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Hardware

CPU Cooling with 15 Liters of Water 194

Posted by michael from the longer-than-a-tercel dept.
ninjagin writes "While not an OC-er, I do enjoy reading about the lengths people will go to on their way to a better CPU cooling solution. I ran across this very interesting article at overclockers.com about this guy's immense 15-liter water cooling rig for his home office PC. Might be just the kind of thing to have the contractors include when they pour your next garage slab."
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CPU Cooling with 15 Liters of Water More

CPU Cooling with 15 Liters of Water

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  • i can keep my cpu temp down 10 degrees celsius by leaving the door to the backyard open. it's not 15 litres of water, but it keeps it cool. i mean, no need to get crazy :x

  • The Problem with water Cooling (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Michael's a Jerk! ( 668185 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @07:35AM (#6260801) Homepage Journal
    I've been thinking of mking a rig like this, but there are reliability problems. Check out What Happened to Dan [dansdata.com] of Dan's Data.

    Corrosion is a big problem for the uninitiated :-(
    • Well, plumbing copper shouldn't corrode to easily. Using distilled water should prolong the possibility also

      • Re:The Problem with water Cooling (Score:5, Informative)

        by Michael's a Jerk! ( 668185 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @07:43AM (#6260811) Homepage Journal
        Ah, did you read the referenced article?

        Basically, his hear exchanger was the annode in an unintentional battery :-)

        The copper corrodes a little, as copper in water or air always will. This is not normally a big deal, because a thin copper oxide layer forms and protects the rest of the metal. But in the process, some copper ions go into solution and make their way around, thanks to the pump, to the aluminium water block. They precipitate onto the water block surface as teeny little metallic copper particles.

        And then plain old galvanic corrosion can happen, as the copper and aluminium are in physical, and thus electrical, contact, and both immersed in the electrolyte. The dreck you end up with is mainly aluminium oxide, with its greenish colour donated by a light lacing of copper oxide. Tah-dah.

        When I flame-tested some of the precipitate, by the way, this was borne out; green flame from the copper, bright sparks from the aluminium. Case closed.

        Incidentally, when I was trying to track down information on this subject, I discovered that if you start searching for "galvanic corrosion" in the company of some other computer-cooling-relevant words, you're likely to find a large number of pages belonging to homebrew enthusiasts, and a smaller number of pages belonging to nuclear reactor technicians.

        Neither of these groups of people want galvanic corrosion to happen in their equipment, but judging by the degree of unhappiness expressed by those who have had equipment destroyed by it, it would appear to be much more irritating when it ruins a batch of beer than when it results in radioactive liquid sodium spraying all over a control room.

    • Re:The Problem with water Cooling (Score:5, Informative)

      by palutke ( 58340 ) * on Saturday June 21, 2003 @08:03AM (#6260839)
      Using a copper waterblock instead of aluminum helps prevent this, as does using some sort of additive to inhibit the corrosion (water wetter or a little anitfreeze).
      • Better yet, don't use water.

        If you look in any well-built data center, you'll find air conditioners that are set up like this [liebert.com]. You've got the air conditioner itself inside, which emit heat into a glycol coolant which is then fed to a chiller on the roof (basically a radiator with a fan blowing on it).

        Glycol is an excellent thermal conductor, and it's just toxic enough that slime and other germies can't grow in it.
    • And he is using that crappy Swiftech block, which has a copper base and aluminum shroud. It'll probably corrode pretty quickly. Copper and aluminum work great for air coolers, though.
    • These huge water cooling rigs are going to make modern computers as big as ENIAC again. So much for compactness and portability. I've got an idea, lets make larger die CPUs, so they won't have these overheating problems.
    • I have seen Dan's article before, and while interesting to see what happened, and his explanation...all of the sudden it hit me! If you want to prevent algae and microbiological stuff in the water, use a waterbed conditioner!!! That's exactly what it's used for in waterbeds and it's very cheap.

  • 15 liters is nothing.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord Fren ( 189373 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @07:36AM (#6260804) Journal
    I cool my PC with my outdoor swimming pool!!

    Still having problems with dirt clogging the lines though. .
    On the plus side, when that happens I get a nice introduction fusion when my Athlon melts down!

    • Funny! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Mensa Babe ( 675349 )

      I cool my PC with my outdoor swimming pool!!

