SFF watercooling - pitfalls

shadowscotland

shadowscotland

shadowscotland

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Not sure this is the right section but all you watercool ugru's hang out here so...

Can anyone point out pertential problems with SFF watercooling.

Tight bends I know about - so will be sticking with 3/8th and maybe some coils.
Keeping my Res2 so pump/res/rad are all external - so no need to squash them in.

But are their any others?
 
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SFF is a nightmare, my Shuttle has been watercooled for 18 months now.

I use 8/10mm tubing, the lengths are critical to avoid kinks, 5 to 10mm can be the difference between a kink and a smooth run. I use compression fittings throughout too.

Also, need to make sure everything runs very cool, if it gets too warm the tubing can easily kink, this happened to me, the pump had a bad day, coolant got a tad warm and the tubing kinked.

Plan your assembly very carefully, I made an assortment of little brackets to make any maintenance easier, none of this was evident until after the first build. Changing from Zalman Coolant to Feser was hilarious and meant holding the wee beastie upside down over the kitchen sink and shaking it around, squeezing tubing etc. My next build has a drain port in it.....

New Shuttle at Christmas hopefully, will probably W/C that, so I think it's worth it.:)

What are you planning to cool?

EDIT: My N/B and CPU are very close together and getting tubing from one to the other was fun when you can't use any height due to the restricted spaces. I used a lot of the right angled swivelly type of compression fittings, perfect for tight corners.
 
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shadowscotland said:
Not sure this is the right section but all you watercool ugru's hang out here so...

Can anyone point out pertential problems with SFF watercooling.

Tight bends I know about - so will be sticking with 3/8th and maybe some coils.
Keeping my Res2 so pump/res/rad are all external - so no need to squash them in.

But are their any others?
Click to expand...

It depends what the case is, and what the system is. I've had good results with reserators in Silverstone Sugo SG-01 and SG-03 cases, and the Swiftech server side-exit CPU block is brilliant for SFF.
 
Thanks for the comments guys.

I've been trawling the net for a case that small but takes full size ATX boards and psu's.

I like my current setup and wouldn't normally have changed it. But I was offered a fanless psu part exchange for some of my unused kit and I jumped at the chance :cool:

Anyway - the CW01 I currently have wall mounted in front of me has the psu at the bottom (back, left in desktop format). This is far from ideal with a fanless psu, as it really needs to be at the top. If I close up my case my temps are way up, so it open to the elements and my son’s eagle eye’s

Some of the other Silverstone’s would have worked (LC10, 14, etc) but I wanted to improve the sound transmission issue I have with the case being bolted to the wall.
You can really hear a disk spin up on the other side of the wall, and there’s no real way of isolating it in the Silverstone :(

So I’ve reverting to an earlier idea of using a professional speaker bracket I have spare, which a Midi tower would sit on.

So there must be a small atx tower out there that’s not too deep – the CW01 at 443 is too deep really – and remembered why I didn’t do this last time – they don’t exist.
All the LL are out as they are 490mm plus, looked at the antec 300 but even deeper than the CW01 with is a shame as it would have given me a great base for a passive pc. All the SSF cases I liked were uATX so that’s a non starter.
Nearly went with a Mozart MX at it would make a fantastic passive pc case but that was vetoed by the wife (can’t think why :))
Then I found the GMC T2-toast.

It’s small, only 390mm deep takes full size motherboards and psu’s (at top). It’s also as wide as my Silverstone is tall so tubing should be no worse that before. It’s has had some good reviews but has three major reported issues.

Only one 5.25 bay – all I’ve ever used for a dvd-rw
Only two 4.5 bays – only ever used 2 HHD
Limited air cooling potential if OC’ing – But I’ll be watercooling!

Am a little concerned that the build quality will be lacking after my previous cases, but the reviews say it’s better than expected. I’ve one ordered and will start a log of my mistakes *cough* adventures soon.
 
i've done it a couple of times, once in a shuttle SN25p and once in a Micro ATX case.

General feeling was that it was just very hard to keep the temps under control due to the close proximity of all the components to each other, my normal aim with watercooling is the shut the damn thing up and thats just not doable with SFF, you need the airflow because you don't have the space in there for normal flow so components like the back of GFX cards, the psu etc, even the pump warm up the air to the point where it just becomes a hotbox.

Batter with a small ATX case tbh, now I'm using a PC70 and just about to move to a TJ07 which I class as full towers, when they're stood next to my old PC7 its clear to me how much smaller the PC7 was!

Its a teeny case!
 
Only ever air cooled them but even so as matt said is a PITA keeping everything "cool"... once you have everything in even with the best cable management (note spent a good two days!) they warm up very quickly once there is any sort of load through the CPU or Graphics Card... Ok at idle or doing low stress stuff but found once it got going a real arse to cool and keep silent...
 
I learnt about SFF watercooling the hard way: the fans are generally there for a reason, not just to make noise.

In my Soltek, the PSU and extractor (blower) fan were essentially all that was visibly extracting air from the case. What I didn't realise is that the heatsink and its fan was actually designed to blow air through the heatsink onto the surrounding components, meaning that when I watercooled, the case got really, really hot despite the CPU being fine.

Other than that, it's only a PITA if you're keeping everything internal: tube lengths (assuming you've got enough of the stuff) are guesstimates at best and once they work, it's not a problem.

I've seen a very cool SN25P which made use of copper piping, cooling two Geforce 7900GTs, an X2 4800 and the RAM with everything internal. It wasn't sub-zerio but it was an awesome piece of work. Far beyond my skills.
 
my undoing with the SN25P was cutting out the grill on the left hand side to make a window.

All seemed fine until the pump got very very hot, turns out the grill is there for a reason lol!

Looked good though :)

DSC01249.jpg


I even made the 2 120mm fans blow into the case and to be honest it was perfectly stable but a faulty mobo finally killed the whole project for me, I got sick and tired of it being a PITA to work with.
 
I think they look cool and there a good idea until temps ruin it. i want to re seat my cpu block. in a normal case this would be no worries but its going to be a good 3 or 4 hours of draining the loop, cutting tubing, removing graphics cards, rad just to get at the cpu block.... I like the fact it takes up no room but even fully watercooled with case fans its too much for the space.
 
what i found was it wound up on my desk which actually took up more usable space than a full tower on the floor!

everyone must traverse this journey :)

me and Tom did it at the same time, both went on a massive downsize, both got SN25Ps, both broke, both went back to full towers lol.
 
Well you've all convinced me to not use a shuttle or mATX SFF (did consider it i must say, but not for long)
I think I'm mis-leading people with the SFF title - but it will have a volume smaller than a V350A

The case I'm going for is basically my CW01 but without the drive bays - simular height and width, but 100mm shallower. Watercooling wise it shouldn't be to dissimular to what I've got, but will look much smaller on the wall :cool:

He's an internal shot of a white one - not a high end case I know, but will not look like this by the time I'm finished with it.
05.jpg
 
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