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Hardware

Water Cooled Power Supply 279

Posted by CmdrTaco from the void-your-warranty-and-burn-down-the-house dept.
lmd writes "Digital-Explosion has an article with step-by-step instructions on how to cool a power supply with water (yes, water) instead of fans/heatsinks to make it quieter. Please read the warning and disclaimer (and buy insurance if you don't have any) if you decide to try this at home."
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Water Cooled Power Supply More

Water Cooled Power Supply

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  • Water cooled? What wusses (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hairy_Potter ( 219096 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:20PM (#5068390) Homepage
    I'm holding out for a liquid sodium cooled computer, just like valves on decent cars.

    • I'm waiting for the cooling system that needs its own cooling system.

    • Heck, go for broke. Use a combination of sodium and water.
    • "I'm holding out for a liquid sodium cooled computer, just like valves on decent cars."

      According to the data sheet [webelements.com] on Sodium, the melting point for good old Na is "370.87 Kelvin [or 97.72 C (207.9 F)]." For the slow, this means it's solid at any temperature below this. So, to use liquid sodium in a computer, the coolest you could get the system while keeping the sodium liquified is ~208F. I think I'll stick with H2-0 for now...

  • Digital Explosion (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:22PM (#5068405)
    Well I guess a site called Digital Explosion is really the best suited to report this.

    • Digital Fireworks Display, one way or another. (Score:5, Informative)

      by BigBlockMopar ( 191202 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:50PM (#5068552) Homepage

      Well I guess a site called Digital Explosion is really the best suited to report this.

      Yeah, I have a couple of problems with the way this was carried out. Conceptually, I would love a completely water-cooled computer since I'm tired of the noise. But this is pretty dangerous.

      Why remove the existing heat sinks? Rather than removing them from components and risking forgetting a mica insulator or doing other damage, why not simply take advantage of them as an easy surface to which to attach cooling tubes. Most power supplies I've opened, I could solder copper tubing to the heatsinks fairly easily.

      The other thing is that the mass of the heatsinks would provide a little thermal inertia to buy you some time in the event of a bubble or other failure.

      I've also got concerns about the overall safety of this. Even without mica insulators or any other outward signs, a heatsink may be running at some potential other than ground. Pure water isn't very conductive, but all the same, your cooling water is likely to be grounded - and should be grounded. Pumping water through a tube attached to a component or heatsink will bring the water to that potential; using a piece of plastic tubing to insulate one metal tube from another is NOT safe.

      What you need to do is have electrically insulating but thermally conductive means to couple the heat to the tubing. Mica insulators and thermal transfer grease are a good start.

      I think I'd solder some copper tubing to some copper sheetmetal, and then I'd coat the flat surface with heat transfer grease, add a sheet of mica and more transfer grease, and then screw it to a heatsink inside the power supply. I'd use off-the-shelf electronics hardware to screw the two pieces together but maintain their electrical isolation: even Radio Shack sells the stuff.

      Make sure that the water is grounded, and then run the power supply from a Ground-Fault Interruptor (GFI) receptacle like you'd find in a bathroom. This way, a water leak in the power supply should turn off the power at the outlet and reduce the risk of a bigger problem.


      • I've also got concerns about the overall safety of this. Even without mica insulators or any other outward signs, a heatsink may be running at some potential other than ground. Pure water isn't very conductive, but all the same, your cooling water is likely to be grounded - and should be grounded. Pumping water through a tube attached to a component or heatsink will bring the water to that potential; using a piece of plastic tubing to insulate one metal tube from another is NOT safe.

        By the way, even if there's no immediate symptom of a problem with this potential difference across the water, I think anyone who ignored such a situation would quickly find bizarre actions like the galvanic corrosion and eventual failure of metal pipes or tubing in the system.

      • ...why not simply take advantage of them as an easy surface to which to attach cooling tubes. Most power supplies I've opened, I could solder copper tubing to the heatsinks fairly easily.

