Any electricians here? I know my computer is unsafe, but don't know how unsafe

wonko said:
Think this looks like his PSU: http://www.80plus.org/manu/psu/psu_...ower_and_Cooling_Turb_Cool860-860W-Report.pdf

200W looks correct if the PSU is at full load, but agreed it would be a lot less with a typical load though. Still, whether it's 30W or 50W or 70W it's still a fair amount of power to remove.
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Well I guess it's better to prepare for worst case scenario really when doing things like this... 200W is a nice figure to shoot for. A 100W lightbulb gives off a ton of heat, so 200W isn't going to be easy...

I guess the best thing to do would be measure the load from the mains when the computer is flat out (benching), this way you can work out with a little maths how much heat you're going to be dumping into your watercooling system. I'm not really familiar with heatsink calculations however, so I normally go for the biggest heatsink I can get, and then feel to see how hot it gets under normal use.

I've made a fanned PSU into a fanless PSU before now, it involved removing all the IC's from the PSU, and simply bolting them to a huge 2kg Alu heatsink, and having leads from the PSU to the IC's. It worked, however this was for a low power Epia rig, something like a Pico-psu would have been much better had it been available back then.
 
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JonJ678 said:
I'm not sure oil is any better than air to be honest, though I'd be interested in arguments in favour of it.
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Well I dunno but proper mineral oil is 100% insulator so even if you had a leak it will probably get insulated by the oil anyways and obviously in worst case scenario this will prevent any fire as well (water might not burn but in the case of chemical/electrical fire it only makes stuff worse). On one side this will help spread the heat across a lot better but on the other hand in the long run it will give out heat slower.

Either way, be careful with it, as said before I remember getting hit by PS1 psu which was only well under 100W and it wasn't a fun experience. So as much as I also feel confident doing this stuff, I'd pass on this particular one, not enough gains for the job done tbh.
 
To be honest, if the PSU heatsinks and fan can cope with the waste heat, the waterblock certainly will, assuming you can get the heat out of the water....

For safety, nice big fat earth straps to the earthing stud on the PSU would be a good idea, but bear in mind this will have an effect on EMC. May not be a problem but worth remembering in case something starts behaving oddly.
 
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