Going Water cooled

[AgentJean]

What special things should I know and consider when designing a water cooled rig?
I'm thinking about have the reservoir external instead of internal.

Also is there any risk to my hardware if I were to house reservoir in a micro fridge(for better cooling)?

 

[AgentJean]

No opinions on this subject?

I've never built a water cooled rig but I'm thinking about taking the pundge.

 

[beemercer]

How much are you willing to spend on watercooling, its really all or nothing; cheap watercooling gets beat by high-end aircooling.

 

[AgentJean]

Originally posted by: beemercer
How much are you willing to spend on watercooling, its really all or nothing; cheap watercooling gets beat by high-end aircooling.

Well I've seen external kits from 100 - 400 bucks. I'm not sure how much I wanna drop into the cooling system yet. I'm sort of in the research phase.

My current rid is real noisy if I turn all the fans to full power. If I leave the fans at the min setting the CPU idles at are 40C(Athlon 64 3500.) My GPU idles even hotter(around 60C it's a Geforce 6800 GT) I've already cleaned the fans and grills and applied new thermal compound. No real change.

 

[Budman]

Why not post in the CASES & COOLING section.

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: AgentJean

My current rid is real noisy if I turn all the fans to full power. If I leave the fans at the min setting the CPU idles at are 40C(Athlon 64 3500.) My GPU idles even hotter(around 60C it's a Geforce 6800 GT) I've already cleaned the fans and grills and applied new thermal compound. No real change.

I got no ideal for your gpu but did you enable Cool & quiet for you cpu?
I got a X2 3800+ overclocked to 2.4ghz and with cool & quiet it idles around 25c.

 

[beemercer]

I recommend building your own setup, this is what my setup consists of;
-CPU Block: http://www.dangerdenstore.com/product.php?productid=17&cat=21&page=1
-Pump: http://www.dangerdenstore.com/product.php?productid=175&cat=23&page=1
-Radiator: http://www.dangerdenstore.com/product.php?productid=47&cat=14&page=1 with 2 http://www.xoxide.com/120mm-nidec-fan.html attached
-Res: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/2232/...m_Reservoir_-_BLACK.html?tl=g30c97s166

All 1/2" ID tubing and a ton of hose clamps (better safe than sorry)

 

[Jules]

Check out my Thread . im selling a whole kit without the tubbing. Let me Know.

 

[krotchy]

AS far as putting your radiator in a mini fridge, it wont damage your hardware, but it WILL damage the fridges compressor. Mini fridges are not made to cool off a heat source. Think about leaving the door open on a mini-firdge all day. It wont be much more than 1 degree cooler than the outside air and will probably take the compressor down.

Now what do you think is harder to cool, a computer dissipating 100W of heat via a radiator, or 75 degree air from your house... Also if the compressor goes, your left with a radiator in a small space with no air to ventilate the heat away from the radiator.

 

[AgentJean]

Another question.

What happens in the event of a hose or other type of catastrophic failure?
Will the entire rig become a huge paper weight(we are talking about liquid leaking all over the place)?

 

[dguy6789]

May I inquire as to why you are going water cooling? Are you doing it out of the desire to achieve a superior overclock, or do you want to do it because it would be a nice project?

 

[Smartazz]

I was considering it, but it would only make sense if I bought a really high end system.

 

[AgentJean]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
May I inquire as to why you are going water cooling? Are you doing it out of the desire to achieve a superior overclock, or do you want to do it because it would be a nice project?

Sort of a project and to have a quiter computer with overclocking potentional

 

[erikistired]

have you checked into what zalman offers for air cooling? you can get quiet and good heat reduction without going to water.

 

[beemercer]

Originally posted by: fisher
have you checked into what zalman offers for air cooling? you can get quiet and good heat reduction without going to water.

And for much cheaper.

 

[Noubourne]

If your setup leaks, it will brick anything it touches, and maybe more. It depends on how it goes out.

You don't just refrigerate water either. First, if you freeze it somehow, you're toast because the whole thing will stop working. Second, filling tubes (and blocks) with liquid of a temperature below the dew point in your case/house will cause condensation, and so you won't even need a leak to brick your hardware that way.

If you don't plan to overclock like a madman, don't bother. Water doesn't cool everything either. Mobo needs airflow, so do hard drives, and PSU. If you are concerned about noise now, you will be after water too, even if you decide to do CPU Chipset AND GPU. What you should probably be doing is looking for a better case (Antec P180 comes to mind) with superior airflow, and quieter fans (Yate-Loons come to mind) to replace the loud ones you have now, and a top-quality air cooler for your CPU/GPU, like the Scythe Infinity (CPU), and the Zalman ZF-900 Cu (GPU). That stuff will probably put you at $200, and offer just as much performance and sound-reduction as just blindly buying some Water cooling kit.

Petra's Tech Shop has outstanding kits preconfigured. You'll need to drop at least $200 to get a good one. As I said though; you'll STILL have the issue of poor case airflow and noisy crap-fans, so you'll need to spend some cash fixing that problem even if you do decide to do water.

I'd get some quality air cooling installed before I did anything with water. That's what I did. My crap-arse Antec 1060 (they dont' even make them anymore) is quieter than my dualie G4 Mac Tower, thanks to quality air cooling. With a better case I could be even quieter, and I've got my CPU and GPU both overclocked to the gills.

I've been overclocking for 5 years now and I'm STILL not sure it's worth it to drop the extra $300 for a couple hundred mhz. Like I said - do decent air cooling before you turn to water as the answer.