        Hmmm. Soldering copper to aluminium is not immediately trivial - ordinary 60/40 lead/tin solder won't wet aluminium, you need special (silver-loaded?) solder which is much more expensive and uses pretty nasty flux chemicals.

        Even then, you'll have increased the thermal resistance of the joint significantly. I'd be tempted to try a solid block of copper with a hole drilled lengthwise and copper tubing soldered (actually I'd braze it - much stronger)to the outside faces. Then use mica washers / thermal paste as usual.

        ...then run the power supply from a Ground-Fault Interruptor (GFI) receptacle like you'd find in a bathroom.

        Be aware that domestic GFI plugs (also known as earth leakage or RCD trips) often don't trip until the current difference is ~ 30mA; typical tap water has a resistivity in the range 1 - 10 kOhm.cm, so at 120V, a few cm of insulated piping might stop the breaker tripping.

        Jon.

  • The site was slashdotted with less than 4 comments, and the error page didn't even have the MIME Type header set right. Are you goin to trust these guys with something that effectively could kill you ?? Good luck guys. The idea sounds very neat, specially considering that the whole PS could be airtight and therefore collect much less dust.

    • Re:Be very carefull with this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cybergibbons ( 554352 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @06:42PM (#5068808) Homepage

      Ok, I can't read the site because it is slashdotted, and yeah, you shouldn't trust these guys anyway, because of what they are doing.

      But nonetheless, your logic is shit. I know HV electricians, pipe workers, welders, heavy plant operators, who don't even know what the internet is, but spend their lives doing stuff more dangerous that you can comprehend.

      It constantly annoys me that geeks think that they know better than everyone else, just because they know the exact ins and outs of computers and networking. Yes, they are important... but there are far more important things in life.

  • I really like the results of water-cooling, but (as in cars) have noticed that the tolerances must be much tighter, leaving the water-cooled system much more fragile. It would suck to be in the middle of a LAN party and have the power supply flake out.

  • Relatively slashdotted... (alternative site) (Score:4, Informative)

    by $$$$$exyGal ( 638164 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:29PM (#5068456) Homepage Journal
    I was getting intermittent CGI errors.

    Here's another site [tomshardware.com] that discusses water cooling your system.

    --sexygal [slashdot.org]

  • Geez (Score:5, Funny)

    by EvilStein ( 414640 ) <.ten.pbp. .ta. .maps.> on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:29PM (#5068457)
    9 minutes later, and it's Slashdotted already.

    I guess those water cooled things *still* don't hold up.

    Some web server somewhere has probably just evaporated in a cloud of steam.

  • hmmmm (Score:4, Funny)

    by Phosphor3k ( 542747 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:29PM (#5068460)
    CGI-limits reached, please try again later!
    If thats what happens when I water cool my PSU, forget that!

  • copy of article (Score:5, Informative)

    by 10 Speed ( 519184 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:30PM (#5068466)
    WARNING : All power supplies have capacitors in them. These components can hold an electrical charge for days even weeks. We do not recommend that anyone opens up their Power Supply unless they do know what they are doing and are willing to take responsibility for their actions.

    DISCLAIMER : The author of this article and the owner of this page are not responsible or liable for any damage caused to any equipment or persons. In attempting what is detailed below you are taking full responsility for your actions.

    A Brief Introduction

    When I went about water-cooling my first PSU, I was learning as I went along so now I've had the experience, I'm in a better position to do a decent job. In this article I'll go through, step-by-step, showing you how to water-cool your PSU from scratch! I started off with a nice little QTec 550W PSU :

    If you've read the first article I wrote on water-cooling your PSU (which was aimed more at inspiring people than being a step-by-step guide), you'll know that my basic plan is quite simple. Basically, it involves replacing the fans / heatsinks with plates of copper. Each plate has a copper pipe soldered to it which is where the water runs to remove the heat. We'll get to that later - for now lets look at taking this thing apart.

