Water Cooling With A Car Radiator

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."

Re:This sounds a little extreme

[Anonymous Coward]

Most old Porsches are air-cooled. You may as well just buy a bigger fan.

Nothing new.

[Pirow]

People have been using old car radiators for water cooling for ages, probably before the advent of commercial water cooling kits, so I don't see what the big deal is. A quick google search [google.com] shows that people using car radiators for water cooling is nothing new so I'd hardly class this as news.

Re:This sounds a little extreme

[1001010]

Porsches use aircooling, so you have to run around the block with you're PC....

Re:The reason I don't use a car radiator

[gl4ss]

soo..

would you rather buy car parts on premium, relabled as "computer cooling" parts? because that's what most people buying pc watercooling parts do(for the radiator anyways.. most common being heater cores).

this guy certainly is not the first to do this kinda stuff too...

Re:Well that makes me feel better.

[JimDabell]

He's got nothing on this guy [bash.org].

Heater core

[anethema]

What most people do with home brew water cooling is take the heater core out of a car.

The fins are generally finer and denser, and the core itself is a much more managable size.

Then you get a beefy aquarium pump, small resevoir...and make your own waterblock with a drill press.
The waterblock is the one part you might want to buy.

Throw some fans on the heater core, hook it up with clear tubing (put springs inside where the tube needs to bend to avoid kinking), install, fill, add some antifreeze to avoid growth and corrosion, and up you go.

Its really not that hard, even for a layman.

Re:The reason I don't use a car radiator

[vasqzr]

It'd probably be just as easy to use an automatic tranmission cooler. Much smaller and easier to use.

Here's an example [prostreetonline.com]

$50, and it'd be new, instead of have an old rusty car part in your house.

Re:Heater core

[Man in Spandex]

Water Cooling IS simple and easy to setup.

But, when it comes to liquids and electronics, the average joe will say "ARe you crazy? I don't wanna destroy my Computer"

Deal with that. If you can, and in general it's not hard to convince somebody to go with water cooling, they will not regret it.

Usually water cooling kits, if the pieces are well selected, will last many years no matter which cpu you'll have. The worst would be you'd have to buy a new cpu block but some manufactures sell kits which can fit the very same waterblock on many types of sockets.

Re:Antifreeze

[Anonymous Coward]

antifreeze is good for its corrosion inhibiting ability, and it actually increases water's ability to carry heat.

I'd definitely use a 50/50 mix in any of my water cooling adventures.

Re:Antifreeze

[Anonymous Coward]

You can never have too much cooling.

In some tests I did some time ago, a small car radiator (used to water-cool a PC no less!) had a thermal resistance of 0.093K/W with no fan, and 0.018K/W with a fan. In the case of a 100W CPU, that means the difference between 9.3K temperature gradient compared to only 1.8K, which is very significant.

Re:Heater core

[Bilestoad]

Five years ago you would have been right - but you're obviously not keeping up. Many mfrs now offer water cooling systems, there are even all-in-one systems from companies like Thermaltake - if you can install a conventional CPU cooler, you can install water cooling.

When high quality reasonably priced waterblocks became available from Danger Den, Swiftech etc. it became a complete waste of time to make your own unless you're unemployed and have nothing better to do.

Inside springs are a thing of the past (which is great, because it was hard to get the little buggers where you needed them), outside springs work very nicely - google on "coolsleeves". And if you use quality tubing, silicon or Tygon brand then they're not needed because only the most acute angles or twists will cause kinks.

Best solution today - Innovatek, using their convection radiators that mount outside the case, no fan required, and their 12V pump that just plugs into a drive connector. Very pricey but the best always is.

Re:The reason I don't use a car radiator

[Anonymous Coward]

MaxxxRacer here (too lazy to make an account)

The car radiator is a bit over the top. I run water cooling and I use a chevy heatercore (heatercores are what heat up the air when u turn on your heater in ur car).

They are much smaller 250mm by 150mm. And they are highly effecient in their design. You can get one for 25 bucks from your local auto parts store or buy them pre modded for use in computers.

The tranny coolers are also a good idea as they have less resistance to air thus allowing more airflow with lower pressure fans.

Not New

[heli0]

This is not something new. The 1986 Chevette radiator for $19 at Autozone is the most commonly used radiator for DIY water cooling on a budget.

http://www.overclockers.com/tips1022/ [overclockers.com]

Re:Antifreeze

[Firethorn]

Antifreeze may be the cheap solution, as many people have some left over for their car, but it's not ideal. I've read that Glycol only has about a third of the heat transfer ability of water. Thus the idea of the "water wetter" type products. You don't really need the glycol, you need the anti-bacterial and anti-corrosion treatments. So they made a product that contained them, along with something that reduces surface tension (better cooling).

This site has some advice [procooling.com]

But I'll say that I know that antifreeze has anti-biological properties. And if you use it, you can probably leave it alone for alot longer than a year as long as you have a resevoir and keep it topped off. My antifreeze is good for five years in my car.