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Hardware

Watercooling Made Easy 181

Posted by timothy from the hipsters-migrate-to-helium-cooling dept.
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"
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Watercooling Made Easy More

Watercooling Made Easy

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  • Water-cooled webserver (Score:4, Funny)

    by GLX ( 514482 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:00PM (#4100267) Homepage
    I hereby claim prior art on a Water Cooled webserver to overcome the slashdot effect!

    Article was posted less than 5 minutes ago, and it's already /.'ed... Think watercooling will be able to put out the fire that's started at the datacenter where that site's hosted? :)

  • Disclaimer must be a lulu (Score:4, Funny)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug AT geekazon DOT com> on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:01PM (#4100268) Homepage
    This looks like a lot of fun. I bet the "not responsible for damage to your equipment" part of their documentation is humongous, but they could probably sum it up with: "Duh!!"
    • You'd think that make sense for most folks. My favorite part in the review is that it didn't satisfy the reviewers expectations. What in the world did he expect? Subzero temps? "Just thought it'd be colder cuz it's, you know, water." Some people just need the ultra-violence.

  • Important question... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rjw57 ( 532004 ) <richwareham@user ... t ['efo' in gap]> on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:01PM (#4100270) Homepage Journal
    More importantly can you use the hot water when it comes off the chip to make a hot-coffee/tea tap on the side of your gaming-box?

    Fit a Pizza-oven [dion.ne.jp] to it as well and we'll never need to go out again...

    • No, the water is not hot enough, even with a dual Athlon XP1800+. I know, that's the setup I have, although it's from another kit than the one in this article.

      Now on to the explanation: heat goes from a colder place to a hotter place. If you want to make coffee from the water, it needs to be at least 80-90C. Now, that's the max (read: if you reach that, pull the plug!!) temperature supported by the XPs, and I think Intel's are a bit lower (75C). If your cooling fluid is hotter than your CPU, it's not cooling anymore, so you have a big problem (actually, the temperature of the CPU will just raise until either it melts or it's hotter enough than your cooling fluid to create a new thermal equilibrium). So even if you wanted to have a coffee tap, all you would end up with is a fried chip.

  • Just an Ad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BlueTooth ( 102363 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:01PM (#4100271) Homepage
    Kits like these have been around for a while...Do we really need to put up with stories that are just big ads now too?

    • Re:Just an Ad (Score:5, Interesting)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:20PM (#4100381)
      no, but it won't stop. People have been submitting these stories to get /. exposure more and more recently.

      Can we start having an option to moderate stories down? Rate them 0 to 10. That way you can browse at whatever you want (either get them all or get only the top)?

      Oh wait, that would make sense.
      • Considering our karma no longer has a numerical score, the chances of articles being scored seem pretty low.

        *sigh*

      • Re:Just an Ad (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Reality Master 101 ( 179095 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `101retsaMytilaeR'> on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:43PM (#4100507) Homepage Journal

        Can we start having an option to moderate stories down? Rate them 0 to 10. That way you can browse at whatever you want (either get them all or get only the top)?

        If you want that, you know where to find it [kuro5hin.org]. In my opinion, that's a bug, not a feature. You only have to look at the moronic articles that moderated up to see what happens when the lunatics run the asylum.

        I like Slashdot just the way it is, thanks, flaws and all. I don't want to see it turn into another socialist mutual masturbation society.

        • Uhh... how is that better than stories that are nothing more than ads and the crap posted by Jon Katz? At least on K5 stuff gets posted because people want it to be there.

          • Because you can turn off Katz and ignore the "ad" stories. Slashdot is what it is because they have editors that choose reasonably interesting stories. K5's stories are generally crap because the "silent, reasonable majority" don't care enough to moderate stories, which means only the extreme wacko elements and/or teenage ignorant elements (with too much time on their hands) tend to moderate the stories. Which is why so many of the stories are either stupid or socialist circle-jerks.

            • Depends on the person, I guess. I for example don't trust at all these choices they make for us. It's like TV, what you get on slashdot is filtered information. On K5 you can see absolutely everything that's been suggested, see people's opinion on it, and save a private copy if it's dumped and you like it.

              What stories are crap on K5, btw? I find most of them interesting.
          • You misspelled "timothy".