    Disassembly

    If you have any doubts, this is the time to think again. As with just about every mod on this site, the first thing to do is void your warranty :D While that little sticker's intact, you can go and whine at your supplier if/when it goes bang. In any case, I'm not afraid so lets get stuck in :

    Four tiny screws later and the top should be loose. If you're doing this to a different PSU, you may find there's a fifth screw near the base - there was one on my old AOpen PSU. Here it is, guts exposed :

    Now the whole point of water-cooling the thing was to make it quieter so lets go ahead and get rid of those pesky fans :

    I found that Q-Tec had been very helpful and given each fan a little connector that can easily be removed. Here's what you should have after removing the noisy beasts :

    Noisy though the fans are, your PSU isn't going to work for very long without some kind of cooling. At this point you should be able to see the two heatsinks we're going to replace. Attatched to the sinks, you'll see rows of components - these are the really hot bits in your PSU and it's these that we'll be cooling. Now if we're going to replace the heatsinks with our water-cooled plates we need access to said components. There's two steps to this. First we need to remove the four screws that hold the main board of the PSU :

    Next we need to remove the little board that attatches to the connector where you plug your PSU into the wall. If you don't do this, you'll have to bend the back of the PSU to get the board out!

    Okay, all being well, you should have a fully disassembled unit :

    The next step is a little more tricky. We need to get those heatsinks off those components but unfortunately, you won't be able to get to the screws that hold them on. So what do we do? Un-solder them of course :) Look carefully at the bottom of the board and then double-check the top surface. You should be able to work out which joints on the base correspond to the components on the other side. All the components have three legs which makes life a little easier. I've found quite often that the heatsinks have an additional soldered connection or two to help keep them attatched to the board. Here's a couple of pics of the components and the base of the board :

    Right, lets get the first heatsink off :

    With a little more de-soldering, here's the second one removed as well :

    Removing the components and attatching them to the new water-cooled plates is a doddle. Just remember two points when doing this :

    1) Whatever you do, DON'T FORGET what order the components went in - it could be disastrous if you got them mixed up!

    2) Be careful when re-attatching, not to leave out the Mica shims (the grey pads). These stop you getting mains voltages going through the heatsink or water-block so they're pretty goddamn important!

    Here you can see them attatched to the water-block I made :

    If you're wondering how to get the holes on your block in just the right place, do what I did and use the heatsink you took off earlier as a template :D

    Re-assembling the beast

    The next step is to re-attatch the components to the board :

    Now I run an XP in my machine and I have no intention of moving to Intel so the P4 connector's just taking up space in my machine. The same is true of the old ATX connector so I got rid of 'em :

    Next it's time to implement a very handy bit of kit which makes water-cooling a little safer and easier. When you turn on your machine you don't want to have to remember to turn your pump on - if you forget, your liable to burn your chip! So what can you do to get around this? The answers simple - a 12v relay. Basically, when the computer starts, the 12v line coming out of the PC goes from 0 to 12v which closes the relay, starting the pump. I also find it useful to have an overide switch so you can pulse the pump on and off (to get rid of any trapped air in the system). Here's a quick diagram of the way my circuit works :

    Apologies for my poor photochop skillz :/ Having soldered the above into the PSU, I quickly re-assembled the thing and here's the results (photos taken just before I replaced the outer casing) :

    And finally, here you can see it installed as I wait for the system to bleed :

    Time for some tea and biccies! Well, I tentatively flicked the switch and as I cringed, waiting for a loud bang followed by fireworks, my machine quietly booted :D Wow, this things so goddamn quiet - I love it! There's now only the two panaflows at the front running and they're at 5v each so you can barely hear them. With the disks encased in foam, even when there's hard disk activity, my machine's still damn quiet!

  • That is just what I want, an H20 source pumping thur a 120v electrical device.

    That is one hell of a failure mode.
    • Right.

      Just like the electric water heater in my apartment. Except, that's operating at much higher pressure and double the voltage of this project. Can you imagine the failure mode?

      For that matter, my apartment has electronic, pushbutton water at each fixture. It's all operated by a box of valves, solenoids and copper pipes under the kitchen sink, which is - you guessed it - plugged into a 120VAC outlet. Shocking, isn't it?