      It surely gives a whole new meaning to /dev/random entropy pool! (pun definitely intended)

    • Pah! Re:15 liters is nothing.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @01:39PM (#6262348) Homepage
      I cool my PC with my outdoor swimming pool!!

      That's nothing, I heat my olympic swimming pool with my PC! ;-)

      Still having problems with dirt clogging the lines though.

      I've had no problems. You need to use a closed cooling loop through the PC and dump a small heat exchanger in the pool.

    • Is anyone else having flashbacks to Maniac Mansion, with the nuclear reactor in the pool?

      Draining the pool and watching the house blow was fuuuuuun! I'd imagine such a thing would also occur if you were to use the pool for watercooling your Athlon..

  • Water Cooling.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chicane-UK ( 455253 ) <chicane-ukNO@SPAMntlworld.com> on Saturday June 21, 2003 @07:41AM (#6260810) Homepage
    Its something I thought about doing for a bit of fun.. but even though sites generally always say its perfectly safe if you set it up properly, I have this nagging doubt that i'd come back into my room and find my computer turned into an electrical water feature.

    That and the fact that every forum I ever read where people discuss their water cooling solutions, they always jest about times when they have found they sprung a leak and found puddles of water at the bottom of their case.

    No thanks :)

  • double duty (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Finally, a way to keep the garage warm!

  • OTT (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Justatad ( 630151 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @07:50AM (#6260820) Homepage
    Does anyone else think that some people take things too far? This is the computer equivalent of buying a beat up car and spending thousands of pounds modding it to make it look "cool". Different strokes for different folks.
    • As long as they don't put a spoiler on the case or one of those big mufflers on the cpu fan exhaust.

    • I gots my 'puter all riced up:

      chain around the cd-rom, coffee-can exhaust, and a vtech decal taped on the side. I'm awesome!
    • Different strokes for different folks.

      Your last line answered your question.

    • Re:OTT (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      People buy $15,000 old car body frames to fix up. They usually end up with something unique and customized, for around $100,000 (time+expenditures). 6 grand is a lot, but the car can be as well.

      Personally, I dig this sort of thing. When you see a unique car on the road, it's impressive, not because it cost a lot, but because of how it is and was built.

      Obviously, not everyone sees the point of this, just as not everyone sees the point of having a v6 or buying a 1 million dollar house.

      I know some northe
  • with that much tubing maybe he should have drilled a couple holes in the side of his fridge and stuck the radiator in there. has anybody ever done this? my garage is significantly farther away from my machine than the nearest fridge.

    either way, that box isn't going anywhere. all LAN parties where he will be able to show that rig off will be held in his garage.

  • huh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson@ps g . com> on Saturday June 21, 2003 @07:51AM (#6260825)
    time & effort = nothing major, apparently.

    why don't you spend that time making money to spend on a faster processor? If you're not overclocking why even bother? Just put the damn pc out in the garage if noise is the concern.

    you'd have better cooling if you ran a bunch of pipe in the ground - the ground stays the same temp year 'round (within one degree F if you go more than about three feet down, 53F, about 12C) so just dig a one foot wide hole, about 5 feet down, and put a big coil of tubing down there. run water through it, and huzaah! cooler than this guy. or just adjust one of them new fangled air conditioner things so that instead of air running over the cooling coils, you run water over them, and run that water through a system like this guy's. then OVERCLOCK the thing and make it worthwhile.

    you could save yourself a lot of money for a new processor if you ran some pipe up on your roof, and put that into your water heater. preheated water is FAR cheaper to keep hot, and you'll never run out of warm water at least, not on a sunny day anyway. use the money you save to power the air conditioner solution that no one has done yet, and keep your processor actively cool, not just passively cool. or, just stick the whole PC in the fridge. wrap it in plastic (or submerse it in a non-conductive liquid that doesn't freeze in the deep-freeze) to keep the bad moisture out and enjoy a pc that's colder yet.

    ah forget it, you do what you want.

    • Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)

      by palutke ( 58340 ) * on Saturday June 21, 2003 @08:07AM (#6260845)
      If you're not overclocking why even bother?

      Noise. I watercooled my PC for about a year, and then dismantled the system and replaced it with a heatsink+fan so I could rework/overhaul it. The PC is at least twice as loud as it was before. For some people, that level of noise is unacceptable.
    • why don't you spend that time making money to spend on a faster processor?