  • Man (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jonny Ringo ( 444580 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:01PM (#4100275)
    If I had the latest in cpu's, motherboards and graphics cards for my computer I wouldn't need a water cooler cause I'd be drooling all over it.
  • I'm not one to begrudge a nice review, but on 1 water cooling kit with nothing special?

    The water cooling phenomenon is pretty common right now- I'd love to go on about my current issues around a ground-phase loop (i unplug the pump, the computer reboots) but that isn't relevant.

    Now if this was an informative article about a number of different water cooling kits, then yes, I think that would deserve a large posting. (yes, the server is slashdotted already).
    However, I'd say this is more like direct marketing. There isn't even a link to the manufacturer's link in the slashdot posting, making it impossible to even review the that.
    Water cooling is very expensive- pumps run 40$, blocks run 30$, tubing and fittings run 20$, radiators run 50$......
    Anyway... thanks for the direct markting blurb, but i think there are more professional ways to advertise a product :)

    • Re:Whoa: Now every little watercooling kit posted? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Water cooling is very expensive- pumps run 40$, blocks run 30$, tubing and fittings run 20$, radiators run 50$...... "

      No, You can cind pumps for $20, tubes and fittings for about $10, and I got radiators from a junk yard for $6 each. A good block, though is still the catch.
    • current issues around a ground-phase loop (i unplug the pump, the computer reboots) but that isn't relevant.

      Might as well discuss it, the story is boring enough, and it is ontopic.

      I'd say it's not so much a grounding problem as an inductive surge off the pump motor coils. Are you running the pump motor from the computer's power supply? If so, you need a kick supressor of some sort. A diode that is put in parallel with the motor windings and reverse biased to the DC current will usually do nicely. Make sure to pick one of the largish black diodes that they use in power supplies, not the little signal diodes.

      Let me know if you need any more tips or have questions. We can meet on IRC to discuss this also, I'm starting a new electronics chat network shortly that this type of question would be perfect for.
      • Actually, the pump is run off a 120 volt line external to the computer, but plugged into the same surge supressor (and hence the UPS) as the computer. Unplugging it reboots.

        Come to think of it i've been dying slowly to the unstable regime. I think my chips going, even if my block / cpu temps are 8 over ambient.

        The pump is a RIO, 200 or 300 gph (cost about 15 or 20$).

        Diode would kinda kill teh AC :)

    • Well, first off, I only remember one other review posted on an entire kit. It was done by Tom's, and was kind of lame because some of the parts reviewed aren't even available from the US distributor for the cooling manufacturer.

      Water cooling is very expensive- pumps run 40$, blocks run 30$, tubing and fittings run 20$, radiators run 50$......

      Well there's something special about this kit, had you read the review: it is only $99, which puts it on par with some of the pricer fan/heatsink combos, and as the review points out, the water cooling system is an order of magnitude quieter (I would have prefered to see some actual db measurements, but I have little doubt that it would be significantly quieter, knowing how loud my box at home is).

      Another thing that I noticed about this kit: it doesn't require modifying your case like half the kits I've seen do, which is a major requirement for me since I'm trying to fit a system in my rack mount case, so I'm not working with the tower form factor that most manufacturers seem to take for granted.

      -"Zow"

  • Attempt to disguise an ad I've ever seen. Really, a review for the "best" water cooling thing out there, and "if" you are haiving problems, etc, etc...
  • How hot is considered too hot? I'm not overclocking, so I guess I am very likely OK. But how hot is too hot of a 1.3Ghz Celeron? Intel only seems to care about ambient case temp.

    • Re:Too Hot? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jonny 290 ( 260890 )
      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.
    • The specs say something about 80C die temperature or 45C inlet temp (aka ambient).

      [I just noticed that my 1.7GHz Celery runs at about 40C in both WinXP and Linux; under WinNT4, the temperature goes up to about 50C. ???]

      • 1.7GHZ Celeron????????
    • My ASUS_a7v/amd_1.7 gig will crash-to-bios at a CPU temp of 170_F if I don't blast my room AC to 60_F. And THAT'S a MT-box sitting on a floor anti-static mat, with 2-lbs of copper heat-sink and 4-fans. With the room at 60_F the CPU stabilizes at 120_F. It's hell on electricity, but up here in Spokane power comes with the rent (0.01$/kw) ... and screws Bay-Area hot tub lusrs.