      My fridge, during the defrost cycle, drips water down the inside of the back wall of the fresh food compartment, by design. This water is seeking the lowest point it can find, which is - you guessed it - rather close to the machine's electric motor. Can you imagine what would happen if...

      What about the electric fuel pump that's inside my car's gas tank (and quite likely yours, as well)? Can you imagine the failure mode? Nevermind that the fuel lines operate at high pressure, and connect to an engine. From what I understand, such engines operate by exploding a mixture of air and fuel. Oh, and I guess they're stuffed full of electronics these days (some operating at ~100KV), and it's all water-cooled. The horror!

      Now then, a few of the catastrophic failure modes of a funky water-cooled PSU for those suffering from severe logical ineptitude (see: "neo-luddite"):

      1) Clean water starts spraying everywhere. Something in the PSU gets upset at this. Output voltages get funky. Mainboard shuts itself down. PSU blows fuses, shuts down. Water pump eventually runs dry, and may or may not destroy itself because of this. Root cause: Should've used de-ionized water (read: Does Not Conduct) and learned how to solder. Solution: Remove case, replace anything with convex/exploded capacitors or obvious burns, allow the rest to dry before testing and using. This costs money, as does a failure in a water heater, fridge, or automotive engine. Deal with it.

      2) Low water pressure, and/or high water temperature. PSU shuts down. Root cause: Should've used a pump rated for continuous duty, and/or learned how to solder. Solution: Fix your plumbing, and power back up.

      3) You didn't insulate things properly, and zot yourself while plugging your sound card into your guitar amp. Root cause: Musicians never mix well with fluids of any sort, especially when electricity is involved. Solution: Replace musician, as needed.

      Now, for the fun experiments you kids can try at home: You'll need a heavy-duty extension cord, a clean non-conductive container, and some distilled water. For increased safety, use a cord with a built-in fuse of appropriate rating, and a GFCI-equipped outlet.

      Fill the container with distilled water. Dry your hands (they're salty, thus conductive with water), and plug the extension cord into a fused outlet. Drop the other end into the container. Which of the following is most likely to occur:

      a) Smoke, fire, lights flashing madly on-and-off, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria

      or...

      b) Nothing at all

      That's right, kids: Nothing happens. You just dropped an electrical cord into a body of water, and absolutely nothing happened. Zip, zilch, nada, nit.

      Learn from this.

    • It can be done. I once saw a 250 kW shortwave broadcast transmitter that used water-cooled tubes in the final amplifier section. I'm not sure what the plate voltage was on the tubes, but it was enough to ruin your day. The tubes were cooled by a water jacket. The water was kept pure enough that it didn't short out the tubes.

  • Why? (Score:3, Informative)

    by core plexus ( 599119 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:33PM (#5068484) Homepage
    Ok, maybe because I live in the Arctic I don't get it. The only problem I ever had with a quality power supply was it got worn out. We do get some glacial silt and volcanic ash, both of which are very fine-grained and abrasive, but water cooling would not have helped that. My current power supply (Antec 450 something) has 3 fans, but they only use them when its needed. (I'm building a case with filtration system).

    People, this is not something to play around with. The disclaimers and warning on the site fall far short. It's one thing to cut yourself while monkeying around with a case mod; it's a whole 'nother country when you get a nasty zap, or worse.

    Computer virus zaps oil giant [xnewswire.com]

  • *ZAP* (Score:5, Funny)

    by suss ( 158993 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:33PM (#5068485)
    The first thing that came into mind when i saw "Water Cooled Power Supply", was "Darwin Award"...

    It'll probably end up there somewhere in the coming months, now that this has been on slashdot.
    • Well, as questionable an idea this project might seem, it won't kill you if the PSU is shorted. You see, a computer's case is grounded, and if you short the live wire to the case, the circuit breaker (or GFI) will trip. That's actually the reason why cases are grounded in the first place.
      • Well, as questionable an idea this project might seem, it won't kill you if the PSU is shorted. You see, a computer's case is grounded,...
        However if you plumb it with plastic tubing, the water can behave as a wire, and carry the dangerous voltage out to your pump/reservoir/radiator. Even metal tubing with a lot of oxide/crud built up on the walls could carry current outside.

