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Hardware Hacking Hardware

Silent Water Cooling on the SLI 127

Doggie Fizzle writes "Overclockers with a serious SLI gaming system don't have to deal with the drone of double the fans to get the extreme performance. A review of a customized Zalman Reserator 1+ water cooling system shows a well overclocked SLI system offering solid temperatures on the CPU, but an impressive drop of 20 degrees C on both video cards during full load operation... And the unique cooling tower of the Reserator 1+ does it all without a single fan to cool these hot components."
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Silent Water Cooling on the SLI

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  • ooh (Score:3, Funny)

    by Neophus ( 861054 ) <neophus@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @07:01PM (#13680972) Homepage Journal
    I bet this is making the gamers all wet!
    • by Anonymous Coward

      I don't know about you, but I think this is really cool.

      • I've been using this [zalman.co.kr] "cooler" (Zalman ZM-2HC2 ) of Zalman's to cool and quieten my SCSI hdd. It does a good job of quietening it (the rubber dampers do damp out the noise well). But the cooling's poor. It cools by conduction through the Al frame and radiates it away on the tubes, but the cooling rate's evidently too slow for SCSI hdd's anyway (may work better with IDE-hdd's). While the reserator is a different kind of cooling system, I'm still a bit skeptical about it's effectiveness in high-end systems th
    • Anyone else finish the review and need a few glasses of water?
    • yup......the next in making a computer cool is water balls yo....
  • How come nobody's thought of using FREON as the coolant, like in air conditioning units? There must be a geek bold enough to try.
    • Flourinert would be a better pick, but the stuff is very expensive.
    • by Kaboom13 ( 235759 ) <kaboom108&bellsouth,net> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @07:15PM (#13681060)
      I have seen refrigerated cases before,there was even a company that specialized in them, but I cant remember the name. The problem I see with using freon is freon refrigeration a. Uses a compressor to force the freon to a liquid state, which is more complicated and expensive then the simple water pump, and b. reaches a temperature low enough to make condensation a serious concern. Water cooling is more then adequate for CPU cooling, even with heavy overclocking. Using a freon system would only have benefits in the "because I could" category, and like I said, it's been done before.
    • by merreborn ( 853723 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @07:16PM (#13681065) Journal
      How come nobody's thought of using FREON as the coolant, like in air conditioning units?

      I thought we use freon in AC and fridges because they're compressor-based cooling systems? Not becuase it's got some magical better-than-water specific heat...

      Water cooling is completely different from compression cooling. One uses a pump, and keeps the coolant at a constant pressure, one uses a compressor and varies the presure of the coolant. I think freon would be a shitty coolant at room temperature, used in a water cooling-style aparatus.

      I mean, yeah, if you're gonna install a compressor in your PC, then freon makes sense...
      • they do make compressor coolers for comps, the best one I have seen hit about -50C. Though at those temperatures you have to seal off the cpu and put a small heater in as well to prevent condensation. Those systems run at about 500+ USD, so they are a bit out of the pricerange of a normal geek. They are also MASSIVE overkill when it comes to most systems. Now a really fun computer mod would be building a computer in a helium filled freezer, my dad, a chemist, has one that runs sub 50 kelvin. In that, co
        • I don't think so. 0 K (Zero Kelvin) is absolute zero (zero thermal energy, basically frozen atoms). Temperatures near this are barely attainable with multi-million-dollar setups. And your dad, by himself, has somehow gotten a computer to function at a temperature of 50 K below absolute zero?
    • by denissmith ( 31123 ) * on Thursday September 29, 2005 @07:16PM (#13681066)
      Quite possibly because it is suspected of destroying the ozone layer, and its use is banned.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        are you stoned?

        it A: does not contribute to the ozone problem due to the chemical properties of it..

        and B: still widely used and still relatively available.
      • Actually Freon is just a trademark (of Dupont) the refers to a number of different chemical compounds commonly used as refrigerants. R12 is the Ozone destroying compound formerly known as Freon. R134a is the "new" Freon, and does not share the ozone depeting characteristics of R12. The downside is that R134a is reported to not cool as well as R12.