  • better solution ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Frag-A-Muffin ( 5490 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:03PM (#4100297)
    <sarcasm>
    Instead of wasting money on a water cooling unit, why don't people just spend that money on a faster processor!?!?! :)

    silly overclockers! :)
    </sarcasm>
    • I did that. Went from a PIII overclocked from 500something to 700+mhz to a "normal" AMD XP 2100. Where the P3 was extremly happy running at the high speed with some very silent fans the XP just wouldn't keep cool even with a much heavier cpu fan and case fans. I also had real stability problems with all 3D games. Temps measured in at 70 celcius.

      This weekend I added a simple water cooling set.

      • A common fountain pump
      • 1 cooling block
      • a reservoir
      • a radiator
      • 1 12cm fan
      • Tubing
      • Chemicals for the water
      Oh and if you use this as a shopping list(don't ask people in the shop or look at plenty of sites) add some spring to keep the tubing from folding up. Anyway it came to about 300 euro's total.

      First I put the radiator inside the case. This cooled the cpu nicely for a while but the water kept getting hotter and hotter. Soon I was back at 70 celcius. I then drilled two big holes and mounted the radiator outside. With a single 12cm softly blowing on it I now have my cpu at 40 degrees after 3 hours of RTCW. Previous five minutes was about max. I am not sure how water cooling could possible make 3D games not crash to the desktop but my problem is solved.

      Next weekend I will add a cooler for my graphics card and chipset and maybe even for the HD, 3 more fans on the radiator should take care of the extra heat and I will have a silent stable cool machine.

      So the answer is why don't I just spend money on a faster chip? The XP 2300 or so isn't available yet and that thing is bound to be even hotter. Yeah I spend the same on the cooling as on the chip itself(pardon me if I got prices slightly off, I make enough money not to really have to take notice) but now the chip finally operates as it should. Of course I could now overclock the 2100 to 2300 and up, but how many more frames do I really need? Basiclly with chips (x86) running hotter and hotter people who want to run their machines without installing a windtunnel to cool it will have to go the watery way.

      The cost is a big one but not more then say a big HD for all you're movies and half of a top vid card. When you have already got the latest cpu, lots of ram, a big HD and the latest vid card a simple water cooling set rounds it of nicely.

      To those considering buying the kit advertised, don't. You are messing around with equipment that pumps water around INSIDE you're computer. Buy the best you can find, one fried motherboard and you will have made the money back.

      • 300 e's?? what did you buy, a silver block, custom radiator, washing machine pump, airplane industry hoses+springs??

        block 20e
        radiator 20e(or bong style for free)
        pump 20e, brand pump 30e.
        hoses 10-20e.
        some fan for the rad 5-10e.

        85e-100e even if bought not even at the cheapest place.

        anyways, congrats on that move, aircooling is for vw's and etc.

        but, for 300e.. add 100e and you'd got yourself mx-eva3 or similar.

        • Never said I got it cheap :P

          Not to brag or anything but I could easily afford it and buying it from a highstreet shop is a lot easier then buying it from the internet even if that would have been an option for me. As for homemade well it has been years since I done something like this. I wanted parts that fit and I could yell at a person if they didn't.

          If I could have paid 500 to a shop to do it all for me I would have.

      • Is there a way to watercool HDDs? I've been thinking about getting a water-cooling setup, but I need something for my HDDs as well, as they get pretty hot.
        • Kooleance (sorry it is late and am a bit to lazy to do spell checking) makes complete cases but also sells seperate parts including HD coolers, look like plates you fix on top.

          Klax also does some that seem to fix to the sides making a HD the width of a cd-rom. http://www.xxlcases.nl/ has those. I can't past the link and the site is in dutch but in the left menu klik on "Waterkoeling" and then on "Koelblokken" and it's the fifth down. Can't tell if HD is any good but the block that is on top worked for me(tm).

