Completely Sealed Case

Gandeh

Gandeh

Gandeh

Associate
Joined
21 Jul 2011
Posts
545
Hey folks,

Just a question here, is it possible to run a PC completely with watercooling, with no need for any fans internally?

If so is it also possible to buy a computer case that is completely sealed with no room for air to get in and so to minimise the chance of any dust?

I'd be very interested to find out if it's possible and if so if there are any cases that are as air tight as you can get.
 
Even with a water-cooled PC you're usually going to need fans on the radiator(s). They could be mounted externally, but that’s not generally ideal.

With the best will in the world there are going to be components within a PC that can’t sensibly be water cooled. Some airflow (even if it’s just by passive convention) is usually going to be required.
 
I'd say it's not really possible nowadays without custom made blocks. There are just so many components inside a computer that create heat which don't necessarily have any form of heatsink already attached, which rely entirely on case airflow to dissipate the heat. Without this, I believe the temperature inside the case would slowly but surely rise, eventually causing your system to overheat.
 
Sure it's possible. An off the shelf case won't do it for high wattage systems, but there are some heatpipe based passive cases on the market. For high wattage, you put a waterblock on everything you can, put the radiators far away / use a big passive one, and hope the remaining components don't overheat.

The other option (for the remaining components) is to pipe cold / room temp water into the case, through a radiator with a fan on it. The fan recirculates air inside the case, but will move accumulated heat back out. To be explicit, put a radiator inside the sealed case, as a means of getting accumulated heat out. This is indeed not the usual configuration for a radiator.
 
I have fantasies about building a watercooling 'unit' in the utility room next to the study including the rads, reservoir and pump and then passing the tubes through the wall and connecting up with the case using quick-disconnects. If I put a waterblock* on everything the airflow required to cool everything else would only need to be pretty minimal and therefore could be next to silent - I'd be insulated from the rad fans by a couple of layers of brick and mortar.

Doesn't really answer your question, but placing you rads in a different room would minimise the need for internal fans

* In my fantasy waterblocks would include everything I could possibly do: CPU, GPU, RAM, Mobo & HDD
 
It's possible, but these kind of set ups tend to be huge. Passive radiators are by no means small.

It would be possible to build a passive air cooled rig, although you couldn't have the highest performing product on the planet.

Passive GPUs do exist Powercolor do a Passive 6850, so you could xFire them, if you wanted really good performance, although I doubt the passive coolers could cope with xFire...
Then NoFan do a passive CPU cooler
and finally Seasonic make fan less PSUs.

So it is entirely possible to build a completely fanless rig, just it's actually easier on air than water. The only thing is that these products tend to have a reasonable premium.

kd
 
If you really wanted airtight I believe a control panel box is as close to one as you are going to get. If you get a stainless steel one and use the outside of the box as a huge radiator it may just work.
 
@King Damager: You can do that however you still case fans to move the air around over thr fanless heatsinks. The only way to have a complete fanless box would be to watercool your hdds, ram, full motherboard blocks, cpu and gpu. Even then there may be other motherboard components that need some small amount air flow. I think the best you could do would watercool everything that you can have and have a big low rpm fan in yhe case for some airflow.
 
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