Water cooling -why ?

steveinspain

steveinspain

steveinspain

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OK, this is not meant to be a dumb question, but why water ?
As air cooling gets better surely there is something better than water to cool with - liquid nitrogen or whatever...?
Seeing how fridges can cool our food without any fancy fans, rads etc etc, why isn't there an alternative to water, or is there and the problems are too big to overcome ?
Sorry if this is an old question, but I am a newbie learning a little more slowly !
 
Reason why liquid nitrogen isnt sold for people like us to use in a retailers.
ITS TOO DAMN DANGEROUS :p

And fridges cool food etc well, because the foods arent getting hotter putting up a fight against temperatures.

Example - stick your pc in a fridge, the pc will raise the temperature inside the fridge causing the fridge to work harder to cool the pc, creating stupid bills and constantly working harder to keep things cool, so thats why things like fridge rads arent in pc cases i think ;)

Plus water can give great results, nice and quietly rather than having the whirring of fans getting on your nerves
 
Its hard to go below 0C in a case, mainly due to condensation.

But water is best accesible cooling for all really, thats safe of course
 
OK, so having just read the thread on liquid nitrogen kits I now understand that, but from what I have read most who watercool still have fans whirring away, albeit slower.
Is there nothing else apart from water that is easily available, or do watercoolers need to think big in terms of radiators - surely if you are going to what seems to me to be a lot of trouble then a larger water store would be better - most of us don't move our pc's around too much unless gaming, and I guess most who watercool wouldn't move things much, so a 10-30 litre water tank hidden away behind the desk might make it all a lot better, or am I missing something ?
 
You can cool your pc using a refrigeration but majority of the time they use this as extreme cooling, ie -10 - 100c ~ have a look at XS forums, you still need a "radiator" (condenser) to remove the heat, on a normal household fridge this is done by convection, you would also need to ensure the unit can handle the heat load.
Thermaltake do a case with a compressor built in

Water cooling tends to offer resonable cost with good results if done properly and minimum maintenance to the user.

Above is my 2penny worth :)
 
There's phase change, which is similar to how a freezer works, but of course better, as a freezer can only take a room temperature object and lower the temperature and with the insulated interior the temperature stays low.

However with PC's there's a constant high heat load and water is kinda the sweet spot between cost and performance in that respect.

Phase, is quite noisy from what I've heard, as well as being very costly.

Liquid Nitrogen, again is extremely expensive and is a short-term cooler - evaporates.

In reality there's not much need to dropa chip too low as I'm sure voltage will soon start coming into play before temperature. I could be wrong about that statement, but would expect that to be a rule of thumb.

*EDIT* Heh was a bit slow :D
 
But again a fridge works for years and must be simple technology, so surely it could be adapted with a thermostat that covers a wider range of temps and cheaply..? (and zero maintenance )
What costs are involved with watercooling to do it properly - £250 or so ? Isn't that more than a fridge costs ?
 
I guess I need to read a little more, as I do seem to be missing something here..
I want a quiet-as-can-be pc with as little hassle as possible - air seems good to me and for my uses is fine, but water cooling seems to be a lot of effort and input for not much more (that could be my lack of knowledge though) and I have no idea what phase change is as mentioned my Deaco.
More to learn about it seems..!
 
It can be more than a fridge costs, but you arent going to go buy a fridge and put your pc in it just because its cheaper.

Watercooling is popular, and will always be popular untill a decent alternative comes out.

Its ideal, it improves temperatures which in turn can lead to better overclocking performance, it can be cheap.

And it also looks pure awesome if done correctly ;)
 
steveinspain said:
But again a fridge works for years and must be simple technology, so surely it could be adapted with a thermostat that covers a wider range of temps and cheaply..? (and zero maintenance )
What costs are involved with watercooling to do it properly - £250 or so ? Isn't that more than a fridge costs ?
Click to expand...

Yeah, but a fridge drops temperatures by 30oc at the very most, and arn't designed to be at 100% load 24/7 unlike a watercooling setup.. Phase change is very similar in the fact it uses gasses, evaporators, compressors and condensors that you would find in a fridge. But are designed for high heat temperature environments such as that in a PC.

If you stuck boiling water in a fridge, I doubt very much it'd stay at the correct temperature of 5-10oC and the components would be struggling which would put more strain and wouldn't last too long.
 
steveinspain said:
I guess I need to read a little more, as I do seem to be missing something here..
I want a quiet-as-can-be pc with as little hassle as possible - air seems good to me and for my uses is fine, but water cooling seems to be a lot of effort and input for not much more (that could be my lack of knowledge though) and I have no idea what phase change is as mentioned my Deaco.
More to learn about it seems..!
Click to expand...

Watercooling isnt an 'effort' if you take your time when you install it, and maintenance, ive been told that if you get a decent setup with decent liquids you dont have to clean it out for aaaaaaaages ;)
 
steveinspain said:
But again a fridge works for years and must be simple technology, so surely it could be adapted with a thermostat that covers a wider range of temps and cheaply..? (and zero maintenance )
What costs are involved with watercooling to do it properly - £250 or so ? Isn't that more than a fridge costs ?
Click to expand...

Set your fridge to medium low, leave the door open eight hours a day for 3 months and then we'll discuss the relative expense of watercooling. :p
 
I very much doubt there will be any alternative to water cooling, as its hard to come up with a quiet setup that needs to dissipate a high heat level 24/7. Air cooling & Water Cooling is here to stay me thinks
 
Air simply got better because we have decent 120mm fans now, as oppose to the old (only 8 ish years old) 80mm cases we used to use. And because you now get 3 times the size of aluminium/copper for your money (huge ass cpu sinks) than you did at the turn of the century. Even after the dollar to pound collapse.

Water inside a radiator might be better than air passing over one, but for water to give to results, you really do need its radiator to be bigger than the competing big heatsink on cpu air competitor.
 
Best thing i done was water cooling. Temps are down and the PC is silent even when on load. The only downside is upgrading. I can't just simply pop in a new graphics card when I feel.
 
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