          • Thanks. :)

            I did a bit more surfing and found it [koolance.com], that's a pretty nice thing, all metal-brushed like that, looks nicer than the Klax one too, but I don't think the site I'm looking at (watercooling.de) stocks the Koolance block, and it would be expensive if I have to get it from outside of Germany. Aah, Koolance does have partners in Germany, it's just that their menu doesn't show up in Opera, made me wonder how I was supposed to get into their Product Listing.
      • 70C? Your air cooling setup was seriously f------ up. I'm running an XP 2000+ with an overclocked GeForce4 Ti 4200 and my CPU runs stable at about 45C. And I just have a micro ATX case with a single 90mm fan.

    • I don't see why there's a need for sarcasm SGML tags and bountiful smilies in the previous post.

      WHY NOT just buy the faster processor?

      overclocking : hardware :: script kiddiez : software -- it's nothing more than an easy way to earn your 'hacker stripes' without having to do anything innovative or clever.

  • I have one!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xzisted ( 559004 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:10PM (#4100329) Homepage
    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.
    • for that amount of money, you could have bought a faster video card and CPU in the first place and cooled it with a $20 fan, and wouldn't have to worry about keeping the water-cooling system running or worry about it leaking all over your mobo.
      • Well...there are a couple points here. A) I'm already running a GeForce Ti4600 B) I'm already running an Athlon 2200+XP C) The reason I did it was to reduce the noice and adequately cool the system in the first place. The last thing a computer needs nowadays is more fans. And if you do the system right...there are no leaks. I havent had a single leak in mine and its been running over a month.

        My watercooling kit can bless and revive your dead kittens and grant them a +14 to vit.
        • And if you do the system right...there are no leaks. I havent had a single leak in mine and its been running over a month.

          I was going to say something stupid about your one month comment, then I remembered something.

          The stupid part comes from me just recently (yesterday) coming back from a camping trip. After returning to my house and checking everything over for damages (and more and more) eventually I noticed that I had no idea how long my web/mail/ftp/etc server had been up for. I did an `uptime` on it and it was 6 months. That's pretty cool since I use that same machine for burning CD's, VNC, etc.

          Your comment about 1 month without a "water leak" made me laugh because of this recent experience of mine.

          Then I realized that we are talking about totally different things. Is a month a reasonable amount of time for a water-cooled system to not leak? I would want at least a couple of years, I'd think. The only reason I would buy water-cooling would be to use it with _multiple_ systems. This would mean that it would have to be air-tight past even the expected lifetime of a single processor.

      • Re:I have one!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by ljaguar ( 245365 )
        That's stupid. The biggest plus for water cooling is noise.

        Back in my days, (heh) CPU didn't need a fan. A reasonable sized heatsink was more than enough. 250 watt power supply was good and anything more was an overkill. Fan on video card was ridiculous and I would have laughed at you if you needed to have a fan on the motherboard.

        Fast forward to today.

        400 watt powersupply is standardish (exacerbated by that freakish AMD's "approved list") and _all_ video cards (reputable ones) have fans. Radeon 9700 Pro has a separate hookup directly to the power supply for more juice. The heatsink/fan included with retail AMD is not usuable and too wimpy (I know at least MSI officially recommends a new heatsink and fan). Some motherboards have fan on their chipsets (MSI KT3 pro or something at least), and a heatsink is standard.

        Your "PC" (meaning "IBM compatible" PC) has turned into some kind of a monstrosity that started with AMD's "more heat, more power, more performance, ARR ARR ARR" trend. (said in Tim Allen voice) A stark contrast to my pentium 166Mhz with one fan only in power supply. Fitted with a quiet power supply, the only noise making component of the pentium is the hard drive. Don't get me started on that new Athlon XP I got.

        The point is, water cooling alleviates the situation a little bit by making things quiter.
        • ok, noise, you have a point. I have had overclocked machines in the past that had 5 or 6 fans in them, and it got to be ridiculous.

          Still, a little noise is worth keeping that $300 to me.
    • There is a great water cooling review and application instruction at Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com]

      Watercooling is really cool but still too expensive if you want more than the basics.

    • I tried going to Innovatek's website but was completely lost as to where to order one of these (the kit featured on Tom's Hardware). Just found indivudual components, and not all components I needed. Do you have a URL for ordering the kit (230V)?

      Thanks in advance.
  • 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.

  • VERY good tutorial, and for a GF4 too on DeviantPC but it seems thre site is offline right now :(

    http://www.deviantpc.com/articles/gf4wcp1/index. sh tml
  • I mean c'mon - not only is the review that of only one watercooler & not a head-to-head watercooler vs. watercooler reveiw, but there's no real difference between the watercooler and a Volcano 9 heatsink!!

