Air flow plans for water cooling
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2003 4:12 pm
It's hard to decide whether this should go in the cooling, general, systems or cases section, but I'm choosing cases because that's where I'm most wanting to ask for suggestions. Comments on the whole idea are welcome though, of course!
At present, my plan is to have a large-area intake filter somewhere on the case, probably a car engine air filter or a car passenger-air filter (cabin air filter).
Air will be drawn through the filter (or filters) by one or more quiet fans.
Air will leave the case through a car radiator or heater matrix (heater core to you folk across the Atlantic). This will probably be something thin and flat with a large area for low air resistance, perhaps mounted on the side of the case.
Air will also leave the case through the PSU. This will be a standard ATX PSU (probably the Nexus NX-3000). Initially I shall run it as supplied, but in the long term I would like to remove its fan. The idea here is that inside the PSU is a noisy place for a fan. Instead the output from the PSU's fan control circuit will feed into one of the inputs for the airflow control system I want to make. This system will assume that the PSU is happy so long as it is not trying to feed more than say 11V to the fan it thinks it has.
From the beginning, the control system should respond to CPU and motherboard temperature measurements (perhaps hard drive too?) and keep the fans running just fast enough that all the measured temperatures stay below preset values. Ideally this would involve some way to vary the proportions of the airflow leaving the case through radiator and PSU.
I plan to watercool CPU, hard drive, perhaps GPU, possibly north bridge, almost certainly not RAM. The point of watercooling the hard drive is to let me encase it in foam then in solid rubber without it overheating.
The pump will probably be an Eheim 1046 or 1048, or perhaps a Maxijet for size reasons. Probably submerged in a well-sealed reservoir hardly bigger than itself, and mounted on sponge foam.
Any recommendations for a case, and how/where to mount the radiator, filter and fans?
Initially it will need to hold two standard size optical drives and one thickly wrapped hard drive as well as all the normal stuff plus the watercooling gear. It would be nice to have space to add more drives later on if needed. It will need to be strong enough to stay sturdy after all the big holes I expect will be needed.
At present, my plan is to have a large-area intake filter somewhere on the case, probably a car engine air filter or a car passenger-air filter (cabin air filter).
Air will be drawn through the filter (or filters) by one or more quiet fans.
Air will leave the case through a car radiator or heater matrix (heater core to you folk across the Atlantic). This will probably be something thin and flat with a large area for low air resistance, perhaps mounted on the side of the case.
Air will also leave the case through the PSU. This will be a standard ATX PSU (probably the Nexus NX-3000). Initially I shall run it as supplied, but in the long term I would like to remove its fan. The idea here is that inside the PSU is a noisy place for a fan. Instead the output from the PSU's fan control circuit will feed into one of the inputs for the airflow control system I want to make. This system will assume that the PSU is happy so long as it is not trying to feed more than say 11V to the fan it thinks it has.
From the beginning, the control system should respond to CPU and motherboard temperature measurements (perhaps hard drive too?) and keep the fans running just fast enough that all the measured temperatures stay below preset values. Ideally this would involve some way to vary the proportions of the airflow leaving the case through radiator and PSU.
I plan to watercool CPU, hard drive, perhaps GPU, possibly north bridge, almost certainly not RAM. The point of watercooling the hard drive is to let me encase it in foam then in solid rubber without it overheating.
The pump will probably be an Eheim 1046 or 1048, or perhaps a Maxijet for size reasons. Probably submerged in a well-sealed reservoir hardly bigger than itself, and mounted on sponge foam.
Any recommendations for a case, and how/where to mount the radiator, filter and fans?
Initially it will need to hold two standard size optical drives and one thickly wrapped hard drive as well as all the normal stuff plus the watercooling gear. It would be nice to have space to add more drives later on if needed. It will need to be strong enough to stay sturdy after all the big holes I expect will be needed.