        This "project" is just plain dangerous.

  • Cool & quiet power supplies? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:35PM (#5068494) Homepage Journal
    Laptops usually have small and cool (no fans) power supplies. Why should desktops be much different? I understand desktop drives take a little more oomph, but then again you have more space for the PSU than a tiny laptop adapter, i.e. space for heat sinks.

    Makes me wonder if desktops still have huge transformers at 50Hz instead of the modern switching type. We do live in the 2000s, the space age once dreamed of, you know. I fancy getting a mini-itx system some day, but only if I could use a laptop style, totally quiet PSU. I mean, PSUs are supposed to convert energy, not dissipate it, or what?

    Then again, fans are not that bad compared to the sound from IBM hard drives...

    • Power supplies on the market these days are all of the switching type, not the linear type. Switching power supplies are more efficient, but you still have to regulate voltage, and the components that do this are not 100% efficient (the more current you draw through them, the hotter they'll get). You could in theory build a suitable switching power supply with no fans, but have you opened a modern power supply? They are very cramped, not leaving much room to apply liberal heatsinks to the components that need them (most everything active, like the switching transistors). The quick fix? Blow air through it and use smaller heatsinks.

      • They are very cramped, not leaving much room to apply liberal heatsinks to the components that need them (most everything active, like the switching transistors). The quick fix? Blow air through it and use smaller heatsinks.

        Yeah, how about the heat generated in the transformers? It must be non-negligible, even though the transformers don't have overt heat sinks.

        Seems to me that ferrite cores aren't hugely thermally conductive, so it might be fairly tough to couple the heat away from the transformers.

        • The transformers will produce heat, but not usualy require heatsinking (unless the supply is overloaded to begin with). The active components will dissapate much more energy for their package size and require something to channel the heat from them (heatsink). The key is layout... most monitors are convection cooled, as well as computers like the slot loading iMac. They don't seem to have a problem with transformers getting too hot, and have tackled the no fan problem.

          • The transformers will produce heat, but not usualy require heatsinking (unless the supply is overloaded to begin with). The active components will dissapate much more energy for their package size and require something to channel the heat from them (heatsink). The key is layout... most monitors are convection cooled, as well as computers like the slot loading iMac. They don't seem to have a problem with transformers getting too hot, and have tackled the no fan problem.

            The point is that the power supplies are designed for fan-forced airflow over all components, including the transformers. They're not designed for convection cooling. When you replace the forced airflow with water cooling, the transformers are no longer cooled as the supply's designers had intended. And I think you can basically ignore the effects of convection in such a tight enclosure as a normal computer power supply.

            I think I'd start by measuring the temperature of the transformers normally, then with water cooling of the rest of the supply.

            • Good point. Convection, as I intended to say, only makes sense when it is designed for it. You are not going to gain anything except a dead power supply in the standard power supply arrangement if you killed the fan.
    • Laptops usually have small and cool (no fans) power supplies.

      Oh really [theregister.co.uk]?

  • back to the future (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HealYourChurchWebSit ( 615198 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:35PM (#5068495) Homepage


    As I recall, back in the day, the early Cray Super Computers [pipex.com] was water-cooled ... imagine, a system so proverbially "hot" that the install required the services of a plumber!

    • ..if u had been to the alternative partys you would have seen these live. they gave away cray modules with tubes sticking out of them as competition prizes(coolant tubes).

      the coolant used is not water on these though iirc it's some sort of nonconducting liquid.

      ps. jeff minter kicks ass. and i run watercooled. pps. guy by the nick 'bladerunner' did this a long time ago(wc'd psu) and a lot of guys has done this since(i'm still not thinking of doing this since i would have to watercool all the passively-aircooled parts inside comp too if i removed the only fan providing airflow through case.).

  • Mirror (Score:4, Informative)

    by xombo ( 628858 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:40PM (#5068510)
    CGI-limits reached, please try again later!

