Watercooling possible without fans?

Roverno

Roverno

Roverno

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First things first, this is hypothetical, im not going to do it, i don't think it would be very practical but...

Would anybody consider using water cooling setup loop as standard, but not adding fans to the rads? obviously much lesser performance, and many more rads needed, but it must be theoretically possible?

Anybody ever tried it? I was just thinking about it and thought i'd ask...
 
passive is possible, just stick a big rad outside the case, wouldnt expect great performance, things inside the case would get pretty toasty.

but then whats the point?
the loudest thing in my case is the pump, which is only barely audible, i keep the fans on low RPM with a controller when in normal use, if i'm playing something intensive or stress testing etc i just turn them up.
 
Been done, someone on here built a case that was basically a passive rad, can't remember the project name now but I'm sure someone will link to it.

Other than that I have all but one of my fans (case and rad) on a temp controlled fan controller so when idling etc I have 1-2 fans running.
 
Shadowscotland will be falling over himself to post in this thread once he sees the title :)

Best results with normal rads will be when having them horizontal as this benefits most from natural draught convection. In my opinion you can't really do this and keep the rads inside the case, they prety much have to be mounted external, but this goes against your "standard loop" stipulation.
 
Bubo said:
Shadowscotland will be falling over himself to post in this thread once he sees the title :)

Best results with normal rads will be when having them horizontal as this benefits most from natural draught convection. In my opinion you can't really do this and keep the rads inside the case, they prety much have to be mounted external, but this goes against your "standard loop" stipulation.
Click to expand...

Haha, ok. I await his reply with anticipation!
 
There was a guy running a mo-ra 9*140 IIRC and got very good temps even passively, but the rad is designed for it.
 
I'm going with a 9x120 rad for my tri-sli setup, I hadn't even considered mounting the rad horizontally, but that solves more than one problem for me as well, I might just have to cut a hole in a desk to do it

although I'll be fitting 9 fans anyway and just running them as slow as possible
 
The difference between passively cooled rads and rads with some very slow fans on I would expect to be a big difference in temps due to the airflow through the rads being much higher than passive.

Some people can run their loops passively for light duties - internet, emails, movies etc but only seen one build where it was completely passive. The log was on here and I think it was the one Danm54 was referring to, where the 'case' was a giant passive rad.

Personally, unless it is a goal of yours to complete for one reason or other I don't see it as practical as fans turned right down on low fpi rads are as near as possible to silent anyway.
 
Will also echo What Greboth said - that little bit of extra airflow makes a massive differance.
Especially to the non watercooled bits.

ssdfin.jpg

link to build in sig

That's my current set up (almost) assisted passive stack cooling is what it's call by engineers.
One fan build - I use a yessico 550w passive psu - the fan is an intake case fan.
All holes in the case filled in, except the roof mounted rad as an extract vent.
2500K / 460gtx / 8gb ripjaws / DX

Standard internal loop. PA120.3, tube res (plus fill port line), D5, EK Supreme HF,
Silverprop Cyclone Fusion HL (that an old school universal gpu block btw)

I've done completely passive watercooling with external rads - just take up lot's of rooms.
and you need blocks for NB, SB, MosFet, Ram, HHD (everything that's performance speck)
Linky

Edit: My psu isn't standard kit - so my next build will be to remove all the case fans and just use
a 80+ gold psu's fan as an extract. This should make the cpu and gpu cooler but everything else hotter :(
hopefully the reduced heat output of the psu will even out the thermal losses and gains inside the case.
 
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guys - i just built my first water-cooling rig just recently....

I'm cooling:

i7 920 at 4.2GHz @ 1.3V
12GB Dominator RAM @ 1600MHz 1.65V
NB & SB & Mosfets
EVGA GTX 560 Superclocked!

All EK blocks.

MO-RA 3 9*140

Completely Passive.

CPU on max load is @ 65 degrees.
 
2011project21.jpg

Here's my one, only moving parts are the D5 pump and a pair of inaudible (300rpm) fans in the top.

It's had:-

i7 920 4.4GHz + 5870
i7 2600K 4.6GHz + GTX580

and now has a i7 2700K at 4.8GHz + GTX580

The biggest step forward for me was removing hard disks and getting decent passive PSUs.
 
arjunchawda said:
guys - i just built my first water-cooling rig just recently....

I'm cooling:

i7 920 at 4.2GHz @ 1.3V
12GB Dominator RAM @ 1600MHz 1.65V
NB & SB & Mosfets
EVGA GTX 560 Superclocked!

All EK blocks.

MO-RA 3 9*140

Completely Passive.

CPU on max load is @ 65 degrees.
Click to expand...

Any chance of some pics?
 
You can get dual PSU cables that will start a second PSU at the same time as the main one. I've got a pair of 520W Seasonic passive PSUs in my PC.
 
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