Water cooling -why ?

Deaco said:
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.

*EDIT* Heh was a bit slow :D
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My Phasechange cooling (Vapo PE) was quiet, it all depends how you setup the vapo config, i was getting -15 under full load on an overclocked P4 3.2ghz @ just over 4ghz.
 
Also watercooling can be useing in non-standard ways.

I use it passively - very large rads and no fans.

I've seen it combine with a WC cystern - normal watercooling setup with a 120.3 in the cystern - its was an office so the WC was flushed relatively frequently keeping the medium around the rad at around 5c

Why not have a Rad dump heat into a swimming pool? or Underfloor heating? or domestic heatexchanger? or outside? or underground etc

Mount a Zalman Resavator on your window ledge / air-con office - great temps no fans straight out of the box.

The joy of water cooling is that you can pump the hot water away from the source. It does not 'need' to go to a internal rad.
 
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shadowscotland - that sounds interesting !
I like the idea of heat dumps - here in the south of Spain it gets pretty hot in summer (you don't say !!) I heat my domestic hot water by solar and run a pipe into a irrigation water storage tank (rather like a swimming pool) to prevent the system overheating and at one stage toyed with the idea of mounting a central heating radiator to the outside of my house as it seemed funny to me - well, who else heats the outside, especially in Spain..?
Watercooling outside the pc case sounds much more interesting, especially using a toilet cystern - brilliant idea !
 
Can't claim credit for that one - have put a passive rad in a chimney, was part of an assisted stack effect ventilation system in a house I worked on. Was linked to some nice AV stuff all valves and bling - cost more than i earn in a year!

Check out the australian overclockers sites - they know a thing or two about keeping heat and dust out of pc's
 
The long and the short of it is that you simply have to get X amount of heat from A to B in the manner which is most cost effective to you. You could employ celestial virgins to constantly waft ostrich feathers at your cpu if you want but it would cost you. If you're asking why people still use simple water then I'm sure there are magic fluids in development somewhere which are slighty more conductive than bog standard water, they simply would cost *considerably* more and are therefore not used by the vast majority of people. Really, its not the fluid which is the most significant variable in a fluid based cooling system, as Shadowscotland says it is the means of dumping that heat to the environment, and the surface areas available for heat transfer at both ends, which are far greater factors.
 
With the sounds of things these water cooling solutions sound like a right royal pain to install them with all the tubes & accessories you might need, as well as a way to cool all the water down. Im just glad I have an Antec case, all those fans to keep the insides of my machine cool, I can put up with the noise with music turned on
 
shadowscotland said:
Also watercooling can be useing in non-standard ways.

I use it passively - very large rads and no fans.

I've seen it combine with a WC cystern - normal watercooling setup with a 120.3 in the cystern - its was an office so the WC was flushed relatively frequently keeping the medium around the rad at around 5c

Why not have a Rad dump heat into a swimming pool? or Underfloor heating? or domestic heatexchanger? or outside? or underground etc

Mount a Zalman Resavator on your window ledge / air-con office - great temps no fans straight out of the box.

The joy of water cooling is that you can pump the hot water away from the source. It does not 'need' to go to a internal rad.
Click to expand...


A friend of mine his pump stopped working now he uses a pond pump sat in a bucket of water and the rad sits in there no fans everything quiet and cool :cool:

And I can provide a link to that if you would like :)
 
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Old school getto style - like it mollymoo, nice contribution forgot all about that approach.
What your describing is not quite a 'bong' but the open bucket = evaporative cooling.

Tell your mate to buy a metal bucket - will knock a degrees or two off the load temps if the water gets hotter that room temp :)
If water is below ambient (due to evaporation) stick with a plastic one.
 
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shadowscotland said:
Old school getto style - like it mollymoo, nice contribution forgot all about that approach.
What your describing is not quite a 'bong' but the open bucket = evaporative cooling.

Tell your mate to buy a metal bucket - will knock a degrees or two off the load temps if the water gets hotter that room temp :)
If water is below ambient (due to evaporation) stick with a plastic one.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm would be nice to make it a bong somehow maybe any residue would chill the cpu out ...... man :cool:

But yeah it works ... not for anything extreme and there could be a problem if he ever starts rendering again but its used mainly for scripting websites nothing overly harsh and works as a good and more importantly free repair :p
 
Water looks cool and is more efficient.

With air cooling at the moment (along with quite heat-efficient CPUs) there's not much point doing it from a performance point of view unless you're overclocking as an academic excercise (you won't get much more real-world performance from it); it's excellent for quieting your PC down without underclocking though. A single water loop with 3 fans on a radiator could replace 4 case fans, a CPU heatsink fan and the noisy little git on your graphics card.
 
Imo watercooling isn't the way to go unless your

A: going to do some extreme o'cing
B: want a quiet system or
C: you have shed loads of money because a good water cooling system with a couple of loops and custom parts will cost a good amount :)
 
mollymoo said:
Imo watercooling isn't the way to go unless your

A: going to do some extreme o'cing
B: want a quiet system or
C: you have shed loads of money because a good water cooling system with a couple of loops and custom parts will cost a good amount :)
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A: water isn't for extreme overclocks.
B: Can be quieter but that's mainly due to using aftermarket fans. Air can also be quiet.
C: Aye, the best stuff is expensive, no arguments there.

The reason why most people watercool is a combination of everything you have said. While extreme overclocks will never be had with water alone (you need LN2 for true extreme clocks), water allows a sustainable high overclock for use in a 24/7 setup with very little noise. It also looks the business when done correctly.
 
danceMB said:
With the sounds of things these water cooling solutions sound like a right royal pain to install them with all the tubes & accessories you might need, as well as a way to cool all the water down.
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Rarely stated on forums, or explained, is the shear karma factor on having running water nearby. Its like maintaining a bonzi tree.
 
If I ever did go for water cooling, I would have to get someone out to fit it all together for me, as I would never install it by myself, no chance. Then again, I dont have a spare £200+ lying around to go that way
 
Im sure that it would! I remember the same video sometime, and it was a bit extreme I must say. But they said that they couldnt leave it on 24/7, it only lasted about 7 hours before they had to switch it off due to the amount of heat that couldnt be dissipated any longer, so its not really a long term solution, certainly not for me
 
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