    If you're gonna post reviews, from now on, can they at least be something worth reviewing?

    Most be a slow Nerds News day, because i don't think this article matters.
    • Apart from "From the tests you can see that you get basically the same cooling from a Volcano 9 heatsink, but the Volcano 9 is ten times louder than the Iceberg 1." indeed little diffence. Personally I like those quit spooky times in shooters not to be interrupted by the constant drone of fans. Others might think differently.

      But I must agree that this review is nothing new. Now if the poster had given links to all the different kits both air and waterbased that would have been worth it.

  • Watercooling is getting interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:16PM (#4100358) Homepage
    It's getting interesting, but _not_ for overclocking or something like that, but rather for noise reduction.

    Once, small computers were totally silent. Think of the CBM64, the Mac and others. Even when they got harddrives, it was just a faint whirr in the background. Today, a modern desktop sounds like a passenger plane taking off next to you. In my machine I have five fans and two drives, and that's nothing unusual. At work it's bad enough that I sometimes wear earplugs just to get away from the noise.

    Watercooling can help in two ways. First, with a larger, efficient radiator, you don't need a high-rpm fan - and elliminating just one fan does a lot to reduce noise pollution. Second, and 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. And when you have that, you could enclose the machine far better than today, getting rid of the noise from the drives as well.

    /Janne

    • ...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.
    • It's getting interesting, but _not_ for overclocking or something like that, but rather for noise reduction

      Absolutely. There's a rule of thumb in the DIY computer market right now: "Fast. Cool. Quiet. Choose two." But watercooling allows for another choice: "All of the above."

      I'm pricing a new computer as we speak. For $1450 (incl. tax+shipping) I can put together a machine that's about 3-4 months off the bleeding edge (i.e. pretty fast). Would I spend another $250 for a watercooling system that would eliminate the need for 4 high speed fans to cool off that BTU belching monstrosity? Absolutely.

      (BTW, my girlfriend thinks I'm insane, but then again she works 8 hours a day next to a case fan with a failing bearing; I figure her hearing's just going.)

    • Actually, I wouldn'y be surprised if PC noise generation actually peaked around the days of the IBM XT and AT in the mid-80's, and have been steadily delclining since then.

      True, we have more motors running inside our CPU cases now than we did when 8-bit processors were king, but those motors just keep getting quieter.

      The trend in the late 90's of moving from desktop boxes to mini-towers that can be stowed under a desk, away from the ears, also helps reduce perceived noise levels.
    • I bought a case [koolance.com] from Koolance a couple of weeks ago because my new dual Athlon MP 2000+ was so noisy (I could hear it from everywhere in the house). The high-rpm fans on the CPUs made a lot of noise, and I had to leave the case open because the temperature inside got so high it caused a hard drive to fail after one night of operation (apparently heat makes hard disk failures more likely).

      Koolance systems have a large radiator on top of the case, where three large fans blow the air out of the case through it. Accessories include CPU coolers, chipset coolers (for motherboard and graphics card), and hard drive coolers so that you don't need additional fans in your case in addition to the radiator fans and the power supply fans.

      I took me several hours to assemble the system (in particular because you have to apply some kind of gap filler to your hard drive's PCB and let it dry - scary at first but apparently quite efficient and innocuous), but I can now say that it was worth it: the machine looks great, is quiet and cold. It's on the expensive side though, about $350 for the case with accessories (2 CPU coolers, 1 drive cooler, 1 second hard drive kit) without a power supply.

  • ...AMD 1Ghz processors in a span of two weeks trying to overclock them using water cooling. (The UPS is only so fast.) The water dripping on his mobo was an added bonus.

    It's cheaper just to pay more for a faster chip, IMHO.

    • The lesson here: If everything you know about pumbing you read on the internet, do not make a high precision mixing of electonics and water your first project.