      Damnit, why don't you spend that MONEY you spent setting this shit up on a faster processor? These people are mad, mad. I barely notice the noise of my CPU fans. If you can't get used to that noise and eliminate it, you'll start to get annoyed by other noises. Cars, the wind, PEOPLE. This strikes me as a very bizarre way to be spending your time, energy and money. I don't understand it.

      • Re:huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Eric Ass Raymond ( 662593 )
        I barely notice the noise of my CPU fans.

        Maybe you should have your hearing checked out.

        I was not annoyed by the cars, the wind or (most) people back in the days when the PCs didn't have any fans in them.

        The annoyance began with the Pentium Classics (the fan bearings would wear out after a while) and culminated in the 72 W AMD CPUs and the monstrous graphics cards with a half-pound heatsink and a high speed fan.

        There was some light at the end of the tunnel when Intel released low-power (30 W) Tualat

        • Intel released low-power (30 W) Tualatin PIIIs. One could almost run a 1.2 GHz/512 MB cache Tualatin without active cooling

          I assume that 512MB cache was a typo?

    • Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RPI Geek ( 640282 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @08:11AM (#6260854) Journal
      If you're not overclocking why even bother?

      Because he can.
      Because by putting this on the internet, now someone else can who may not have been able to before.
      Because of the joy of building something.
      Because it's quieter now.
    • Why do people chase a little white ball around 10km of grass? Because it's fun. Because it's a challenge. If you want to walk out of the pro shop, drop your ball straight into the 18th hole and call it a day, go for it. Leave the rest of us can enjoy our pointless persuits in peace.

      • Why do people chase a little white ball around 10km of grass?

        For me, the difference is that if I lose the little white ball I don't go out of business, or fail my degree, or whatever. All this stuff is fine if messing with hardware is the goal and actually using it to do something is a bonus. But if your machine is a means to an end, innovation is not necessarily that great.

        The same is true of cars. I have a motor caravan on which the previous owner did a cut and weld job to get the exhaust to come out

    • Just put the damn pc out in the garage if noise is the concern.

      That's actually a good idea but he has problems that would prevent that. Because he indicated he turns his computer off, chances are he's running windows. This makes having a nice quiet terminal in the house and a noisemaker in the garage much more difficult. That rack he had in the garage was nice. There was room for all sorts of beige boxes out there.

      you could save yourself a lot of money for a new processor if you ran some pipe up on y

  • If there is some leakage then your computer is broken for good.
    So, why people don't use other fuilds for cooling like oil etc ?
    That would be no rocket science, this is just simple common sense.
    Oh, I see, common sense and overclocking...
    • >If there is some leakage then your computer is broken for good.
      I guess that depends on where the leak is or how long you run the system dry. Same goes for automobiles too.

      >So, why people don't use other fluids for cooling like oil etc ?
      Gee, isn't oil used to reduce friction or something? Not a whole lot of friction going on in that CPU. I canâ(TM)t really think of any cooling system that uses oil to transfer heat the way water does.

      >That would be no rocket science, this is just simple commo
      • Gee, isn't oil used to reduce friction or something? Not a whole lot of friction going on in that CPU. I canâ(TM)t really think of any cooling system that uses oil to transfer heat the way water does.

        Power transformers are usually oil cooled - requires no maintenance, non-corrosive, doesn't need additives to prevent freezing, etc., etc.

      • Re:Why water ? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Glonoinha ( 587375 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @11:25AM (#6261511) Journal
        1986 Suzuki GSX-R series race motorcycles used oil as the cooling device - oil ran through the radiator on the front of the bike to cool it off.

        Oil can get hotter than water at regular pressures withouth boiling, can be sprayed directly onto the hotspots (which often benefit from the lubrication of the oil also) and does not have the corrosion problems of water.

        So yes, there are systems that use oil to transfer heat the way water does. If I am not mistaken oil doesn't conduct electricity the way ionized water does, but it would still make a fscking mess if it leaked inside the computer case.

    • Re:Why water ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @08:23AM (#6260881)
      Many cooling systems do use oils instead of water. No cooling oil I've ever seen (Dowtherms etc.) can compare to water for heat transfer efficiency. Water has low viscosity, high heat capacity and is cheap.

      The only liquid that really does much better is mercury, not something I would want flowing round my computer.

      • Liquids other than mercury (Score:4, Informative)

        by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @10:26AM (#6261244) Journal
        Liquid sodium is pretty good too, and a "eutectic" alloy of sodium and potassium melts at much lower temperatures.

