First Retail Water-Cooled DDR2 Memory Tested 132
Twistedmelon writes "We've all heard of water cooling for processors and even graphics processors,
in today's high end PCs. However, a water cooled memory module is
something that hasn't been done until now. OCZ Technology recently
announced
their line of Flex XLC Water-Cooled RAM, with its integrated heat-spreaders
that can be connected to any standard water cooling system. The memory
operates much cooler under load with tight timings at DDR2-800 speeds. For
those with water-cooling setups,
these DIMMs could easily be tapped into an existing system allowing for
quiet and robust cooling for your system memory as well."
I concur, it's a Computer "ricer" territory (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But how much does it really improve things? (Score:3, Informative)
There are also the people who do serious work who might notice a boost in productivity: they might be able to render movie frames faster, or compile a project with 10 million lines in an hour instead of 70 minutes. Of course people in those industries are already massively parallel, but if you have a 60 person development team anxiously awaiting the next build, anything you can do to shave off a few minutes could have really quick paybacks.
Before bragging about firsts... (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.koolance.com/shop/default.php?cPath=29_ 56&osCsid=28547a1202b3942d29d4a39bc4ed1984 [koolance.com]
rj
Beg pardon? (Score:2, Informative)
Water-cooling RAM has always struck me as a lot of work for little to any performance return. Plus it's one more thing to go wrong. I never lost a component in 4 years of doing this but it was such a pain to install and maintain. I can only imagine the headaches involved in plumbing up RAM modules too.
Re:zap... (Score:5, Informative)
NeoThermic
(* ok, it still conducts, but it has a higher resistance, and in computers there's few items that'll make deionized water conduct if it leaks. Much safer than normal water)
Re:zap... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But how much does it really improve things? (Score:3, Informative)
The power supply is probably the hardest thing to get quiet, unless you're going with a passive one. But you can also get an efficient one with a good fan controller, like a Seasonic, for 75 bucks or so. Silent CPU coolers can be had for 25, and while most graphics cards these days are obnoxious by default, you can regulate the fan speed down to sane levels when you're not actually gaming. (I actually have an aftermarket VGA cooler lying around, no point in using it since the stock fan is essentially turned off 90% of the time.) Another component which is difficult to get silent is the hard disk - elastic mounting works wonders, but it's still just quiet, not silent. You need to go for a more expensive 2.5" drive and possibly sound insulation for that.
So um, the point is, from a silent computing point of view, water cooling is pretty much a waste of time. It might still be interesting for the overclockers who (still) need extreme cooling power, in combination with peltiers or something; I wouldn't know, that stuff was never my thing.
Re:But how much does it really improve things? (Score:4, Informative)
No extra credit points for figuring out which answer we'll get this year.
However, I will say that the recent set of Dell workstations we got in technically use water cooling. The heat sinks use heat pipes to passively transfer the heat from the CPU up to the large copper radiator fins, and the heat pipes most likely use water as their internal cooling fluid.
Not so (Score:4, Informative)
As long as you don't have free electrons, you won't be passing current.
Re:zap... (Score:3, Informative)
Ordinary distilled water is close enough to nonconductive, until it gets contaminated of course.
Deionized water is significant in that it is not only nonconductive, but it is noncorrosive. Water is corrosive because of ions known as hydronium and hydroxide (although as I am chem-bozo-man, I have no idea which is positive and which is negative.) Water will actually react with itself to form these ions, so DI (deionized) water is no longer DI after it sits for a while, even in a sealed glass container.
Hence, regardless you will be putting some additive in your water system if you don't want corrosion, and you'll be changing the water regardless. Might as well put in distilled water, since the difference between distilled and DI is pretty much insignificant for this use. You could add alcohol, somewhere from 20 to 50 percent to reduce corrosion. You could use a glycol, like in a car's antifreeze. Hell, you could probably use Redline Water Wetter.
Re:Not so (Score:4, Informative)
The key is to not using dissimalar alloys in your system. An aluminum block and a copper radaitor are going to cause problems, unless you use some of the products out there which combat. That's the real key. Pure water is even more corrosive than tap water. Ideally, you want your alloys to be as close as possible, simply for the fact there will be little electrochemical potential.
Re:But how much does it really improve things? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. That's hard. At least compared to just buying cheap, off the shelf quiet components.
As for the rest: the doctrine at Silent PC Review, probably the definitive resource on this kind of stuff, is that 2.5" disks overall are more quiet than 3.5" disks and that current 120mm PSUs are more quiet than 80mm or 2x 80mm PSUs. The current Seasonics (sorry about the price, I'm in Europe and didn't want to underestimage the US prices) are really great, and they're 120mm. The 80mm PSUs had the advantage of usually having a straight airflow, which is more efficient and which also lends itself for easy PSU tunnel solutions giving the PSU its own airflow.
I've mounted my HD on elastic cord - you can't get more vibration isolation than that - and the noise management set to silent, it's still pretty much the only audible component. And it's a fairly silent HD to start with, 3.5" though.
But of course, your mileage may vary.
Not so, maybe... (Score:2, Informative)