        R12's manufature is banned. Not its use.
      • Amazing! I'm sure this never even occurred to the original poster
    • There are. (Score:2, Informative)

      by PAPPP ( 546666 )
      While a freon-style coolant based system running with no compressor (as implied in the parent) wouldnt be very effective, there are some compressor based systems. Most notably is the asetek vapochill [vapochill.com] which is a compressor-driven phase change cooler hooked up to a CPU pad. The same company makes widgets that are essencally case-sized airconditioners. These are NOT low-noise solutions like water cooling though, as compressors (think of a refridgerator or airconditioner) are loud.
      As for using another liqui
      • Re:There are. (Score:3, Informative)

        The coolest ones are that inert 3M material they show that is ALLMOST as thermally conductive as water, and completely inert (safe if it gets on your system, and even for submersion cooling, unfortunately the stuff costs about $500/gallon).

        Water can be made pretty damn close to inert if you have a de-ionization filter somewhere in the loop. The dual-loop chillers for the laser systems I used to work with ran water directly over a 130VDC arc lamp drawing 60 amps (and was directly in contact with both el
        • then there is 3M engineering fluid 1107 (i think is the number).
          liquid stable from -110c - +250c. do a water style cooling system with that and pre cool with a compressor based system (located where the noise + heat is a non-issue).
          That's what I do with one of my systems (not a pc).
          -nB
          • sorry, temp stabile range is: (-135C to 61C)
            beyond that the phase transision sucks away tons more heat and we use peltiers for a bit of a boost.
            -nB
        • IIRC, DI Water is a very strong solvent and is rather corrosive though, and I don't trust the crap inside these consumer-grade cooling kits to not leech out enough ions to make it conductive.
          • That's why you have a filter in-line - you could make the entire system from stainless steel, but crap is still going to find its way into the water. It's really not a problem with a decent DI filter on the system, and the laser systems I mentioned before were not really that much better than what what you might find yourself with from Newegg.
      • How about a propylene glycol based coolant?
        There are a number of products that appear to have less than 2 microSiemens/cm conductivity and sell for closer to the price of antifreeze - also non toxic, good viscosity and come close to water for thermal transference. (~80%) Pricing seems to vary from $10/gallon to $120/gal.
      • Do you remember the guy who tried immersion cooling his PC in fluorinert a few years back? His plan was to filled a cooler with the stuff, submerge his motherboard, and then add dry ice to keep it all about -60. After adding about $800 worth of the stuff he discovered that it gelled somewhere above the freezing point of carbon dioxide, making it useless for the extreme cooling he had been hoping for.
    • I did. There's a few ways to do it... the first idea of just blowing an air conditioner in to your computer is a bad idea, because even though the air conditioner is a dehumidifier, introducing the cold air in to the warm case will build up condensation everywhere. The next idea is to run a normal water cooling system but chill the water using freon which is what I did. You take a window air conditioner, construct an aquarium around the evaporator coil and use that as the reservoir in the water loop. The fi
      • "I've heard of research for laptops to do a similar thing where the heatpipes actually carry a chemical that does phase change cooling (how your refridgerator keeps things cool)."

        hate to break it to you, but the current crop does that already. That's how heatpipes work.
        -nB
    • Freon is harder to get than pot. Other refrigerant gasses are doable.

      Compressor systems using various refrigerants (including freon) have been used for quite a while. They work. All those top 20 scores in 3dmark/futuremark are usually kryotech/asetech/custom vapochill(compressor&refrig gas), overclocked systems. Back when Tom's Hardware was showing us what a 1GHz(woot) Athlon (c2000-2001) could do they used a commercialy produced (and purchasable) Kryotek (became Asetek) system like this to achieve thei
      • really im pretty sure i just walked out of walmart with 4 canisters for my ac unit....
        • It wasn't freon though, Walmart would be facing a HUGE lawsuit if they sold it. Freon (R-11 & R-12) has been banned since the mid 1990's . Does the can say HFC-134a? That's one of those OTHER (reread my post) rerigerants you CAN buy. It isn't Freon.
          • Actually, the manufacture of CFCs and HCFCs was only restricted by the Montreal Protocol, and not banned outright. There will always remain a few legal and legitimate uses of them (asthma inhalers, for example,) although they are few and far between. There are also exemptions that were put in place to allow for servicing some really big (and expensive) existing air conditioning units (the U.S. insisted.) These uses include large office tower style air conditioners that have an expected 40 year service lif
    • Companies like Asetek [vapochill.com] and Extreme Prometeia [extremeprometeia.com] already have PC systems like this.

      The key thing is that in most cases they just cool the CPU (as the logistics of trying to cool a card in a slot on a motherboard with limited access to the core/memory make other cooling near impossible). Most extremists run "A/C cooling" on their CPUs and water cooling on their graphics cards, Northbridge chips, etc.