        Then, instead of a boring neurotoxin like mercury, a leak could cause an unextinguishable class D fire with smoke full of sodium and potassium hydroxide (think Drano(tm), or oven cleaner).

      • Well, the problem with water is it's relatively high freezing point. I use Dowfrost(tm) (Propylene Glycol) in a 1:1 ratio with water running at 22 F (it could go much lower) through a 5 hp refrigerator/pumping station to keep stuff cold. You can pick up a 55 gallon drum of it for under $600 US. But then again, what I am keeping cool is a hell of a lot more important than my home office CPU - thousands of gallons of beer.
    • There are far more factors than just "use cooking oil"
      a few i can think of,
      1) Water is a far far better heat conductor than Cooking Oil. There was an article on overclockers.com about it.
      2) Since water has a low viscosity, the pump works less and more water flows across the waterblock and radiator. Dont forget to add some additive to stop corrosion.

    • Re:Why water ? (Score:4, Informative)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @08:49AM (#6260939) Homepage
      Why? Same reason that water is used for cooling cars even though it's relatively heavy- it's damn good at it.

      Leaks are actually very rare.

    • 3m made some very non conductive liquid. But it was about $100 a gallon. Someone bought 3 gallons, took a styrofoam box, dropped a MB inside, threw in some of this stuff and it worked fine. I forget how well it cooled everything down though. Anyone have a link for this?
  • If the radiator is contained in the garage, why does it matter if it has fans or not? If you can hear them, invest in some type of material to block off the sound and put it around the hole connecting the two rooms. And why is this even on slashdot? It's like most other water cooling systems just with a radiator that's way too large for it's purpose. It probably would have been better if he got a much MUCH smaller radiator and made some huge heatsink for it (and it'd be more slashdot worthy, making a bi

  • Hmmm, you want your PC to be cold? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Put your PC in a mini freezer. Many freezers can give you -20 deg. No hassle.

  • Next thing (Score:2, Funny)

    by floydman ( 179924 )
    I would fix my computer at a plumber... start it with a tap...Your code will have LEAKS..bla bla bla bla ...

    /*Come on in ladies and gentelmen, please have your swimsuits on*/

  • Current PCs and noise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Simon Kongshoj ( 581494 ) <skongshoj@oncabl ... inus threevowels> on Saturday June 21, 2003 @08:05AM (#6260842) Homepage

    Am I the only one who thinks it's absurd that there even is a need for something like this for reducing noise in current computers? I mean, I could understand it if the guy was some compulsive tinkerer who overclocks everything in sight, but for silence in a home office PC?! It seems insane.

    I sometimes think that, for those of us who don't play the latest games anyway, PC's are becoming too powerful for their own good. Most current PCs have a large pile of case fans, a big noisy CPU fan, two fans in the power supply (sometimes very noisy, sometimes not), a small and very noisy fan on the graphics card, and another one on the chipset. I've seen mods that add fans to RAM, although those are still only needed by overclockers.

    • Re:Current PCs and noise (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @08:29AM (#6260899)
      Oh I perfectly well understand the desire to reduce noise from a PC. My current PC has a cheap case fan and power supply and can charatibly be escribed as a jetplane. It rather annoys me.

      However, as you allude to, his solution is not necessiarly the best nor the most ecenomical. For myself, I have ordered a new power supply and case fan. Total cost is about $110 with shipping. Now provided the information on these units is accurate, it should cut the fan noise to a level such that the vibrational noise of the harddrives becomes a bigger concern.

      This is generally a much more cost effective solution and also a more practical one, as you don't tie your computer to one location. Just locate good, quite fans from a company like Papst. Then, find a powersupply that has been made for silence. A number of companies take powersupplies from companies like Sparkle and upgrade them with better fans and more efficient electronics to give better sonic results. You can also find some powersupplies that are totally silent, they operate only with a large heatsink, no fan at all.

      All in all, if you took a fanless VGA cooler like the Zalman ZM80A (rated for GEForce 4 class cards), a silent powersupply, a quiet CPU cooler and one quiet case fan it would be easy to have a high performacne system with fan noise under 20dB at 1 metre. At that point your harddrives would be a hard larger problem, which water cooling does not help.
      • Oh I perfectly well understand the desire to reduce noise from a PC.

        Me too. My point wasn't that PC noise pollution is a good thing, but that it's absurd that the noise and cooling problems have come to such an extreme that a non-overclocker needs to do things like this. PCs should be quiet by default, like older home computers were.

