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Hardware

Liquid Coolent System For PCs 70

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-ya-wanna-overclock dept.
Deadric writes "Looking for a cheap way to cool your computer system? Really want to overclock that Celeron? Just want to make sure your processer keeps cool? Go check out this page and see if this home-made liquid cooled do it your self process is for you. "
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Liquid Coolent System For PCs More

Liquid Coolent System For PCs

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  • Why not just run plastic tubing through the heatsink a la radiant floor heating?
  • Posted by mr_log:

    I saw this a long time on a newsgroup (the one that is now comp.arch.hobbiest).. it's still an
    interesting idea.

    What about that liquid they emmerse crays in? I want to get a tub of that to put my motherboard in. =)
  • Posted by Mr. Assembly:

    Peltier cooling would be easier and drier to implement. Also, your PC wouldn't become a boat if you sprung a leak. But I admire this marvel of engineering. While this seems a straight forward way to implement liquid cooling, it is not necessarily the best.
    The finned heatsink is not neccesary, as it is meant to be used with 'air' and not liquid. What matters is heat transfer and surface area. Small diameter tubing could be tightly coiled and soldered/welded to a thin copper or brass plate (easier than the finned heatsink). The finned heatsink is thus replaced by circulating fluid. It would be important to use grease between the plate cpu as this removes tiny air pockets that prevent heat transfer. Traditional clips could be used to attach this assembly to the cpu. The tubing could then be run outside the case, and then if you sprung a leak, it would be 'outside' your pc. This method also lends itself to other cooling methods (i.g. using a refrigerator as a cooling source).
  • Posted by antivert:

    Yours was about the 10th comment on the subject, and it's completely off topic - mentioning how efficient your PowerPC is has nothing to do with thermal cooling of processors. So.

    I'm not always on topic, and I think it's good that we branch out into several topics - it's the order of nature. =) But really it just seemed as if you (and the others who posted similar comments) were taking a very thinly veiled (or not veiled at all) poke at the Intel users. We're not intel users because we think Intel is the first and last word in processors. Or at least most of us aren't. The fact is that we really don't care about how efficient your PowerPC is, and we're having great fun running water into our systems. Plus, I don't even use an intel processor. Nah nyah. =)
  • Distilled, PURE H2O is an insulator, and a good one.

    Problem is, it dissolves minerals readily, and even a slight ion content makes it much more conductive. One tiny little screwup, and *POOF*
  • Show me a decent 3D card that works with a PPC, and I'll switch.

    Esp. LinuxPPC.

    Linux has one available 3D card, the Voodoo/V2. Which is only supported on Intel platforms.
  • The anodizing process basically leaves a thick layer of oxide on the aluminum, that's it.

    The material created by anodizing isn't that great, but apparent immersing it in boiling water causes it to change form to a wonderful protective coating. (I think that's it...)

    Look around on metalworking sites, you might be able to find a HOWTO for anodization.
  • How many times do I have to hear that the PPC is more thermally efficient than a Pentium in a single thread? I'm kind of getting sick of it. Some of us have reasons for using x86 architectures. It's not our goddamn fault that some of the applications we like just AREN'T AVAILABLE on your oh-so-perfect processor.

    I happen to LIKE Quake/QuakeII, etc., especially with a good 3D accelerator. Considering how far behind PPC architectures lag behind in these arenas, I'll stick with my thermally inefficient x86, as much as I'd like to be able to switch to PPC, it's just not practical right now.

    Don't give me that "Oh, we've got the Rage 128 now." excuse, how long did it take for that to happen? Still, the R128 has its dirty little secrets ATI doesn't tell you about. Did you know it takes a 30% or so performance cut if you enable trilinear filtering? And no, the Riva TNT doesn't, in fact, I don't think ANY modern cards do.

    And "We're getting Quake II". How long has Quake II been out with no PPC port?

    And don't even get me started on LinuxPPC and 3D - Zero 3D acceleration whatsoever. And one thing - Good luck EVER seeing support for the 3D portions of ATI chipsets. Can you say ANAL? Trying to get specs from ATI is like trying to squeeze apple juice from a moon rock.

    Apple's love affair with ATI has doomed them to be eternally in the bottom of the barrel for 3D graphics performance until now. Now, they're just average.

    Personally, thermal trouble is a small price to pay for being able to run the applications I want to.