    That site needs a mirror, and I need karma, here is a mirror [moderngeek.com]. Be nice to it :-)

  • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Dangerous. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Penguin2212 ( 173380 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @05:49PM (#5068546)
    Speaking from the perspective of an Electrical Engineering student, I must say this is totally insane. First of all, taking apart a power supply is bad enough if you're not careful. Second, pumping a conductive fluid through a high-voltage power converter is even more insane. Pumping water onto a processor to keep it cool is one thing, because currents and voltages on the motherboard are relatively low but a power supply has potentially lethal current and voltages. The article makes no mention of using a non-conductive fluid, nor does it make any mention of how to even correctly discharge capacitors while working with them. Anybody who tries this is seriously risking his or her life.
    • The article makes no mention of using a non-conductive fluid

      Use distilled water. It's non-conductive.
      • Another reason for using distilled water is to prevent stuff from growing in it. Nasty smelling black bacteria may clog your pipes after a few months with tap water. I work with fire systems and can tell you the stench of trapped water in pipes after years. This is why distilled water is specified for welding cooling systems. The distilled water keeps the pipes flowing without fungus buildup.
    • ...of how to even correctly discharge capacitors while working with them...

      Use a screwdriver to short the contacts and watch it go flying across the room? :)
    • nor does it make any mention of how to even correctly discharge capacitors while working with them.

      HowTo: Safely discharge a capacitor

      Capacitors can store large amounts of electricity for a long time after the device has been turned off. Depending on the size/rating of the capacitor, this can be enought to injure or kill you.

      If you ever plan to work on a device with capacitors, you should properly discharge them first to prevent youself from a potentialy fatal electric shock.

      Look for the contacts of the capacitor, then, lick one of your fingers, and gentaly touch the contacts, making sure than your finger touches both of them at the same time.

      You have successfully discharged the capacitor, and it is now safe to work on without the risk of an eletrical shock.

      Disclaimer: Yes, most of use here know this is a joke. But just incase you might be up for the next Darwin award: Don't use your fingers to discharge a capacitor. Infact, if you didn't know that already, you should never taking apart anything in the first place.

  • *BrrrZZZaaaAAAAAaaaaaaaP*

    It'll be really cool after it shorts.
  • OK, so decreasing the temperature of your PSU with water is... uhhmmm, cool.

    But, I want to see some one come up with a ups enhanced power supply. At least in my experience most power supply problems have to be the little brown outs and black outs during storms. They generally last between momentary to 5 seconds. A PSU with 30 seconds of reserve energy at its rating (example 400W*30sec.) would be something worth having.
    • Dude, just get a UPS. There's no room for a battery and inverter to give you that 30s in there.
      • PC Power and Cooling, in the early/mid 90's, made a full-sized AT power supply with an internal battery backup. For those who don't know: AT supplies are -big-, and usually mostly full of air. This one was full of lead-acid gel cells, instead.

        You'll see these at hamfests and such occasionally, and they're painted black, so are relatively easy to spot.

        IIRC, they were good for somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes of runtime.

    • Back in the kit computer days, there was one manufacturer that used a special type of transformer (fero-resonant, maybe, don't remember for sure) that would protect against brown outs. I think they did this for the advantages in the industrial markets.

  • The reason that power supplies have fans... (Score:5, Informative)

    by DeComposer ( 551766 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @06:00PM (#5068590) Journal
    ...is because all of the discrete components need cooling, not just the ones that have heat sinks. It might be as much as a year before he smells the delicate aroma of cooked dielectric when a capacitor overheats and explodes.
  • PC Power Supplies tend to be very inefficient, where efficiency is defined as

    Power Output
    % Efficiency = ----------------
    Power Consumed

    I wonder how much power we could save as a nation if we had higher efficiency power supplies in our PC.
    • I've got a few class A rackmount avalon audio preamps that make my pc's powersupply look like a honda hybrid.
  • Why in the world not use some liquid that DOESN'T conduct electricity?
    • Exactly! I mean, a few hundred bucks for flourinert or something is a lot of money, but relatively little compared to the cost of replacing your computer in the event of leakage. Well, I suppose it would depend on where the water was leaked, but I'd imagine the power supply blowing would be pretty devastating to the entire system.

