Watercooling

[Krazeh]

I'm looking for a much quieter method to cool my pc and from what i've read watercooling could do the job. Unfortunately I don't have any experience of watercooling so I'm after some pointers of how to go about setting up a good watercooling setup.

Thanks

 

[old.RedVenom]

Comedy "Pour jug of water in whilst stirring" option.

 

[Jonty]

Hi Krazeh

Before you try anything, you should be aware that watercooling isn't for the faint-hearted, and that by utilising such equipment you will, more likely than not, void all warranties associated with your PC's hardware.

Nevertheless, more and more people are choosing watercooling solutions, so much so that online stores such as OverclockersUK now sell complete kits with everything you need to watercool your system. They're not cheap, but this is about the simplest way of watercooling your PC.

Sadly I've never tried it myself, but I know of quite a few people on these forums who have, so no doubt they'll be able to advise you better than I can.

Kind Regards

 

[Testin da Cable]

there are massive threads on WC in the tweakers.net forums but they're all in dutch heh. I'm quite tempted to rig a setup as a little side project. let's make this a h00ge watterkoolink fred!11

 

[Embattle]

I've had a water cooled system before and it is fun to try and get it all installed, but it takes time.

You really need to do a little planning before actually even buying it, the primary problem is case space. I personally had a full tower so was able to locate most of the parts inside; all expect the Radiator which is better to locate just outside.

The 120mm radiator fan was located just inside my case, this meant I had to cut a rather large hole in the rear top of the case which is another problem that was made harder by not having a tool like the Dremel. As you can tell installing a water kit does require some modifying of the case to get various parts to fit and get certain things like power cables out.

Once you have it all together you actually have to leave just the pump on for at least 4 hours and ideally for 24 hours to look for any leaks around the joints.

 

[Testin da Cable]

aye, I'm fully aware imo. I don't think my case and/or having to mod it slightly will be too much of a problem. it's one of those borg-cube things, with a huge amount of space inside.

it seems a fun enough project to do, and the costs aren't too insane. the peeps in the dutch tweaker forums talk about flow rate and stuff like that a lot, and bitch about what radiator has an optimal design and stuff. when I have more time I'll sift through them and see if I can scrounge some cool info.

I've been reading up and tbh I'm not too chuffed with the info on wetting agents, adding anti-bacterial/algae stuff, using distilled water et al. I did already know about that (what was it again?) electrolyse thing with the different metals (copper, aluminium etc) degrading over time and stuff, so that's cool I guess. Purchase carefully and it's fine. There was another thing about electrically shielded pumps, but I imagine that most of the pumps offered for WC usage are shielded, or you can ask about it. I have a month off in three weeks, I think I'll go for it then

 

[Embattle]

TBH they don't degrade fast enough to cause any real problems

I've actually looked at watercooling my shuttle but tbh I think it is just too small and would require me locating a number of items outside, I did consider that Corsair HydroCool but it is a little bit too noisy at the moment.

One more point you should realise, it will help decrease system noise but not quite by as much as most people tend to think since they tend to forget that one of the nosiest items are Hard Drives which soon become the loudest item once you add watercooling.

 

[Testin da Cable]

really? oh, that's fine then. I seem to remember that some bloke did an article on his CPU block degrading so badly that it blocked the waterflow (hmm ?) or something and it trashed his rig. not to worry too much then. no fancy lights and fluorescent water additives either hehe. ah well

I'm just wondering if I should go the whole hog and go for bridge and gpu cooling in one fell swoop? I may as well imo, seems a nice project. After some more research I'll post a list of the components I think I'll be getting and let you poke holes in it. May even scrounge a digicam and make a page about it (ooh only 28 zillion others to contend with )

 

[Sibanac]

I've been looking into the refriguration coolling kits like Prometeia but they are still way to expensive (basic kit at £ 425)

But the koolance external kits look nice if you want a clean system, and samewhat less pricy £190 for the external kit , and thats a full kit (tubes, cooling liquid, cpu block ect..)

 

[Embattle]

I did my graphics card too but didn't both with the Northbridge and just stuck a larger passive heatsink on it.

Tbh it is wise to use little bit additive but i often found that I would change the blocks etc before it actually degraded at all, guess it depends how long you intend to keep items for....me I tend to change stuff so much it wasn't worth it

BTW if you can go for a bigger pump.

 

[Krazeh]

While i've been building pc's and overclocking for a good few years now this is my first foray into watercooling so I have been looking at a complete kit. The new Asetek Waterchill kit seems to be fairly highly rated by review sites across the net and is available with blocks for cpu, gpu and northbridge.

My only concern is how reliable it is for long term cooling, my computer is pretty much on constantly and i don't wanna get home to find my new barton cpu and gf fx have melted cos the watercooling failed. I spose it's no less likely than a fan failing but in that case it'd still have a heatsink which is better than nothing.

 

[Jonty]

To be honest, leaks may be more of a concern than overheating, as may motherboards now have an auto-shutdown feature which cuts the power if the system reaches a certain temperature, thus protecting your hardware from any long-term damage. That said, if you run the cooling setup as Embattle highlights, then leakage ought not to represent to much of a worry either.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. Obviously check your motherboard first for whether it supports the temperature monitoring fail safe, sometimes refered to as a 'temperatue auto-guardian' or 'BurnProof' feature.

 

[Testin da Cable]

aye, and as said earlier, turn that WC system on and let it run for a period of time to check it for leaks and other problems. that way you can also tweak any bubbles and stuff out of the pipes.

 

[Krazeh]

Well i'm looking at the asus a7n8x deluxe motherboard which has a burnproof feature afaik, but on the other hand amd's can reach kill temperatures very quickly when you lose cooling

 

[Jonty]

Originally posted by Krazeh
amd's can reach kill temperatures very quickly when you lose cooling

True enough, Krazeh. That said, sometime ago I made a mistake when building my AMD-powered Shuttle PC which caused the temperature failsafe to be activated many times in the course of fixing the problem. Thankfully, although rather alarming at the time, once the problem was fixed everything still worked as if nothing had happened. Admittedly the CPU wasn't operating long enough for it to reach a sustained high temperature, but nevertheless, the BurnProof technology is rather good

Kind Regards

Edit ~ As you rightly say, the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe board does feature CPU Overheating Protection (COP)