    • The main problem is poor design. Most cases today still use 80mm fans, which you need a lot of to get adequate cooling. This means lots of noise. A well designed case using 120mm fans can push a LOT of air at an extremely low noise level, and using large, well designed heatsinks with at least 80mm fans on processors can do the same thing. With intelligent fan placement and slot-exhaust videocard cooling (see the nVidia Geforce FX for a good idea poorly executed) you can keep the case temp down near room tem

    • Re:Current PCs and noise (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Glonoinha ( 587375 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @11:34AM (#6261558) Journal
      I have three PCs and two laptops in my 9x12 office.
      Every PC has the powersupply fan, the CPU can, and a fan on the front of the case to suck air either in or out. Two of the PCs are PowerEdge servers by Dell (a 500sc and a 600sc) and the 600sc fans are particularly loud, enough that I can't hold a speakerphone conversation when that machine is on.

      Yea, I know - servers are not built to the same creature comfort levels as 'desktop' machines, but this thing is a jet engine compared to the rest of my gear and spends most of its time off unless I need the additional horsepower of a third machine.

      I would LOVE a way to silence this machine.

      -:-

      Personally I think if the guy had passed on the whole 'run lots of copper pipe in the garage' and just put a 30 gallon (112 liter) fishtank in his office, threw some fake fish in there and used that as his water reserve he could have plopped it in his office as decoration and water cooled with that - perhaps have a overflow that routed excess water down his drain and a way to turn on water at a source to add water (thus adding cold water and having warm water overflow down the drain) in the event the water ever exceeded operating temperature.
    • There are times when it gets a bit annoying -- for example, when I'm watching a movie on my computer, and it hits a quiet part where the dialog is all whispers.

      But for the most part, the noise my computer makes helps block out noise from my neighbors, traffic, the airport nearby, etc while I'm sleeping. It's sort of inadvertently like a white noise generator; though I doubt it's actually strictly 'white' noise.

      I really don't know where we are going from here though. I can't imagine the average consumer

  • Bend allowance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @08:16AM (#6260867)

    When the system was finally completed, the flow rate was tested and determined to be 3L/minute.

    I'd guess that his estimate of the flow rate was off because his pressure drop calculations assume a straight pipe - they make no allowance for the effect of the multiple 90 degree elbows in his radiator.

  • Why not just imerse the whole PC into some kind of non-conductive liquid and circulate the liquid through a big surface radiator?
  • The design is still using a water pump.

    Would not a convection based water cooling be the ultimate noiseless CPU cooling system? Now, is there anyone who would have an access to the blueprints of the US Navy's nuclear submarine reactor cooling system (pumpless and convection based at low speeds)?-)

  • Coincidence? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by pclinger ( 114364 )
    Did anyone else see the banner ad for overclockers.com that was running on /.? I saw it within the last 48 hours or so, and now we have a story here that is about an article on their site... coincidence? Buy your own /. story today, only $49.95!
  • What is wrong with people? It's just a P4 2.2 G. Not like this guy is cooling some 4 way system or something. Jeebus.

  • [fun] To beer or not to beer ? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The ultimate cooling solution for your hardware is already standardized: the BeerBox. Read the report on this contraversial issue. RFCs, benchmarks, pictures :) http://www.ranish.com/beerbox/ [ranish.com]

  • just 15? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jesler ( 683123 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @08:31AM (#6260903)
    Why use 15 litres when you can use 15 BILLION litres???
    br. I plan to live in a houseboat and tow my submerged boxen.
  • I note that the huge big air duct almost completely covers the 'outbound. air fan.

    Perhaps if he'd have moved the ducting to the outbound fan and left a small inbound air fan he'd have had more luck with air. My Dell has something like this already when they built it!

    of course it wouldn't have been as quiet, but if he wants quiet he'd should look for better air flowed cased IMHO..
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • What is the point? (Score:2, Informative)

    by fdawg ( 22521 )
    So he lowered the noise of his machine be nixing the CPU fan. He still has the powersupply fan to deal with. We have servers at work (1U rack mount) that are p4 2.0ghz machines whose only cpu cooling is a copper HSF combo and they really arent that loud. There are 12 of them and honestly the loudest part of the boxes are the powersupply fans. Even with those on and under heavy load (cluster used for wireless simulations), its still really quiet. He could have saved the cash and bought quiet fans and a

  • The article brought up images in my mind of Lain [animefu.com]'s bedroom with all the intense looking tubing to cool down her NAVI [everything2.com].

