Cooling why water cool?

For those of you that water cool your system, I just want to ask why did you do it? The only 2 reasons I can think of to watercool is for the reduced noise and because of overclocking. Or is it just because its a cool thing to brag about?

Im just asking because I see a lot of articles about making your pc quite (and I really want to do this because my pc is pretty loud to me ) and most of them talk about putting foam inside the case or around the hard drive to block the sound but most of the noise from my pc comes from the fan on the cpu heatsink. I was thinking watercooling might be extremely quiet. I guess the reason I havnt done it is because im willing to stand the sound of the fans because I fear the water running out through my pc and frying everything.

 

might want to post this in the extreme cooling section ... or even the hardware & overclocking section ...


personally i dont watercool anything, basically cause im poor ... if i had money i would because my gaming box is really really loud ... and id like my processor to live a little longer ... bringing a chip down 10c can double its life ...

 

Whoops. Oh well it will be a good excuse to upgrade my 1900+ when it has a premature death from running between 60 and 70 the whole time . That's the price we pay for silence....

And PrnkstrO. Water around your system shouldn't be anything to worry about. Just so long as you test the whole thing ouside of your PC for at least 25 hours and make sure there aren't any leaks. However I've heard that water cooling isn't totaly silent. There is the noise of the pump and the noise of the fan(s) on the radiator + the usualy noise of the PSU (unless you watercool that too). Personally I have a quiet CPU fan (about 25db - which is why it runs so hot), no case fans and I'm planning on using a Zalman passive cooler for my GF4 and a 120mm exhaust fan above my PSU instead of the 80mm fan that it has at the moment. I was considering water cooling but this should be a much cheaper and maybe even quieter solution.

 

1. for cooling (doh) - like in my system, where my athlon goes from 55-70 deg (like what tk said- 10 deg's can double its life )
2. quiet
3. experimentation
4. i cant think of another reason, you guys think
5. ..bragging rights
6. ..looks cool (actually, i was planning on making a reservoir to be shown on the front, then have some leds illuminate the water )

why NOT to overcool
1. expensive to set up (pump and radiator's quite expensive, and so is the waterblock if youre going to buy one)
2. expensive to maintain (1200 gallons per hr = 300 watts? :/)
3. if you dont think you can set it up, or can get someone to set it up (you know, usual doubts with water+electricity=bad)


..uhm, btw, can anyone else point out the wattages of pumps?

 

Uhh - Braggin' rights? Looks cool?

 

Not sure exactly where you're getting your numbers. A good eheim will consume around 20W if that. As for flow rates in a water cooling loop, I will be impressed if you have more than 1gpm (=60GPH) in your loop, particularly considering how people tend to try and save money by getting a cheap pump.

Bad Idea!!!!!!!!

The pump is the weak link.

If you have a crap block crap rad and loud fans, with a good reliable pump, you will have a system that performs quite well, but will last for ever.

If you have the best block (read: cathar's white water) a good rad and couple them to a cheap aquarium pump, you will still get mediocre performance, due to the low flow rates. And if it fails, which cheap pumps do have tendency to do, then you won't have long before the water in your block heats up. Granted you will get a little more time to save your work and shut down than with air cooling! If your pump doesn't fail, I have heard so many tails on other forums of people trying to save money on a pump for their silent water cooling system, only for it to develop a rattle. Most of them then go out and spend more money on a better pump, such as an eheim and are happy with the results.

They still wasted money on the first one though.

Get the best pump you can, then fit the other components.

Recommended brands, Eheim, Iwaki, some people have had success with danner pumps. These can be expensive but will be worth it in terms of performance and reliability.

8-ball

 

ooh! ooh!

that was what turned me down the most. the operation costs.

so how many GPH should i get? and how many watts should it consume? might just reconsider my decision on giving up on watercooling.

 

My rig is a 1.333ghz t-bird currently running stable as a rock at 1.524ghz @ 45 degrees max. I have one 92mm fan at the front (7 volted), one 70mm fan (volcano 7+ heatsink) running on the low setting i.e. virtually silent, one 80mm outtake and another in my psu.

It is extremely quiet, i think the most noise comes from the air being pushed through the built in grill at the back, i must get round to removing that thing!

I considerd watercooling, but for the money i'll spend i could get a new cpu or graphics card. And i doubt watercooling would be much quieter than my air cooling is right now.

 

Of course air cooling is getting more sophisticated these days, and more quiet. There's several passive solutions for NB and GPU, and even CPUs are getting more efficient, quiter coolers(Sound dampening mats however are not brilliant, they raise inside temps). Harddisks are engineered to be quieter these days, too. So there's no reason not to go with a well-designed aircooled system. There's just as much cleverness involved as with watercooling.

Watercooling of course is very quiet and allows for more serious overclocking, but I just like the engineering involved. It looks seriously... er... cool. Do it well, and running costs are negligable.