  • Full Mirror with Thumbnails (Score:4, Informative)

    by Xerithane ( 13482 ) <xerithane AT nerdfarm DOT org> on Sunday January 12, 2003 @06:26PM (#5068718) Homepage Journal
    http://xerithane.nerdfarm.org/watercool_psu.html

    Or:
    Here [nerdfarm.org]

  • Of course... it has to be distilled water, but this is fairly easy to get. It is the impurities in water that make it conduct electricity. So even if a water-cooled system leaks a bit inside your computer you'll probably be okay long enough to patch it (assuming that you get to it quickly enough that much dust hasn't had time to settle in the water, which would make it a conductor). Certainly the instant that a leak is noticed, the system should be shut down in the most expeditious manner available, and left off until the problem is fixed. It doesn't take TOO long for dust to settle inside a computer, after all (more than a few minutes, but usually less than a few hours).

    As I understand it, after installation and patching any initially detected leaks (which you should do a thorough test for immediately after installation), a water cooled system is very unlikely to develop any further leaks anyways unless you did a shoddy assembly/patch job.

    Of course, this is jist what I've gleaned from my own experience

  • Once you actually get a silent PC (I made one of mine silent by sticking it in a closet in the room adjoining my media room, and just running long cables for everything), then you have the joy of discovering that everything else around you makes noise, too.
    My neighbor's pipes are loud. So is my refridgerator. Even my TV and DVD player make more noise than I would've thought.

    If you're going to be so fanatical as to water cool a power supply, all I can say is, good luck with all the new stuff you'll eventually find annoying.
  • --as long as someone is modding their case, etc, whynot just remove the power supply to someplace else? Why does it have to be inside the case all the time? Resistance drops on dc wiring ain't all that bad within a reasonable distance, like inside a room to over yonder in the closet. And wires are cheap, and connectors can be cobbed. Put the power supply someplace away from where you are, add a larger low rpm quit fan, not have to worry about fitting in more stuff inside the case or concentrating the ambient noise, and having the power supply outside the case will have it run cooler just from not being so confined and next to the other heat sources like the drives and cpu and vid card.

    I guess you could use it as a coffee warmer to disguise it as well if it was still inside the room. heh.
    • One problem would be that a computer (PC type) is not a static load on the power supply. I read some Intel design notes on supplying power to the CPU that imposed some very nasty requirements on the CPU voltage regulators. The power drawn by the CPU can vary over a large range and change very quickly. That varying load is going to cause rapid changes in the power drawn from the main power supply. Excessively long wires between the PC and the power supply could cause all sorts of problems with voltage regulation.
  • If we are doing this for sound reasons (pun intended), then you should remove all fans from your computer and submerge the whole computer in hydrofluoroether [3m.com]. Well maybe you want to keep your floppy and CD drives out of it. And it boils at 61 degrees Celsius, so you can visually see if it is getting too hot. TechTV has a story [techtv.com] about building a case and sticking your motherboard in it, but no reason why you couldn't do the same for the whole computer.

    It would look cool in a fish tank with some fake fish and plants. Plus you could use your aquarium thermometer...
  • I'm curious: are there any materials out there with the following properties, which would make them suitable for use in this context?

    1) High Thermal Conductivity

    2) Very high electrical Resistance (insulators)

    3) Fluid at ~0-200 degrees C

    If there are no suitable fluids, perhaps merely a powdered solid would be workable

    4) Low chemical reactivity - not poisonous or corrosive.

    I envision a change in packaging where the

    1) silicon wafer is mounted on a stand-off inside a thin composite, mostly electrically insulated 'tube' (see 2), so that a fluid as above could entirely bathe the chip

    2) the connections of the chip connect to discrete contact points (possibly in three dimensions) which are conductors through the tube to the outside, which are the 'pins' of the IC.