  • Can't speak for others, but my motherboard doesn't support chips as slow as ppro-166s, and last summer I couldn't afford anything faster with a good cache size. Good fans and things were okay. (until the cheep sleeve bearings failed. I now can afford and bough pcpower and cooling fans, and they are much nicer)

  • Also gonna be required on PIII
  • I had a similar idea.

    I was gonna throw my computer in my pool to keep it nice and cool, but then I thought, "Hey. I'm gonna have to take off my clothes and put on my swim trunks (or just leave them off if I'm feeling frisky) just to change a cd or floppy!"

    Then I got the bestest idea in the whole wide world! I have an air compressor in my bedroom. I have it hooked up to a similar contraption as his. The air going into the compressor is cooled by an air conditioner. The only bad part is I have to replace my PII-400 every couple of days (you wouldn't beleive how quickly air tears through silicon). Hopefully a filter will help.
  • The Sega Dreamcast has a liquid cooling system for its Hitachi processor.

    It's a bit of a weird idea -- copper tube filled with distilled water sinks the heat.. and if *that* overheats, the thing bursts,
    soaking the motherboard with water, whereupon you have to send the unit back for repair...

    You want trivia? just ask...
  • Wow !!

    There must be some kind of magic here ...
    Can you tell us how you do to keep your CPU temp below the room temp without using active cooling ??

    Did you turn the computer ON before ?

    Btw, my K6-2/300 is about 25C overclocked to 600Mhz and powered OFF !!

    Mac fanatics are soooooo funy sometimes =)
  • ...cause if that thing springs a leak your box will be FUBAR
  • While I am rather impressed by the intrepid young mans ingenuity (sp?), I don't understand why he doesn't just buy a Peltier Cooling Chip (i.e. a chip when you run current through it, one side gets cooler, and the other side gets hotter).

    Seems to me that he could glue one o' these chips right onto his Celery chip, and it should be able to keep his processor chip cooler, without all the water.

    Of course then he would have to cool the heat sinks on the Peltier chip itself, but still....

    Hmmm.. maybe I am violating one of The Laws o' Thermo...

    Comments anyone??
  • Aha,

    Now that I have discovered the "Flat" mode at Slashdot

    I see from above postings that someone else has suggested this too.

    However, the questions still remains: would a Peltier Chip Work?
  • if I could just buy the board, no operating system, then I would be interested

    For the hundred billionth time, you can. IBM sells them, and I believe Motorola does too. And of course you can always get them used on eBay or many other places.
  • this may seem trivial, but the second and third pages have a discrepancy ... the tubes run into the top on one, and the sides, with valves on the other.

    Yes. The second page showed the "normal" setup. THe third page showed a modified version.
  • PPC's are NICE but I don't want to put money into Apple's coffers anymore than I want to put the stuff in Microsoft's. Since the primary source of obtainable PPC machines are Apple Macs, I won't buy one. Not to mention that I can pick up a motherboard just about anywhere for the Intel architecture- I can't do that with the PPC and it's hard to do it for the Alpha.

  • hmmmmmm (Score:1)

    by RISCy ( 5493 )
    CAn you say flaming motherboard?? Mother boards run on +12v, -12v, and 5v's dc if you want to get picky. The POWER SUPPLY can take either 110v or 220v ac, but either way they still output the same volts in dc. The processes is just more efficent(read: less heat from the power supply) if you use 220v.
    ---------------------------------
  • About 6 months ago I got this idea and started to do some serious research on the internet and I have amassed a fem book marks of sites with some more informative content. I think the most informative site is Water cooled CPU's [agaweb.com]
    . Basicaly he addresses most of the points brought up in this discussion. In brief; Alcohol sucks, use Vasaline to stop condensation on the pins, and water works really well.

    ---------------------------------
  • Um, I actually had to do that this summer when I got my PII 400. Hopefully the new case I just bought will do better next year. :)
  • includes cascaded peltier design http://larkin.nuclearwinter.com/cool/ [nuclearwinter.com]
  • Nothing like a little liquid nitrogen to keep things cool. Maybe I'll try to over clock my 386/25 to a few terahertz now. Now I just need to find a motherboard.

    Andrew
  • Why not just use a block of aluminum, drill some holes all the way through the side. Put threaded nipples in the holes, and presto you have a dependable water cooled heatsink. Its similar to the water cooled heatsinks on R/C boat engines.
  • This month's Next Generation magazine [next-generation.com] has a piece on the internals of the Sega Dreamcast game system available now in Japan and soon in the USA. It uses a liquid cooling system with distilled water that transfers heat from the SH4 CPU and the Hitachi graphics chip over to the outside world. It uses a thermistor to shut down the system if things get out of hand. I haven't found any details about whether the system uses convection or an actual pump to move the water.

