use. Also, if this is as good as they say let's cool the GPU - THAT is the part that gets REALLY hot in a computer when it's doing serious crunching. The CPUs these days actually do pretty well.

If you'd like to reduce CPU heat that's fine too but do it with a sky high clock for those of us who use the cycles. The closer to ambient I can get my CPU the happier I am.

Mine is crunching now actually - temp is 67C, all cores maxxed, and will be for about 8-12 hours. video processing is a biatch...

"An anonymous reader writes..."

[Horshu]

You can stop reading right there.

"Solving" a non-issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you just have to put something in there that increases the thermal conductivity--nano sized or not.
But I don't think that was ever the problem with water cooling; the problem has always been complexity of the plumbing and possibility of catastrophic leaks.

Re:"Solving" a non-issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heat pipes consisting of an evacuated copper tube containing a small amount of water in my solar thermal setup. The heat transfer is very large because it uses the phase change of water, even at a low temperature, about 75F. I am sure the same principle could be used for cooling a cpu.

Re:"Solving" a non-issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heat pipes for CPU cooling have been done to death... how about a thermosyphon?

Re:"Solving" a non-issue?

[BLKMGK]

These systems use crimped connectors, semi-rigid lines that prevent evap, and are pretty much sealed units. No leakage issues or plumbing woes. they also cannot compete with well built hand built cooling systems - which I run. they don't have the flexibility or the capacity for it - not yet. Done right leaks aren't an issue and even when it does happen there's no catastrophe - at least not in the instances I've had in years past. I'd love to know what these guys have used but I'm not sure it's nearly as cool as they want it to sound...

Sounds like complete BS

[gweihir]

Also because water is a very efficient cooling agent when used with a circulation pump. My guess is some idiot in Zalman marketing just wanted something "cool" or "hip" in there.

Who cares what Zalman "believes"?

[JDG1980]

By using the so-called nanofluid, Zalman believes it can offer better cooling

Belief shouldn't have anything to do with it. Let's see the numbers – how does this compare to other closed-loop liquid cooling systems in terms of thermals and noise? I'll reserve judgment until I see Anandtech, Tom's, or some other reputable site review this in comparison with other cooling devices.

They *may* be on to something

[arielCo]

As ridiculously shallow as the TFA is, there is some work on nanoparticle-liquid suspensions:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135943111200511X

Nanoparticles in Thermoelectric Power Plant Cooling Fluids

Nanoparticle Additives Boost Industrial Cooling Systems (That Means Saving Energy)

I'll try to make sense of it (can someone more competent provide a Cliff's-notes version, please?).

Meanwhile, sorry to rain on the bash party.

Re:They *may* be on to something

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo.

As godel_56 mentioned here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4102451&cid=44602879

The idea involves particles that undergo phase change, allowing more heat to be transferred.

Re:They *may* be on to something

[arielCo]

Nice. Then the third link is related - the nanoparticles ease phase change at the microfluidics scale by adding nucleation sites, like boiling chips do at a larger scale.

they're not the first to offer this technology

[Anonymous Coward]

these guys are the first:
http://www.icedragoncooling.com/index.asp?pagename=Technology_Background

I had an email conversation with the guy that did research with the army on this fluid filled with nano-sized balls of material, back in 2010ish, and I've been following them for a while now.

It does seem to give a real world benefit in systems with sub-optimal radiator-fan area, but otherwise it's rather underwhelming in terms of performance boost.

so...

[Anonymous Coward]

so basically, it's a refrigerator.
at least that's what i took away from this.

Nanoparticles probably means phase change.

[godel_56]

There are products that embed a small amount (8%) of a tailored wax material coated with a protective shell, into plaster wall board.

The wax is designed to melt at around 16C and the combination acts as a thermal mass for storing heat in buildings (actually "cool"). This gives the plaster wall boards about the same thermal mass as a brick wall.

I suspect this is something similar. Phase change nano-particles dramatically increase the heat carrying capacity of the cooling fluid at a lower flow rate and probably lower noise and power consumption.

Correction

[OptimalCynic]

Correction: "An anonymous Zalman PR flack writes:"

Water cooling not useful without better cases

[Grishnakh]

Water cooling would be a lot more useful if there were some genuinely nice, well-designed cases out there to put these water-cooling systems into. Even the high-end cases aren't very good; they're much too large, they're plasticky and cheap, they don't have toolless drive bays, they have way too many drive bays, etc. This isn't 1993 any more; we don't need cases with 10 5.25" drive bays. And why does anyone bother with full-size ATX motherboards any more? No one uses expansion cards any more, except for GPU cards; this isn't 1993 where every function on a system was on a separate expansion card.