      You could in theory A/C the entire contents of the case, which would presumably work up until the point that you s
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29, 2005 @07:02PM (#13680981)
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  • Did anyone else think Sharper Image Ionic breeze [sharperimage.com] when they saw the cooling device in the article?
  • by etymxris ( 121288 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @07:11PM (#13681036)
    It's enough two keep a dual CPU rig cool, and is indeed quite silent. Of course, the effect will be ruined if your motherboard has a chipset fan, which are inevitably noisy. Most PCIEx boards have their chipset right under the video card, making water block placement problematic. I found a waterblock that fit, but I had to fashion my own fastener to give the video card room to fit in the slot. If anyone is interested, here are some pics of my own setup [clevernothing.org], back when the choices were blue or blue.

    I should also mention that the reserator is highly sensitive to room temperature changes. If the room increases temp by a few degrees celcius, so will your water.
    • I, too, have a dual CPU rig, with a reserator to cool it. It cools it well, however the system is not silent, as the reserator has a pump which in mine has slightly boisy bearings...
    • I like the Abit AN8-SLI for that reason. It has a low-profile heatpipe rather than a fan on the chipset. I run a waterblock off my video card, and the tubes actually touch the top of the heatpipe connector, so you're right, a fan definitely would get in the way. I guess I may as well link to my setup too :-) : http://lemaymd.com/main.php?frag=gadgets-pc&title= Homebuilt%20PC&pfrag=gadgets [lemaymd.com]
    • I've actually seen water cooled PC / Case and FISH TANK combinations.

      A set of dual 3.0 's apparently provides ideal water temprature for most tropical fish.

      The setup is a clear mid tower case, with a small fish tank attached to the side of it. I am sure other's here have seen it.

      While I would love to setup a cluster of 20 dual xeons all liquid cooled with one huge heart in the middle beating to cool them (glow tubing, of course!) I'm still parital to the hum and whirr of my fans.

      I just can't really b
  • by spellraiser ( 764337 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @07:17PM (#13681068) Journal
    Letting the days go by
    Let the water cool it down
    Letting the days go by
    Water flowing in my box
    Into the CPU
    In the silent water
    Inside the tower yes,
    There is water cooling it.

    (With apologies to The Talking Heads)

  • They used a A64 3000+ with 2x 6600 GT. That's the lowest you can go with SLI, but I doubt the reserator will be useless for 2x 7800 GTX (which is something I am considering). Maybe if we go dual reserator...
    • My first spelling error! I mean useful, not useless.
    • I am running two overclocked XFX GeForce 7800GTXs and an Athlon 4400+ with the reserator. The cooling is fine for this, and after several hours of heavy load on a warm day the CPU hits 46C, the primary GPU tops out at about 50C and the secondary GPU is always 4-5C cooler. The problem I have is that the RAM still needs a fan blowing over it, otherwise the display locks up about 20 seconds in to a game. I have one fan at the end blowing over both GPU's RAM and it is quieter than the original fans for the G
      • May I ask why you would ever shut off your reserator? My son shuts off his PC every night (the hard drives are noisy) but never the Reserator. At night he can't even hear the pump that's just 12 feet from his bed. The only time he ever shuts it down is to carry the thing to a LAN party (which is still a two-person job until he buys some of Zalman's new quick-disconnects.)

        The pump draws about 5W. At my local electric rate that's under $4.00 per year. Cheap insurance when compared to what might happen

  • by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @07:52PM (#13681235)
    They're having so much fun, I almost hate to post on-topic.

    I looked the first generation of this unit over pretty carefully when it first came out. I'm really glad they changed the color of the tower from that awful blue, the black would match my tower really well. The problem is, this thing doesn't cool that much better than a good fan-equipped CPU heat sink. Essentially, it's a fish tank pump, some tubing, and a big aluminum tank with sme percolation. The check-valves and flow indicators are nifty, and the thing is quiet, but it's not really overclockers gear, more like something for a total silence freak.

    Hope this helps, you can go back to your regularly scheduled trolling now.

  • My laptop fan is driving me crazy.
    I have a tray with the little pipe cooled system and below a usb
    power fan tray.
    It doesn't work crap.
    Anyone knows of some serious liquid-cooled laptop tray???
  • Anyone know what a quick way to get rid of humid air would be?