    I'm not really sure why I don't experiment with this stuff. My workplace has tons of this stuff just lying around since we use it to cool down LASERs and intense pulsed light devices.

  • My variant (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skroz ( 7870 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @09:21AM (#6260986) Homepage
    Now that's just damn creepy... I was thinking about doing something very similar just yesterday. I'll be building a house soon, and was thinking about what I'd do if I could build a cooling system directly into the house. The idea I came up with is similar to this one, but I think I have some improvements.

    The garage floor is at ground level, and concrete is an AWFUL conductor of heat. This presents two points of inefficiency; the temperature of the concrete will be affected by seasonal temperatures due to air temperature and proximity to heated surface earth along the edges. Depending on what part of the country you're in, the ground temperature below 24-36 inches is a constant temperature in the low sixties or upper fifties. SO, while the base of the garage floor's foundation is likely below this point of constant temperature, the poor conductivity of the concrete will likely render the system far less efficient than it could have been.

    My server closet would be in the basement, preferably with the systems close to the ground. The system I envisioned is identical to his up until the heat exchanger. Rather than dumping heat straight to the concrete floor, I thought of getting a 18" x 18" steel plate and welding 1" thick, 24" long iron bars to it, perpendicular to the surface of the plate. 16 bars should do. You then sink the bars through holes in the wall straigt into the earth as close to the floor as possible, resulting in the deepest possible depth for the bars. Your heat is then dumped to the very cold, constantly cooled earth at a depth of anywhere from four to five feet.

    On a practicality scale of 0 to 10, 10 being as practical as brushing your teeth and 0 being as practical as replacing your teeth with screw-on ceramic chompers that you can toss in the dishwasher, I give this solution about a two. Nobody in their right mind is going to go to all of that trouble to cool a few CPUs. Or drill holes in their foundation, for that matter. But it would still be cool. ;)
    • Incidentally, I finally decided to simply put the servers in the basement in a small room with a vent fan and an exposed concrete wall. The concrete should keep the air a little bit cooler. If not, at least the fan will keep the room at a temperature constant with the rest of the basement. No water cooling, no phase change coolers. Just good old fashioned air.

      • Re:My variant (Score:4, Insightful)

        by YU Nicks NE Way ( 129084 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @11:21AM (#6261497)
        If you're going to use ground temperature, though, why not go the whole way, and use a geothermal heat pump? Run non-reactive tubing through your yard (or vertically, if you want to), run a liquid coolant through that tubing, and use the 17 C ambient earth temperature to heat and cool your PC without drilling holes in your foundation.

        And while you're at it, you can also keep your dwelling at a temperature not too far from the temperature at which your computer is kept. And, as a bonus, it'll cost you about $0.50/day to maintain this constant temperature.

        Mmmm. Saving two thousand dollars a year of heating and cooling costs -- better add a few more meters of tubing there, to handle the new computers you'd be able to afford.
  • Pretty sure it's 15 literJONS. And isn't the guy supposed to braid the water rings into his computer's hair as a rite of courtship?

    Think about it this way: At field rates, that's 150 literjons, so maybe it's not such a bad deal after all.

    Now, in terms of the whole "No machine may be made in the likeness of a human mind" thing, we may have some other issues going on here. JIHAD!

  • Mr Bean would use a toilet for a water cooler 'cause Mr. Bean knows that a toilet has aproximately 1.6 gallons per flush which is much more efficient than some old small pissy assed water pump....
  • I was impressed by the engineering that went into this system. Certainly going a lot further than buying a watercooling kit from Popular Discount Computer Mod Store. I liked the switch and relay box that turned the pump on when the computer was switched on, saving a walk to the garage. The only question I had was this: He has a water transport loop a good deal longer than your average watercooling rig. Would the delay in getting the water circulating cause an undesireable or even dangerous heat build up
    • Good concern, poorly founded. The way that system is set up, the instant the pump powers on is going to be the instant water is moving past the CPU, simply due to the fact it is full.

      While it may take a little while for the pump to ramp, the fact that water is moving at all over the processor is enough to insure that it doesn't over heat.

      You may notice spikes in temp at startup, but not close to the dangerous levels you're afraid of.
  • "15 litres of water to cool a home/office PC"

    The guy is obviously a fruitcake. Anything as unstable as a home-built water-cooling rig should never be used as a work machine.