      Generally, the people who look into these fancy overclocking rigs are the people who already bought the fastest chip on the market. People with way more money than common sense who feel the need to proclaim that they have the fastest PC in the world.
  • site looks a bit sketchy already, so here you go:
    Cached Version [ultimatedesign.co.nz]
  • Is it just me or are do-it-yourself water-cooled PCs just an electrical fire waiting to happen? Unless you have some pretty high grade(expensive) seals, it seems to me the potential for leaks is way too high. I'll definitely think twice before running a partially conductive water through my PC.
    • First off, I've posted my experiments with watercooling about a half dozen times on slashdot. It's old. It's been done. Nobody has considered any safety issues whatsoever. I am not an expert, so don't sue me if your machine, home, signifigant other, cat, and car erupt into flames. None of the commerical kits really detail how to do a professional installation. For most people, it is more work than you want to even THINK about. It took me a solid day of testing and another solid day of construction to get my kit installed.

      http://www.nyx.net/~smanley/watercool [nyx.net]

      You need to install a GFCI to protect against a ground loop. If there is a short to ground, this will kill the power instantly. You MUST have one if you connect liquid to a mains supply, as most systems do.

      Secondly, pure water is a insulator. Aren't YOU smart. Put it in an average watercooler for 15 minutes and you now have a very good conductor. Hella good, probably. In a few months, even better. Water isn't called the "universal solvent" for anything - it will pick up enough ions to be conductive from just about anything. Hint; you're running it though copper blocks in most cases, and the other surfaces aren't pristine.

      There are many other precautions. I've run for almost a year without a problem, but I took my time. I am looking to watercoool my home games machine now, as I believe you can probably get away without any fan on the system whatsoever. The noise reduction IS worth it when the girlfriend gets bitchy that your desk is whining like a supercharged honda when she's trying to sleep - and it's down the hall! Heh.

      Other experiments I'm thinking about include using a convection system that might stabilize at mid-50's C with no pump or fans whatsoever.

      My $0.02..
  • when did /. start doing product placement? At the very least, we deserve a disclaimer....

    must be having to stretch to meet payroll....
    • I know this may be a tempting thought, but it simply isn't true.

      It's inevitable given the nature of Slashdot that we will mention products, made by companies. This rig is one such. No special conspiracy required.

      timothy
  • Like im gonna junk the spud gun and the 4 wheeler to cool down the dern CPU thingybob.

    Right now i got the 4 wheeler turnin bout 50 fans to beat the friggin heat and the spud gun is launchin empty beer cans a good 150 feet onto the neighbors lawn. Besides what do I need to cool er off for. Unless the Porn is steaming up the computer as much as it does me : )
  • your really like myself
  • Really? Is it ground-breaking? Is it "New"? Is it a blatantly free advertising spoof for a over priced water cooling system?
    NO! NO! and YES!
    If you want to learn about water cooling, odds are you know of someone who is doing it, or heard about it from a friend, or are at a site which sells the units. This isn't needed on a site like this.
    Besides, the systems they sell at these overclocker sites are way over-priced any way.
    My cooling system, which I bought the radiator on ebay automotive was brand new, 3 to 4 times the size you will find at a overclocking site and only $23, thats including shipping.
    The water pumps are for the most part the same ones used within pond fountains or those fancy worthless desk-top rock fountains, which again can be bought for much less through the proper channels.
    My pump is rated over 500+ gallons an hour and again I got it for $26 including shipping.
    All in all, my cooling system was about $80.
    Go and recruit your goombas somewhere else... were trying to read interesting articles here.
    *whew* ok.. rant done...
  • I have yet to notice a water cooling system for having a (nearly) silent PC. All the ones I seen have been to cool CPU only, mainly to overclock it.

    What I'd like is a complete water cooling solution, ie: water cool CPU, GPU, Disk/CD drive, and Case/MB. Thus having NO fans inside at all.

    A problem I see with this is condensation, with just CPU cooling u insulate it all so only CPU is exposed to the coolness of the water, so condensation can be controled. But with a water cooling system for all the parts in your box I think this may become more of a problem.
    • I'm one. The first time was for an audio work station. Computer needed to be in the room, but no noise allowed. Very fun project. The kicker was building a water cooled ATX power supply. Heat exchanger was in another room. Koolance(sp?) makes a power supply, btw, if you don't want to role your own.

      Since then, I've slowly dumped my fans for water based systems. I don't mind the noise from my power supplies, hdd, and video cards, but dumping a 48db ytech fan was fantastic.

