I just wanted to know if anyone have tried WCing with an house rad. My question are is there a lot of material compatibility problem (same as alu/cooper in one loop) Is it worth the price new (that would surprise me as nobody use them) Is it worth is you found one for free as a passive system (for a not moving PC obviously)
Household radiators are not passive. If you wished to use one as a passive cooler I think you encounter a lot of problems, as in how would you transfer the heat from cpu to the radiator?
You would need some powerfull pump for that lol I've seen someone use a car heater rad and a small electric car radiator fan. Worked pretty good too.
Well my question is would the rad be able to cool the fluid. It's what they do normally right, exchanging heat from the water of the house boiler with the air of the piece. So technically they should be able to exchange heat from the CPU with the air.
There are three vairables when considering heat exchange. Temperature difference, thermal conductivity, and contact. Contact with the air plays a significant role. The raidator can either be bigger or have fans to push the air onto the surface. Even though household radiators are so big, the volume of air surrounding it, is small compared to what multiple 120mm fans can push into a typical computer raidator. A typical 3x120mm radiator with fans usually have a temperature difference of 10C between the water and the air. While household radiators take much hotter water to heat the house only a little. The only way you can get better performance is increasing the temperature difference. If you mounted it outside instead of inside the room for instance.