    3) Fluid is constantly pumped through the package, going to a (variously sized) 'vat' of fluid: once the heat is away from the pinpoint source, it is very much easier to cool.

    -J

  • A little feedback for you all... (Score:5, Informative)

    by JonTheG33K ( 640632 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @08:15PM (#5069177)
    I'm the (crazy?) guy that wrote that article and I feel it's only fitting I answer some of your reservations :) First of all, the article included a disclaimer indicating the dangers of capacitors inside PSUs and hence the need for caution. That said, I've never opened a PSU and magaed to find any voltage left in them (carefully tested with a multimeter). The reason I used water is that it is the best combination of price vs performance. Admittedly if there was a leak, my machine would be in serious trouble. The way I've constructed the thing, it's no more likely than the fan dying to be honest! The PSU does actually still get a little air flow since my case has two 120mm fans at the front running at 5v. They're blowing across the radiator which cools all the stuff that's water-cooled. With regards to the worries about "live heatsinks" I've tested every PSU I've water-cooled and in each and every one, there hasn't been a single "live" heatsink. Hope that clear things up a bit for the more sceptical of you ;)
    • herr g33k here demonstrates the level of g33kness we should all aspire to.

      and i'm not insulting him. with a ton of up-and-coming geeks, it's nice to see a modicum of safety exhibited. in this case, he actually used a multimeter (!) to check the capacitors (!) to save himself from being fried while modding his computer (!).

      it's the same with cars: ricers deck out their cars with 32987543289 amps of tasty goodness, but fail to demonstrate any level of foundational knowledge. which isn't to say that there are 32987543288 geeks frying themselves out of every 32987543289 geeks.

      what i'm saying is that the pinnacle of geekdom lies in the studying everything. not just where you can go, but where you should have been.

      and thusly, you can prevent yourself from sizzling the tender slushy organ known as the brain.

      i think that this message should be drilled into the heads of all future nerds. i would sincerely hate to see future slashdot stories like:

      - GEEK FRIES SELF MODDING POWER SUPPLY or
      - DO NOT MOUTH PIPETTE BATTERY FLUID or
      - "I TRIED TO OVERCLOCK MY WALL OUTLET WITH MY TONGUE AND _LIVED_!"

      safety first. discharge static electricity before doing your work. test your circuits. and always, ALWAYS wear a cup.

  • G3 iMac, G4 Cube (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) <slashdot3@@@phroggy...com> on Sunday January 12, 2003 @10:15PM (#5069743) Homepage
    Take a look at the later-model G3 iMacs and the G4 Cube; they have no fans. The Cube uses an external power supply, not inside the case, and it radiates heat like any adapter brick. The iMac has the power supply inside, and as hot air rises out the top it draws cool air in the bottom.

    Obviously the iMac only works that way because it's also engineered not to produce very much heat; I wouldn't expect the same to be possible with your standard Athlon system. Even Apple's newer desktop systems don't run cool enough not to need fans. Still, it seems to me that some of the same concepts could be applied.

    One of the reasons for having a fan on the power supply is to act as a case fan as well - it draws warm air out of the rest of the system, and cools the power supply on the way out. It seems to me you wouldn't want to just remove the power supply fan, unless you had another way of cooling the rest of the system.

    Hmm, I was going somewhere with this. Oh well.
  • Wouldn't the best idea be to have a power supply designed and built from the ground up with water cooling? Power supplies themselves are probably cheaper than the CPU water cooling kits, so the water cooled PS shouldn't cost much more than a PS cooling kit.

    Even better would be a complete case and power supply, so you could route some water to the drive carriers, so the sound insulation doesn't make them fry. You'd have to do some custom plumbing to hook in the CPU cooler, but the rest of the system could be completely assembled with the case and PS.

  • the stuff we use at work has to have a minimum resistivity of 18MOhm/cm; I wat till it stabilizes at 18.2 usually, put that in a clean, mostly-plastc system and you'll have no worries. Still, ground it all just to be sure. (i work with 3-10kV H20-colled powersupplies, granted they're in the neighborhood of .1mA, so...)

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