      As for water, no overclock, no need for a peltier. I have no condensation issues since the water is running around room temp. Cold water presents some interesting issues, but not at 30C....
    • First of all, you can already watercool every major component in your pc. You still need a fan or two to keep other minor circuits from over heating the inside of your case. As far as condensation goes, unless you use peltiers or something it's not a problem. A standard water cooling system stays at about room tempterature or maybe a couple of degrees over. Condensation will not form unless the water drops below room temperature which is literally impossible with just a fan and radiator. If you do use a peltier or something to further cool the block, there are gaskets available to seal off your CPU and block from the surounding air so condensation shouldn't be a major problem if done correctly.
    • The radiator can only be cooled (in regular setups) by room temperature air. So the water in it will not decrease below ambient. Water and air can be used to go below ambient by evaporation (like air blowing over wet skin) but this is unlikely to occur.

      Condensation therefore does not cause any problems. Once you start cooling the water with say a fridge or use a peltier between the cooling block and the heat source then of course condensation becomes a very real problem but this is hardly needed for a quit PC.

      I have now tested a basic setup for myself(see other comment) and hope soon to start building my own case with the aim of being completly silent. Yes even the bloody DVD-rom. Removing all fans however will not be needed. Just for them to be replaced by slow moving big ones. These don't have to make anymore noise then the hum of the electronics itself.

  • like, you could have this kinda headline on slashdot every gddamn week. there's at least 20+ kits available, and few(at least several) that sell cases with ready wc stuff.

    and even some that will cough up the dough if the block fails(in intended use, correctly installed) and your gfx+mobo gets screwed.

    me, i've been watercooling for ~2+ years.
  • Didn't we see this one a little while ago, thus making it 'redundant'?
  • Won't the water inside the system cause water in the air outside to condensate and drip onto your system? I was told this was the case by my Operations and Maintenance professor in High School.
    • Not if the water cooling the system is at the ambient temperature (room temp). The radiator's purpose is to equalize the temp of the coolant with that of the surrounding environment. Condensation wouldn't be a problem unless you were actively refrigerating the coolant.
  • The human brain burns, by calculation, about 20 watts of power.

    The Pentium 4 does 75 watts. W.T.F.

    For cryin' out loud--instead of some water cooling, why don't take advantage of the inferno and add a damn Easy-Bake Oven [yesterdayland.com] as an upgrade? I can make some brownies while I'm blowing the brownies out of some fragbait in Unreal Tournament.
  • I would like a water cooling system which could cool down HD, Power Supply, Video GPU etc. and be able to put the pump/radiator/fan far away.
    Or don't use radiator/fan, just pump the water from the swimming pool and put it back in so that we start crunching numbers and get an heated swimming pool ;-)
  • I've never had an overwhelming urge to overclock a CPU, so I'm obviously pretty clueless, but wouldn't a peltier junction cooler be easier?

    I realize that the hot side of a peltier device puts out quite a bit of heat which has to be gotten rid of -- is this why people end up resorting to water cooling?

    • I looked hard into these for a while. Too dangerous. They condense the water in the air around them and that's no good for electrical components. There are kits, but if you drown your system, you are down that much money. They aren't that expensive (I think like $20-$40 for a 50+W junction) but 50W of cooling is behemoth compared to the ~ 70W MAX heat dissapation of the Athlon TBird.
  • It's one of the worst kits I ghave seen recently. The waterblock is inefficient, the radiator is too small, and overall it's not worth the money. Just get an slk-800 + vantec tornado for $68 if you want decent value, or the swiftech kit if you want decent performance. Best of all, build one yourself, it's really not much harder than assembling the premade stuff.
  • However, if your like myself and have no creative skills whatsoever...
    ...or language skills, apparently. The contraction of "you are" is "you're."
  • I think we overclocked overclockersclub
  • > You can build your own water cooling system out of scrap parts such as a radiator from an ATV

    like any motorcycle or ATV parts, this sounds expensive to me.

    Why not try an aftermarket automatic transmission cooler like This one at Jegs? [jegs.com]
    This one is kinda big since its made for race-cars, but I think you could find one at a Napa store for like 30 bucks.

