Cooling Basic Water Cooling Question

Hi there
I'm new to modding, new to water cooling and new to this forum.. Please be gentle

I'm tempted to do a water cool mod to my rig, however I have a few concerns.

My wife has bannished me and all my kit into the attic as she has no interest in seeing, let alone using any sort of computer equipment .

This is not a problem during the winter months at the attic is quite cold,
However during the summer months it gets real hot. How hot i hear you ask?

Well i haven't taken a temp measurement, but in the hight of summner I can
break a sweat within 5 min, just by sitting down.
I have installed an AC unit but it dosn't come on automatically as the temp rises.
I forgot to power it on and a few of my servers shut off as it reached the bios temp threshold.

I'm worried that the system will work fine during the winter, but fry my processosr in the summer!!!!
Any suggestions???

 

insulate the roof??

as it is at the top of the house, and thus with heat rising, and it being a perfect space for the heat to get trapped, it can get very hot indeed (i know ours gets up to mid thirties to fourties)....so yeah, insulating hte roof, would probably not only save you a lot on heating/cooling down in the future, but also stop your pcs/servers from shutting down..

 

I was in the same situation as you last summer, so my first words of warning are: Cool your harddrives! Your pc hitting the shutdown temp and switching off is annoying, your hard-drive getting perminant errors is worse, trust me

As for water cooling, it won't be much more effective than air-cooling, coz it's still stuck in the same insulated room. The only solution I can think of (which is pretty drastic), is for you to find a way to put the radiator(s) outside your loft/attic area.

 

Talk to your wife and negotiate. A well-built (espacially watercooled) computer is unobtrusive and quiet, and marriage is about compromise after all.

 

I Had thought of water cooling all of my systems with a 25 gallon water butt
full of water to cool a coil (Acting as the rad), similar to how a hot water
tank works here in the UK, but in reverse (as it would take a lot to heat up 25 gallons of water).

I thought of having a feed/return system like my central heating to ensure all
PCs get cold fluids instead of plumbing it all up in series. And having quick
release valves/barbs so when I go to a LAN I can have a mini system to deal
with cooling.

The only thing is that the systems would need to be plumbed in copper pipe
(so not movable), and I would need to ensure that the fluid that is pumped
to the PC’s have some anti-freeze for the winter (I’d hate to lose flow )

All I think I would need as a decent pump to shift the coolant from the
reservoir to the cooling tank and back up 2 stories to the attic where it
would be distributed to the water blocks.

Kinda mad mod… but would it work??

 

Course, even a big tank of water would heat up eventually if you kept your PC on 24/7.
Mind you, in our atic we had a big tank that was basically the res for the hot water. So, as people use hot water it's taken out of that tank and is replaced by fresh cold mains water. It has the added benifit of pre-warming your hot water, saving money on your fuel bills, handy eh?

 

Hi Phuzz,
unfortunatly I cant use a water tank in the attic as i don't have one. the
attic has been decked out as a room. but i recon i can get some pipes to the
outsde without causing a leak in the roof.

The attic has been insualted under the floor with fiberglass and the walls are
insulated with foil back plataboard and polystyrine blocks.

It has been suggested that there maybe some issues with the idea stated above.

One of the guys i work with has said that by pumping the coolant from the
ground floor up to the attic will create a high presure system.

This high pressure system is likley cause the system to fail just where you
don't want it to, at the water block. he also expressed some concernes
around throughput of coolant to the water blocks for each system.

Not knowing anything about this subject I don't know if this is a show stopper
for this idea

Another suggestion he made was to use a standard car rad mounted on the outside wall so it hasn't got to travel up from the ground floor

would passive cooling on the rad be enough to cool 5-6 systems

Please help
(Thinkig of keeping it air cooled)

 

if you were to do the 2 story travel it would indeed need to be a "high pressure" (relatively) system. You would also need a system that had a head that could pump 25+ feet which means at this point I believe it would need to be threaded copper pipe or the likes. You wouldn't want a system like that hooked directly up to a computer you would need to have some sort of collection tank and then have a low pressure loop that hooks in to this collection of water. also the pump would hafta be of the beefy variety Not even the garden pond pumps have heads that high.

A LOT more conveint, easy and cheap
Would be to invest in some sort of mini fridge, beer cooler, etc. Either use the coils directly or what not and put a res in the fridge or Freezer. If you run anti freeze you could run the res (no need for a rad) in the freezer just fine. I'm strongly thinking of doing htis and kicking the rad. This could make a really simple and portable system with just 2 barbs sticking out the side of the minifridge. if you find certian beer coolers are what not they are already designed to run 24/7 at a certain temp so it should be all good.

 

Those mini fridges and freezers can only cope with removing 40w of heat (at most) from your coolant. A single CPU dumps more than 40w of heat into your coolant. You will burn out the mini-fridge (as minifridges generally run from a 40w tec with a heatsink on the back).

If coolant is cooled to below ambient / dew point, you'll also get condensation on pipework and metal surfaces of blocks.

A flash-chiller / beer-line cooler however can remove several 100w of heat depending on the refrigerant charge and captube configuration. It's thermostat determines final temp of coolant so can be set to run just above dew point to prevent condensation.

I wouldn't consider either of the above as suitable options.

Suggest mounting radiator and fans outside the house, in the overhang behind the bargeboards. Should be easy enough to route piping to there, and the radiator will have a constant supply of outdoor air.

Failing that, use multiple pumps rather than one highpressure pump to cover the run from ground floor up.

EG: Measure from lowest location to highest location. Choose a pump (such as Eheim 1250). Divide your distance by the pumps' max head, then position one pump every interval of this distance on the "up" line. Nothing required for the down line. Gravity will do that job.

This would cope fine on regular watercooling tubing.

Ultimately, your best solution would be to get some airflow in the attic to cool you as well... ie: 2x 240v 180mm or bigger slow-running fans. One on one wall, one on the opposing wall to get a thru draft in the attic, with filters on the inlet. That should reduce ambients enough to run a regular watercooling system without issues up there.

 

thanks guy's
you have given me alot to think about.
I'll let you know how i get on (with pic of course )

Steve