    For fun... yes. For games... yes. For making one look l33t in the local ale-house... yes. For the office.. no.

    Maybe this guy is just attention-seeking?

  • the problem with overclockers.com is that everything is "nice" or "good" - half the stuff is crap. I challenge you to find a "this product sucks" review.

    An example: most OC'ers I know think most of thermaltake's products are shit (which they are), while oc.com keeps plugging away with the good reviews. My Volcano 11 keeps my Barton 2500+ Oc'ed to 2.0Ghz @ 49C (way too hot) and the damned thing sounds like a harrier is about to land on my roof (not to mention how badly the thing needs a lapping). What does

  • While I do admire his geekiness.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by acidrain69 ( 632468 ) on Saturday June 21, 2003 @11:30AM (#6261532) Journal
    He could have done a little more testing. I mean, aside from the image manipulation, office apps are pretty light on the CPU. He put all this work into flow rate equations and graphs, and then at the end he doesn't even play any games to show a system under REAL load. No idle temps either. What gives?
  • I begin to wonder whether the power efficiency of CPUs
    as radiating element starts to exceed that of traditional
    heating elements? Imagine embedding into the floor 2
    AMD CPUs per square meter, with the marble floor plate
    serving as "heat sink" (for the CPU) and "heat source"
    (for the house). Now, that would probably make quite an
    energy-efficient radiator, which as a side-product is also
    able to perform massive-parallel computations such as
    cracking crypto-keys or google-type database lookups.

    Marc
  • ..Doesn't seem to be coming up much in the discussions so far, but is the only reason I'd set up any water cooling system (seeing as overclocking/big performance isn't on my list of requirements).

    But if anyone is interested in the topic, your first port of call should be here [silentpcreview.com]...

  • my first priority would be changing my life so that it no longer featured Tercels. water cooling can wait.
  • This guy is a true geek.

    He turned something not so good into an opprotunity to learn and try something new. I know that it's not really a big deal, lots of /. ers are like that, but it still feels good to read about a guy making something good out of something bad.

  • On page four of the article, the author lists that he used the system for typical office applications like email, word processing, and digital imaging. I'd have to wonder what the temps would be like if he torture tested it instead.
  • I see a problem with this. His CPU block is the highest up componenent in the system, thus that is where air will want to get trapped. And you don't want air to be trapped in your block - it will not work as well. He needs to come up with some sort of air trap system above the cpu block.

    And as other posters have commented, corrosion can be a problem in these systems. Particularly when you are using different metals e.g. copper cpu block and brass fittings, and aluminum radiator. (I know that's not w
  • I got tired of all the noise my '486-66 PC was making, so I decided to move the machine further away from my desk. I went down to Fry's [frys.com] and picked up some VGA/keyboard/mouse extension cables, cut a hole in the wall, and ran the cables through the wall. With the machine in the other room, I could barely hear it.

    But if put my ear to the wall, I could still discern a hum. And my CPU temp was still consistently above 20C. I considered freon cooling, but that's bad for the environment [sweetliberty.org]. I then tried water
  • I really, really, really don't get it. If he's that concerned about noise, buy a fucking eMachines. My parents bought one a few months back and while it's a POS technology wise (doesn't even have a fucking AGP slot *CRINGE*) it is dead SILENT.
  • Just being a spoil-sport, whyever build a heat exchanger like this? Even plumbers make the occasional bad solder joint on pipe; often the leak is so slow it doesn't matter in a heating system because the water evaporates, this results in the dissolved solid being left behind, and it eventually stops. But in this case, with distilled water, eventually there will be a puddle...

    Why not use a standard domestic "radiator", i.e. heat exchanger? Pressure tested welded joints, cheap, all the surface area you want i

  • Water Cooling, is in most cases just not practical. I'm not trying to advocate *against* water cooling, I am however giving any other readers not versed in water cooling a bit of anecdotal experience.

    1. Water Cooling is entirely unreliable. Sadly, Unless on eis prepared to design a water cooling system with redundant water pumps, and alarms to alert the user when the pumps fail, then I would absolutely NOT recommend water cooling to anyone who leaves there computer on while not home. Almost all pumps tha

  • incidentally .... (Score:2, Informative)

    by n-carro2 ( 670495 )
    Most cars use less than 15L of coolant and run a lot hotter (Aprox 208F) ... you would think that a more efficient system could be developed.

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