so, i made a mistake today. i have been planning a rather large external water cooling system for...well forever. today i found an excellent deal on a pump that i thought i could make work, despite the fact that it was much more pump than i would reasonably need. i figured i could make some sort of bypass or neck it down to keep it from exploding my cooling blocks. so i tested it in the bathroom sink. it promptly emptied the sink onto the bathroom floor. so after cleaning up the mess, i RE-tested it in the bath tub. it instantly created a violent whirl-pool; that is, after i manage to pull it away from the tub floor where it vacuumed itself upon plugging it in. the thrust it generates is so incredible that im sure it would propel a small boat quite happily. it also produces an impressive amount of racket. id say no less than 70dB. so needless to say, i cant use this pump and will return it for something more reasonable. however, i can highly recommended this pump for more serious uses. its made entirely of cast iron with a stainless impeller. its very heavy and has an amazingly high quality feel to it. its rated for 600 GPH with a 115ft head. the motor produces 1/2 HP. best of all its half the price of most computer-sized water pumps at only $40. with specs like that, i just had to give it a shot. purchased at Harbor Freight Tools. sorry, i forgot to take pics of the bathroom post-flooding, but heres the pump itself:
bare with me here: i have a radiator for a v8 dodge pickup that i am modifying (meaning, shaving and fiberglassing the side tanks to remove the large hose connections and various molded-in bossings and whatnot - to give the tanks a smooth look). i also have a 13" electric cooling fan from a small car. my plan is to mount the radiator and fan in an external cabinet, with lines running to the computer. i also plan on using mineral oil for coolant. i realize mineral oil doesnt conduct heat as well as water, but i feel that the sheer size of the radiator will more than make up for the reduced coolant performance. the advantages are: -the computer case will be very clean - with just a CPU and GPU block. the pump will also be housed in the radiator cabinet. -zero risk. mineral oil is non-conductive, so if i spring a leak i just have to wipe it up. -high performance and quiet. the huge surface area of my radiator combined with large fan (which i will slow down considerably for my application) should equate to very high cooling performance with very low noise (i may even run passive, if i get decent temps). -no corrosion or algae. since my radiator is aluminum and my blocks will be copper, corrosion could be a problem if i used water. mineral oil is a corrosion preventer and doesnt support microorganisms. the obvious disadvantage is lack of portability. this computer wont be making any LAN parties once this setup is complete what is this "over-kill" you speak of?
Mineral oil may work, but there is one think you probably haven't considered. The radiator may be big enough to cool the oil, but the "water" blocks may have problems transferring enough heat from the CPU/GPU to the oil since they still have a very small surface area.
Also, have you seen the price of mineral oil? You're gonna need alot just to fill the radiator. Good thinking though. I'd love to see it working.
I think the over kill is the shear size of it. Just like I thinking of water cooling rig that's plumbed into the houses hot water system 120 litres storage tank in the loft copper fittings and a customer copper block for the cpu just need to work out the flow rate and how to keep a coutinues water flow.
Ha ha! I love your train of thought! A half HP pump with a 115Ft head - your tubes would've popped off the instant you fired it up! It could work but you'd need comparably heavy gauge tube and custom cooling blocks that allow a high volumetric flow rate, i.e. rather than trying to maximise surface area, you just let the fluid run over a smooth copper surface.
You could probably water cool a library of computers with that thing. It doesn't look much smaller than the pump we have on our pool ! LOL
@Smilodon, thats something i had considered. im hoping that having the oil hit the blocks at a lower temp (increased tdelta) will compensate for the mineral oils resistance to heat transfer and still achieve decent temps. its something ill just have to try as i dont have the mathematical skills to calculate the results. worst case scenario, i always have the option of disassembling the system, cleaning it out, and filling it with water. @Pete J, i had planned a bypass system that would circulate the oil through the radiator several times, whilst only splitting a small portion off to go through the cooling blocks. this way most of the pumps pressure would remain in the radiator which could handle it. but this pump is just way too much regardless. @microsoftPerson, so your saying a need to start up a folding farm....hmmmm....
Could you connect it up to about 20 household central heating radiators and a 50 gallon storage tank to reduce the flow a bit? Edit: I connect my rads to the house mains to flush them out although I'm usually careful about the amount of flow I put through them. I did forget to disconnect the closed valve I had on my Black Ice Stealth rad a few months ago and now have a balloon Surprisingly it didn't burst.
600 GPH with a 115ft head God thats a proper pump lol Used to work in land clean ups and the pumps we used in the tanks there had a head of 10-20ft and they shifted
115ft... Ahm... For our application, you're killed overkill. Even if you want to use mineral oil (for whichever purpose I can't understand), you wouldn't need anything more than 20-30ft. of head. And even that is "overkill".