Why can't someone make a really nice, metal, miniITX system with space for 2 hard drives that doesn't look like some cheap, gaudy plastic-front POS?

Re:Water cooling not useful without better cases

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you 3D print yourself one?

Re:Water cooling not useful without better cases

[dargaud]

Why can't someone make a really nice, metal, miniITX system with space for 2 hard drives that doesn't look like some cheap, gaudy plastic-front POS?

A hundred times this. I've been looking for two days for the smallest case+mobo that can take two 3.5" hard drive and one 2.5" SSD (or possibly an mSata), no optical bay, has plenty of USB, has integrated graphics and accepts VT-d processors so I can run a headless home server that can run virtual machines efficiently. Well, so far I'm empty handed or the cases are twice bigger than they could be (the Shuttles, which have a very nice cooling system).

Re:Water cooling not useful without better cases

[dargaud]

Because: (1) It would be plastic instead of metal (not good for heat conduction) and (2) I'm perfectly willing to shell 100$ to someone who has already done the job instead of wasting my time and 1000$ doing 3 iterations to get an OK design.

Re:Water cooling not useful without better cases

[Trax3001BBS]

Water cooling would be a lot more useful if there were some genuinely nice, well-designed cases out there to put these water-cooling systems into. Even the high-end cases aren't very good; they're much too large, they're plasticky and cheap, they don't have toolless drive bays, they have way too many drive bays, etc.

Ah your not looking hard enough I've had water cooling for over two years now in a very nice
cooler master haf 922 steal case, I can't find the heat transfer rate just the CPU temps which have never
gotten above 75 C with OTTC (i7-920 overclocked to 4.5Ghz).

I started with a H50 that looks a lot like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181031
a radiator with tubes running to and from a copper block that sits on the CPU, water or some liquid being propelled by a small pump.
A lot less weight than other coolers.

I just got a Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106190
which has twice the radiator surface area. This is water cooling in every respect, but only for the CPU, the new radiator took
some work to fit in my case but I managed, it sits sideways. My case is made for water cooling, all the fittings and tubing for CPU,
video cards and memory.

Running OTTC system stress tester the small radiator and fans blew a lot of heat away from the CPU and kept it at a very decent temperatures.

A very nice case is the Cooler master HAF 932, I bought it for my son, it's a bit larger than mine, the new radiator would of fit nicely in it
and it comes with rollers :} though we never installed them http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119213
Steel case with plastic front bezel, the top is made to pour liquid into a reservoir covered by rubber if not used for that, He runs a H50 himself.

These water coolers work very well in limited space, http://www.newegg.com/Water-Liquid-Cooling/SubCategory/ID-575?Tpk=water%20cooling I just like a large case cause I do use a lot of dives/CD/DVD's and plan on another video card soon, plus open space in a case really helps air flow.

Re:Water cooling not useful without better cases

[T-Bone-T]

That's something I noticed when I was case shopping recently. I've got more room for expansion slots than I know what to do with when I would really only need maybe 3 or 4(GPU, eSATA, USB 3.0). I still use my DVD drive occaionally but I've got room for 3. Maybe I could get some kind of control panel for the other slots. I've got 2 HDDs and an SSD but my case also has a dedicated SSD spot, which means I'm still not using half of my HDD slots. It all seems kind of silly.

Re:Water cooling not useful without better cases

[Grishnakh]

It is. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm getting really sick of the giant monster cases when it's now possible to pack everything onto a miniITX motherboard, and the big PC makers like Lenovo and HP have lots of "small form factor" desktop PCs available that have far better designs than anything in the build-it-yourself market, and are much quieter too even without water cooling. The build-it-yourself stuff hasn't even changed in 10 years; it's all exactly the same.

Bah. The solution is to eliminate all the waste he

[Anonymous Coward]

Once we switch to ARM, we can go back to simple heat sinks, like in the Z80 days.

HD NanoParticles

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not buying it until they make the nanoparticles in HD.

Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid marketing hype is stupid.

Computer Noise and CPU fan

[lsatenstein]

I actually find that with current desktop technology, that the most ambient noisy part of the desktop box is the power supply fan, To achieve power vs package size, the power supply's fan has to roar in high speed.

I actually bought a more expensive power supply, just to combat the noise. I can now sit for hours with the ambient box within arms length of my face, and not notice if the box fans are actually running.

Will I be able to put his cooler fan into the box so refrigerated air flows through the power supply case?

I think not.

HP 480481-001 CPU Fan

[Anonymous Coward]

Brand New HP 480481-001 CPU Fan, HP 480481-001 Cooling Fan , 6 Warranty Months. With 30 days money back guarantee. Does Your old Fan have noise or other error, not running? Buy a New HP CPU Cooling Fan to replace.