As for the water in the PC thing, I would like to remind particularly British forum members that most have used an electric shower in their lives (you won't find them in the US or Europe so much). 240 Volts at about 7000 to 10500 Watts in a small plastic case connected to the mains water supply... And you're standing in a big stream (OK, sometimes with lower rated units, a drizzle) of water coming from it. Never worried about getting fried? Never heard of an accident? That's because it is technically possible to engineer a device that has water and electricity running through it, safely. So relax. It's just a matter of building your WC PC well, and testing it thoroughly.

 

I disagree. Have you looked at the size of todays heatsinks compared to what we had 5 years ago? My first pc was a p166. The processor was cooled by a fanless heatsink no bigger than 2x2x2 inches. It ran fine, and still runs fine today (yes its still in use). Now take my current setup. I have an athlon xp 2000+ with a thermaltake volcano 9. The friggin heatsink & fan is huge to me! I will say though that my current cpu is faster and produces more heat. But geeze! Still it seems to me that as chips get faster and hotter, heatsinks and fans just keep getting bigger and louder. When I think of things getting better I generaly thinkg of smaller, lighter, faster. So what do you mean when you say air cooling is getting more sophisticated these days?

I guess what im saying is that my noisy pc bothers me!

 

Air cooling is getting more sophisticated, micro fin technology, copper slugs, heat pipes, hundreds of different arrangements of fins and/or pins.

The problem is, theres only so far you can go. This isn't F1 racing, its just a case of increasing surface area, conductivity and cfm. But you can only take it so far. Did u know the first ever propeller designed and built for the SS Great Britain in 1843, was only 5% less efficiant than the most high tech, expensive, wind tunnel tested propellers in existance today. Heatsinks are a bit like that, theres only so far you can take it.

 

Good point Nexxo.
I never thought of that argument...
*me makes a note for future reference...*

My Eheim 1046 does 300 L/h at 5Watts, and my 1048 is 600 L/h at 10 Watts.
I seem to remember that the 1250 is 1200 L/h at 20Watts but it's in the cupboard upstairs, so that's just from memory...


PrnkstrO - the same question was also posted here
BiT-Tech.net Forums - Why Watercooling?
... a few more opinions for you.

 

Like chambochae says:

Just look at Zalman's stuff. That's pretty sophisticated to me. I installed a Flower on my father-in-law's P4 2.0 (the stock Coolermaster unit was driving him nuts) and the thing was quieter, and didn't even get luke-warm to the touch (about 34C)!
There's heat-pipes, big passive sinks, convection systems... There are two different passive cooling setups for the Radeon 9700 available.

As to pump wattage: My Johnson CM30P7-1 (12V, 2.0A) pump takes 20W at 1350l/h.

...and Pug, you run Wizard Designs, don't you? Expect an Aquatube order from me soon...

 

That's me.

be sure to let me know it's you if you do...
(I do read ProCooling forums occasionally )

 

Well, Pug, I've done the deed. I e-mailed an order to you yesterday!

Can you advise me on carrier costs inside the UK, though? I can't work it out from your site and so I don't know how much to pay you in total (via PayPal)...

Can't wait to get my hands on some Aqua Computer goodness! (drool... )

 

Not wishing to derail the thread too much... YGM.
For those who wish to know anyway, I tend to use Special Delivery & packaging at cost.

...but with me being West Midlands born & bred, Nexxo caught me on a good day and I owe him a favour, so he gets it for free.

 

i have a reasonably quiet machine with just aircooling. I installed the power supply at the front and i installed an 80mm fan backwards as to maintain the front-back airflow, however i don't think this is a prob because power supplies don't actully produce that much heat themselves, they only run hot if they're the system exhaust fan. then i made a 92mm blowhole beneath my gf4ti4200(not too hot either) and replaced the fan on the gf4 with a 60mm sunon. then i rigged up the processor heatsink(sk6) with an 80mm fan and so now there's an 80mm fan and a 92mm fan at both ends of the system, so the intake and exhaust fan cfm=exactly the same and i run them all @ 5 volts except the 80 mm one on the sk6 whihch i keep @ 7volts because 5 volts ain't entirely stable. it runs @ around 60 degrees under load and sisoft sandra does make a fuss about this, but i don't care, as by the time my processor burns out it'll be worthless anyway.
and i also have 7200rpm maxtor with an fdb motor which you can only hear for the first 3 seconds or so when one starts the pc, and the final result is that the loudest and most annouying part of my pc is the clicks of the HDD... i should have got a barracuda instead.
myconclusion after al this pissing around with the components is that at least it looks 1337! I'd love to watercool, if I only had the resources and time to do so. Damn college. Damn the lousy money my parents call allowance.

 

watercooling in a computers...funny...water + electricity, aint that a bad combination?!?!

i mean wot if the pipe was to burst...the comp dies!!!

No point i reckon.

 

It is a bad combinitation if you don't test your system correctly. And the hole point of water cooling as i see it is to keep the sytstem cool so that you can overclock them more and getting Benchmarking scores. And the only time that the system will break is if you havn't connected or tested it fully or done something stupid. It would be stupid for you to water coool as you no nothing but for some its a good option

 

i know ive got nuffin good to watercool, but even if i did i still wouldnt...i just think its pointless, so nerrr