    Basically, I live in Canada, and our nights get quite cold. I was thinking of having a pipe from the outside suck in the cold air to my comp.. and then another pipe sucks out the cold hot air from the comp .. sounds pretty ghetto.. I know... but this could work if I could have cold dry air on my system. lol.

    or does anyone have any ideas??
    • Cold air in the winter time is not going to be very humid. I suggest you get a hygrometer and test it. You'll probably find the air inside is more humid than outside air.
    • Depends. Where do you live? From what I've experienced up north it might just work around Calgary or possibly Edmonton, but winter only. I'd think that the only advantage would be novelty
    • I live in MN and I always had the same thought about doing something such as this. Hummm my computer fits quite nicely in to my window just cut a few holes in the side of the case (not to big its gets windy) maybe find some fine mesh or screen to try to keep other such things out. I have a few old computers that I would't care about loseing and I know one of them can monitor CPU temps. I might try to set this up this winter if I do I'll be sure to take pictures and post up the results I get.
    • I've been considering something like this as well- I'm irish so the only time that outside temperatures are higher than inside temperatures are on warm days from June-August. Also, with a system like you propose, the actual fan could be placed outside and that would in itself eliminate noise.

      My biggest worry would be fine drops of water or fog in the air rather than humidity- you don't need to worry about cooler-than-indoors air shedding moisture on warm computer parts. As for fine drops of water, a U-b
    • and then another pipe sucks out the cold hot air from the comp

      Wow, you Canuks have it all! Maple syrup, Mounties, and cold hot air! If I were you I would save this rarified "cold hot air" for scientific use. Additionally I think the Icee-Hot company would give you a large donation for a continual supply of their new product.

      Just a thought!

  • by sarge apone ( 918461 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:05PM (#13681303)
    Blacklight + Irradiated Sea Monkeys = mobile LEDs in tubes
  • by Thilo2 ( 214163 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:30PM (#13681446)
    I had a Geforce4 once but that one just broke down exactly 2 years after buying it, there was so much dust in there the fan wouldn't rotate anymore and i didn't notice. And blowing through the ribs of the processor cooler i regularly managed to have dust clouds shoot out at least 5 meters.
    The fan for the processor broke twice, luckily the amd thunderbirds seem to be able to withstand extreme temperatures. I live downtown, so there really is alot of dust.
    That's when I decided to switch to water cooling. I just couldn't be arsed anymore to do all this cleaning stuff every 3 months and fearing the next component will die the death of heat because i fail to notice a fan is broken.

    I am having water cooling for over half a year now.
    I cool my cpu, and AMD64 3200, mainboard chip and GT6600 card on an Asus A8N-SLI board with water. This means, i effectively got rid of three noisy fans and replaced them with two big and quiet ones for the radiator. Combined with a good power supply, it is simply amazing how quiet the system is compared to the earlier setup, if I don't look at the LEDs I frequently fail to notice the system is running at all. No cleaning anymore of the fans and coolers, which is a huge relief for me (better than switching from ball mouse to optical mouse) and I have a handwarmer now in wintertimes (got to play some 3d heavy stuff though ;) by just touching the radiator.
    The downside is that it can turn out expensive and you can spend much money on it. If you buy the right things, it is very unlikely water leaks out, the biggest danger comes from a broken pump. Considering that I had many failing fans in my environment before and already broken hardware as a result I'm willing to take that risk, so yes, I would do it again if I had the choice.
  • by jjr23 ( 784123 ) <john @ r i m e l l .cc> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:58PM (#13681609)
    Kinda like the iPod Nano and its scratchable screen, the Zalman reserator is a great product with an annoying flaw. The reserator does give near silent cooling....for a while... After a few months, you might start to hear a quiet rattling.... then it gets louder. After 3 or 4 months, the reserator can making a full-on loud rattling that can get unbearable. The problem is with the pump that comes with it. It has a soft bearing that extended high heat and constant use can wear down and cause the pump's impeller to rattle. Zalman knows about this and offers free replacements for the pump (I'm on my third after 9 months). The real solution is to spend another $20 on getting a better pump though. Note that this is only a problem if you have a really hot system, such as a dual cpu + gpu + northbridge cooled system. Here is the forum thread on the subject. http://www.zalmanforums.com/showthread.php?t=48&pp =10 [zalmanforums.com] Ok. With full knowledge of this problem though, I have to say that I love the product. My computer used to sound like a jet engine with all the fans, and now is REALLY REALLY quiet (with a good pump). Sure, I found myself in an aquarium looking for a part to fix my computer, but I think that it is worth it (and it only cost me an extra 20 bucks).
  • by bigtrike ( 904535 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @09:07PM (#13681646)
    The ethylene glycol coolant included with this is very toxic. It tastes sweet and is highly toxic to small children and pets. It is toxic in both liquid and vapor forms. I would either avoid this product or safely dispose the included coolant and replace it instead with propylene glycol which is only toxic in very large quantities. It also does not taste sweet, so your animals/children are far less likely to ingest it in the case of a leak.
    • The ethylene glycol coolant included with this is very toxic.