    A heater core might be better suited but you would need to adapt to garden-hose sized tubing.
  • dropped on top of the cabinet will work as well and be hella cheap. just remember to vent the gas every once in a while
  • Just spray water from a garden hose into your system every couple of days.
  • The water tank is too small. Whats that like? A cup of water? No wonder it cooled to inefficiently. Also mounting the radiator in the case certainly wouldn't be as good as mounting it outside the case. Think about it.. There is still a lot of heat from all the other stuff in the case. Hard drives, video card, PSU... so really you are absorbing a lot of that heat back into the radiator. If you blow air in, you raise the overall internal temp but cool the radiator. If you blow air out, you don't cool the radiator as well.

    I think someone needs to come up with something like a small air conditioner that can mount to the radiator or something to keep it cool. Even an air dehumidifier could fit the bill because it basically is a small AC unit anyway.
  • Installation

    Included in the box, was some very bad instructions. These instructions had no real pictures only diagrams, and the instructions were very hard to follow because the grammar was horrible. I do understand that these instructions were written by someone in Korea, but geez get someone better to translate it :/ Luckily I figured out what goes where, by trial and error.

  • As long as we're running ads disguised as stories (Score:3, Informative)

    by CaptainCarrot ( 84625 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @06:32PM (#4101060)
    ...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.

  • Around the top of this gray hole is a specially designed water proof plug. The plug simply tightens down very hard on the power cable so that no water can escape.

    Let's all hope he's mistaken about running water through the power cable.

    I poured in about a half a cup of antifreeze to help the algae down, and I also used distilled water.

    Well, of course, and you don't want the computer refusing to start on those cold mornings.

    Would you PLEASE stop posting this stuff? When you've got an alcohol (preferably gin and dry vermouth, shaken, not stirred) cooled sytem, then I'll be interested.

  • Anyone thought that it would be cheaper to buy a faster processor than overcocking a cheaper one and buying and expensive cooling system?
  • Uhhh, ok, let me get this straight... the article links to a review for a cooling system.

    At the bottom of the "review"/ad, it says one of the Cons was: did not meet my cooling requirements...

    So the point of this was what, exactly?

    If you are trying to market your product, you might want to actually READ the review first...
  • Silly question. Why H20? Is there another legal liquid substance that would provide more efficient cooling?
  • TechTV had a segment a while back about a submerged liquid cooled system. They placed the mobo and all components in what ammounted to a short, wide fish tank with 2 halves with a small air gap between them. The half with the computer in it was filled with this liquid made by 3M which is apparently completely inert and non-conductive, and can reach sub-zero C temps without freezing. The other half of the box contained a radiator, and was filled with alcohol and dry ice, if i remember correctly. The liquid was pumped through the radiator and into the computer half of the box, with an outlet directly above the CPU, and Athlon sans heatsink, and one to circulate the liquid around the rest of the components. The whole setup was then closed in. A properly sealed version would run without needing new liquid, though theirs was evaporating since the top was not locked down. The dry ice/alcohol would need changing regularly of course. The got the whole system, including CPU temp, down to -30 C, when it stopped working. 3M markets the liquid for cooling super computers. Wonder how fast you could overclock the system like this? They didn't try, although when the turned the pump off, the Athlon started boiling the coolant! Maybe when I have more money than god, or at least CowboyNeal...
    • The chemical is called Fluorinert, pronounced Floor-Inert.

      This was done way before Tech TV got to it.

      The stuff was fairly cheap from what I recall, 10$ a liter, maybe.
    • Wouldn't it be cheaper really to just buy a faster CPU? By the time you go through all that cost and effort to squeeze a few more cycles out of the cpu you could've spent less (time and $) on a faster one by design that doesn't have to sit in a bucket of goo to run.
  • "Navi, connect to the Wired."
  • They're not as expensive as they used to be [yahoo.com], and they're far less messy than water-cooling. They still don't seem to have adequate thermostatic control, though, so they can drop the temperature below the dew point and cause condensation.

    In the mainframe world, everybody was very happy when the water cooling era finally ended. Having spent years dealing with the cooling problems of mainframes (bad memories of crawling under a building late at night looking for a leak in a chilled water return line), I am very down on water cooling as a solution. It's more like a problem.

  • Whoa ! (Score:3, Funny)

    by NTSwerver ( 92128 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @08:07AM (#4103678) Journal

    Check this guy [bbspot.com] out !

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