Watercooling Made Easy

Ronny writes: "'Overclockers are always looking for a better way to keep their processors cooler. If you've found the best heatsink and best fan, but that still isn't cooling your processor enough, you may want to look in to water cooling.' You can build your own water cooling system out of scrap parts such as a radiator from an ATV and a water block made out of a 4" PVC cap. However, if your like myself and have no creative skills whatsoever, then you may be interested in this new water cooling kit that is available on the Internet. The kit includes everything you need to start water cooling your CPU, at a very reasonable price. Full review of the water-cooling kit found at OverclockersClub"

I have one!!!

[Xzisted]

I actually bought the $300 system from Innovatek for my gaming rig. It keeps the proc around 32 degrees C. They are kind of expensive and for most people completely over the top useless. In my situation it was perfect because my computer sits in a dead air section of my apt. and just kept recycling the hot air pumping the cpu temp up to about 60....which is too warm for my tastes.

The install hassles for a system like this are too much for most people. You have to drill and clean your case and you have to remove and reinstall all the equipment from it. Then you have to spend the time to connect all the hoses and bleed air out of the system. Then...about 7 hours later (yeah...if you do it right...it can take that long) when you finally boot the PC, you get your just rewards....a nice water cooled system that now is about 10lbs. heavier than it was the day before and has about zero functionality added to it.

Like I said...its a little too much of an ornate system for most people.

Try Koolance for a full case.

[jefft]

Koolance [koolance.com] makes a couple of different water cooled cases. They come with a resevoir two pumps and a radiator on top of the case with 3 fans cooling it. The speed of the fans can be proportional to the temperature of the CPU making it relatively quiet. You can get extra blocks for your hard drives, motherboard and graphics cards.

I built my latest system with one and it's been running like a champ. Dumps a lot of heat into the room though. I recommend them if you're interested in having a quieter system. Especially if you can build your own system, but don't feel up to doing your own water system.

Re:Too Hot?

[Jonny 290]

Ah, but they do care. 85 C [intel.com] seems to be the official redline.

Although, informally, if you're breaking 60, rethink your cooling setup.

Re:Watercooling is getting interesting

[silicon_synapse]

...for the future, I can envision a water-cooling system that can collect heat from several heat sources in the machine, and cool them all using one radiator and one fan.

You can already do that. Just add more blocks to the line. There blocks available for all the major video cards, hard drives, and the northbridge. All the major components of the computer can be water cooled today. There are still many smaller components that are impractical for water cooling (unless you totally submerse) and need some air cooling. For those one large fan at a low RPM should suffice and be nearly silent.

As long as we're running ads disguised as stories

[CaptainCarrot]

...Let's at least be more comprehensive. Here's the kit [1coolpc.com] from 1coolpc [1coolpc.com], formerly 3dfxcool.

There's also the Koolance and Sen Fu product lines at Plycon Computers [plycon.com]

Those are the ones I knew about. A Google search [google.com] turned up a whole bunch more. Man, I'm glad I don't subscribe -- ads are unavoidable, it seems.

ummm... have you ever used that Peltier?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's commonly known around the overclocking community that the Peltier CPU Cooler you linked to is completely worthless.

Not only does it not cool the CPU, but it actually heats up the CPU because the heat sink is not effective enough dissipate all the heat the peltier creates, so it's no suprise they put that little disclaimer there.