      Unless I'm mistaken, ethylene glycol is just plain old anti-freeze isn't it?

      Since you're clearly "thinking of the children", doesn't it need to be banned from cars/garages as well? Why is it more dangerous when used in a computer? Did you know that ingesting petrol is also dangerous to children and animals? And yet there are still no safety devices on petrol pumps to stop children walking up and putting the nozzle in their mouths. Since you're cl
      • Antifreeze bottled up in your garage usually isn't cycling through a pump for better parts of (or all of) the day. Most modern gasoline pumps can't be operated by children; at least one button required to start the pump is far too high for someone under 5 years old to push.

        You *might* be able to teach a two year old that water from the reserator is a no-no. I doubt it, but you might. Good luck with trying to teach that to a dog or cat.

        I don't know myself, but I suspect that propylene glycol is very simil
      • The problem is that you have pipes dangling in the open, exactly where a child/animal would be tempted to pull/chew on them. You simple can't watch them 24/7, it takes merely a second of distraction for a child to get itself into trouble.

        Still, it would be a fun way to tell the dumb kids from the gifted ones. DIY eugenics, anyone ?
      • Oh please. All your sarcasm won't keep someones dog alive. Dogs die every year from drinking normal anti-freeze. How it got out can vary widely. Someone flushes the radiator and is not aware of the problem. Dog drinks it. Radiator springs a leak. Whatever. If you put this stuff in your home and your nifty keen liquid cooled computer springs a leak when you are out and your dog happens to drink it (yes, it does taste good to them), then you may return to a dead dog.
        The poster makes a good suggestion
  • Despite the name, this is actually a good, easy to use water cooling solution. I set it up without any prior experience in about an hour, and have been using it every since. I don't OC, not often, but I do OC my ATI card quite a bit. My computer has no fans now(got a fanless PSU) and I've had no problems so far, for almost a year now(had to add a 1/4 cup of water once, but that's expected).
  • by BalaClavaChord ( 686030 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @09:30PM (#13681766)
    Traded in my 'Zalman Reserator 1+' for a 'PSU of Arctic Chill +4' last week to an elven mage.

    Never looked back....
  • If you leave the water in the cooling system too long how long before someone gets a good dose of legionaires disease from thier coolant (water) accidentally spilling on thier desk?
    • If you leave the water in the cooling system too long how long before someone gets a good dose of legionaires disease from thier coolant (water) accidentally spilling on thier desk?

      The top of the reserator is sealed by a rubber seal. If you simply fasten the top sufficiently, theres's no leaks. Besides, the unit comes with an anti-corrosion and anti-bacterial fluid that's to be added to the water. Think that'll stop most of it.
    • We have an original Reserator, and the instructions only say "add water." We added filtered water, and then an amount of bacteriacide/algaecide designed for humidifiers as protection against stuff growing in the hoses and blocks. We did this mostly to keep the internals from being coated by slime that could reduce the cooling capacity of the system.

      However, the currently-slimy interior of the tank leads me to believe the water may still harbor some unhealthy life forms. I'm thinking an actual ethylene

  • Maybe I could mod this thing for my PowerBook G4 [apple.com] before I hard boil my nadz...again.
  • You can buy this cooling towers since 2002 (if i remember it correctly):

    http://www.webshop-innovatek.de/assets/s2dmain.htm l?http://www.webshop-innovatek.de/0000009427113970 4/000000942713b3501/50142494350d4401b/501424943d0a 34647.html [webshop-innovatek.de]

    Btw: My cooling system is from there, and they offer the greatest* support i ever had: Hed over to their forum, to have a chat with the designers and developers of all their stuff. Literally cool guys. ;)
    (* The only support that comes close to it is the telephone support of te
  • Ok well i think there is a major flaw in this review, what happens when you run the return into the CPU first then the Video Cards ? I think you would see a huge drop in CPU Temp and only a slight one in the Cards.

    From their pictures it looks like they are running to the cards first so ... i would assume thats the way they set it up.
  • this guy can build systems involving some of the most advanced technology available, and yet he didn't realize that by opening both ends of the box you can simply push the contents out the other side.

    The mind boggles.

  • Great cooling system, but it looks like one wouldn't be able to do SLI with the Zalman GPU blocks, if the PCIe slots are adjacent to one another, or if one has a card in the middle slot of this board.

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