    Kriston J. Rehberg
    http://kriston.net/ [kriston.net]

  • I remember seeing a PC - might've been in Popular Mechanics, might've been on the web - which came in a refrigerated case. Like your fridge, you know, just sealed so as to prevent condensation. The promo material hinted at some verrrrry impressive overclocking speeds.

    Anyone know what I'm talkng about?
  • theresa host of PCI Voodoo cards that can be used with LinuxPPC - theres also the PermediaII and the
    forthcoming PermediaIII - and the Riva

    alan
  • Why not just submerge the whole motherboard in mineral oil, like they do for high voltage transformers? This could keep your Voodoo IIs from overheating trying to run Unreal if you put the video card in too. The only hitch would be keeping connectors (mouse, keybd, SIMMs, ect) from getting contaminated with oil.
  • I was just wondering why they made their own coper tubing instead of buying it at a hardware store. I would think that would eliminate a large % of the probibility of leaks.

    Harlequin
  • There's a company here in Japan that sells water-cooling kits for Socket7 and Celeron CPUs, and they even have a version that uses a peltier chip between the CPU and the water-cooling unit... I think the kits were called "Poseidon" or something similar.

    A magazine here did a review of the kits a while ago, and they found that even with the peltier chip, the improvement is generally only one bus-speed higher. Try to cool the CPU too hard and you get condensation, too...
  • assuming a room temperature (~ 74F or ~23C)

    Turn your thermostat down. Works for me in Minnesota in the winter ;-) Yes, overclocked PPCs can run at ~ambient temperature.

    BD - whose thermostat is set at 64F
  • I hope he doesn't get the hot and cold water taps mixed up.
  • Kryotech made a modified PC cooling system case, and Anandtech reviewed it a while ago.

    http://www.anandtech.com/html/review_display.cfm ?document=343

    So, this cooling has been done, better. Well, if it wasn't for the fact the cooling system was so damn expensive and it was limited to Socket 7 CPUs.
  • actually pure distilled water (H20) is extremely nonconductive. it conducts so little electricity it requires a voltmeter that can read voltages in the range of 1x10^-9 v to even detect it.

    2H20 -> H30+ + HO-

    that's the only reason distilled water will conduct any electricity at all. maybe you're thinking tap water.
  • Ok Ok

    Water contery to popular belief is NOT I repeat NOT a good conductor, (note I am an Electrician)

    now for a little experiment fill a plastic bucket with plain tap water, get 1 hair drier, turn on hair drier, now drop the hair drier in to the bucket.

    Now what do you expect will happen to the hair drier, blow up, blow a fuse, kill every one in sight. nah it just sits there churning water, and you can put your hand in it and lo and behold you dont feel a thing, you can even measure 240volts, on your arm with a volt stick..
    BTW I have done this.....

    But if your Interested about such things, about electrical safety. Mail me

    carnage_visors@bigpond.com

    Electricity should never be played with, the above experiment was done to show a bunch of aprentices, some of the common misconcepions about water and electricity.
  • OK lets just say that u actually get this thing not to leak. Ever hear on condensation? Rust is a bitch when it comes to the pins on the processor :)
    Natas
  • Just after the release of the Pentium II 300, Intel was in Europe doing some intersting demonstrations.

    By freezing a Pentium Pro, and then sticking it in, the system was running at a full 700-800mhz! The cooling seriously affects how the chip processese information, and it seem that freezing it seems to give a performance boast.

    Anyone ever do this at home?
  • But...

    Higher clock speed means less time for each transistor to accumulate enough electrons to switch. Clock it up too high, and not enough electrons flow into the transistors to make them switch... and, no boot!

    Does freezig help this problem? Does super-cooling somehow increase conductivity in ordinary silicon?

    To get a processor to run at, say 682 MHz -- that's 5.5 times 124, the max speed on most high-end Super7 boards -- by how much would you need to raise the voltage for an AMD K6-2? How far could you go before you fried the chip entirely? How much cooling might this require?
  • wouldn't it just be easier to drill some power cord holes in a fridge or something? =]
  • The things one has to do for those inefficient Intel chip designs... ;-)

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