Watercooling with no rad and massive res

RichH · 15 Feb 2012 at 09:50

Hey guys,

Has anyone tried anything like this?

Obviously if your res is big enough, say 10,000 litres, you will never need to worry about cooling the water as fresh stuff is always being used.

Has anyone experimented with this principle using a sensible sized res though? I was thinking around 30 litres.

P3N9U1N · 15 Feb 2012 at 09:54

10,000?, thats rather large, 30 is still a tad big imho. mines 5 litres and thats big enough. I do see your logic tho

RichH · 15 Feb 2012 at 09:58

P3N9U1N said:
10,000?, thats rather large, 30 is still a tad big imho. mines 5 litres and thats big enough. I do see your logic tho

So you dont use a radiator?

P3N9U1N · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:01

Yeah, use a 140 and a 360,tho that cools my i7 920 and my gtx 590 on the same loop, which wasnt a good idea. Obviously the larger the res, the longer it takes to heat up, which is why i went bigger

RichH · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:04

I see. I was talking about just using a massive res and no rads at all.

P3N9U1N · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:07

If you have a pump, say a laing d5, that pumps 1200 lph, and a res of 10,000 liters, it would take at least 8 hours for all the liquid to get through your loop. If you had a res that big i personally dont think you would need a rad at all, as the liquid would heat up very very slowly

RichH · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:19

Yeah, I know that, but 10,000 litres is obviously far too big to be practical, so my point was what size would do?

I was hoping 30L would be ok. The water would only be passing though the block about 6 or 7 times an hour with a 200l/h pump.

KiiYzOo · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:34

honestly, that wouldn't work, the only types of loops that you don't need to use rads in are sub-zero loops

Bubo · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:37

Quick check of google shop for a laugh:

10,000 litre tank = £2000 + massive room to store
360 rad = £60 + store inside your pc

A 30 litre tank will heat up quicker than you think if the only way heat can be lost is through the plastic walls of the tank itself. I'd say 30 litres is no where near enough to make this a pheasible idea, unless you only use your pc for like an hour a day.

RichH · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:39

Well it would work if the res was big enough, it is basic physics, the res would become a radiator. You couldn't boil a dustbin full of water with a match, it's the same principle. The only question is how big the res would need to be.

KiiYzOo · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:41

I'd take 10,000 litres worth of a radiator over a 10,000 litre reservoir any day

RichH · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:44

Bubo said:
Quick check of google shop for a laugh:

10,000 litre tank = £2000 + massive room to store
360 rad = £60 + store inside your pc

A 30 litre tank will heat up quicker than you think if the only way heat can be lost is through the plastic walls of the tank itself. I'd say 30 litres is no where near enough to make this a pheasible idea, unless you only use your pc for like an hour a day.

Ha, ok, I wasn't actually considering converting my loft into a huge reservoir! But you don't think 30L would be enough, ok thanks.

I was just wondering if anyone had tried it really.

Sir SpankalotUK · 15 Feb 2012 at 10:56

there was a thread on here where they were talking about outdoor radiators and that started to go into the math, probably around christmas time.

makno · 15 Feb 2012 at 11:13

RichH said:
Ha, ok, I wasn't actually considering converting my loft into a huge reservoir! But you don't think 30L would be enough, ok thanks.

I was just wondering if anyone had tried it really.

well you might want to consider structural work that needs to be done to increase strenght of the building 10000L of water are 10 tonnes (excluding the tank) i doubt any house was build to take that weight

You might want to consider a heathsink kind of res, let's say a res made of copper with all sides coated in copper fins (if that makes any sense)

RichH · 15 Feb 2012 at 11:21

makno said:
well you might want to consider structural work that needs to be done to increase strenght of the building 10000L of water are 10 tonnes (excluding the tank) i doubt any house was build to take that weight

You might want to consider a heathsink kind of res, let's say a res made of copper with all sides coated in copper fins (if that makes any sense)

Perhaps I should just dig a garden pond and use that as a res...

A big copper water tank is a good idea, although if you are going to do that you might as well just get a massive radiator from an old Land Rover or somthing.

I liked the idea of just hooking the computer upto a couple of big jerry cans.

Bubo · 15 Feb 2012 at 11:31

I forgot to add in the price of the water in my joke sums.

10,000 litres of dionised @£0.75 a litre = £7,500

or if you are mad

10,000 litres of Mayhems Ultra Pure @£4.99 a litre =£49,900

Mlwood will be along in a minute to say this is a GREAT idea and you should definately do it

Basically, bare in mind that if you are using this large res as a standard part of the loop, then you can't fill it with bog standard tap water if you want your blocks to be completely free of scale. Some may say that a fixed volume of tap water won't allow scale to build up, and they would be right, but you will usually always have to replace water due to evapouration and so the dissolved solids will steadily increase over time, and it will generally build up on hot surfaces eventually.

Bubo · 15 Feb 2012 at 11:40

makno said:
You might want to consider a heathsink kind of res, let's say a res made of copper with all sides coated in copper fins (if that makes any sense)

What you would have there, would be rad

RichH · 15 Feb 2012 at 12:03

Bubo said:
I forgot to add in the price of the water in my joke sums.

10,000 litres of dionised @£0.75 a litre = £7,500

or if you are mad

10,000 litres of Mayhems Ultra Pure @£4.99 a litre =£49,900

Ha, ha, brilliant!

I was thinking tap water and cheap blocks that can be replaced if they do clog up.

Jokester · 15 Feb 2012 at 12:30

The surface area of a 10000l tank would be way more than passive radiators you can buy now so it'll easily cool a PC continuously. Even a 1000l tank has 6m2 of surface area, 4 times that of a Zalman Reserator, so you're lookingat something like a 250l tank - I would need to work it out as the the relationship is non-linear, but how big is something like a hot water tank? Or if you're property has a cold water storage tank maybe use that!

RichH · 15 Feb 2012 at 13:00

OK, so does anyone know what the surface area of a 360mm rad is? Considering my tank is plastric not metal i'll aim for twice the surface area of a 360.