hey
the main reason i want to water cool is for silence, so looking at putting the pump etc above me in the loft.

hoping to go totally fanless, do you think its possible?

ive got an old 3x2x1ft fish tank in the garage, complete with pump.
do you think this much water volume would be great enought that it would cool naturally + will a fish tank pump shift enough volume?

thanks
dan

I'm going to translate this from slight gibberish to make it more understandable, and also bump it above my post

The plan is to use an aquarium tank, that's 3x2x1ft, as a passive rad. Does this have a hope in hell of working, given that it'll be in a cold loft, and hold a lot of water?

All we know about the pump is it's "not micky mouse"; ie a quality aquarium pump - What flowrate would be required to pump water down 10ft to the pc, through three blocks, then back up 10ft to the res? Is this even possible?

*grin*

Dave

(gj on the spell check sloesoft, "enought" )

you have wonderful friends, dan

depends on the rating of the fish tank pump, but i would recommend getting a good, new pump for peace of mind.

such a large volume of water may indeed let you run without a radiator, i'd say give it a try and if it gets too hot, just plug a big radiator in and run that passively. one thing to note about using a fishtank is that you'll have to make sure it stays clean - algae and other gunk that builds up there will find its way into your loop and that causes all sorts of problems. hence you'll need to keep the lid on it all the time, and you'll also have to run a large amount of radiator coolant / corrosion inhibitant to keep things in check.

lastly, if possible i'd recommend putting the tank at a lower altitude than the system, as pumps are generally designed to work better pumping water up than down. it still might work though, sounds like a case of trial and error to me.

thanks
guess im going to have to buy some waterblocks and have ago

dan

Here is a retarded idea: what if you bought a bunch of 1/2" copper pipe, cut it so that each pipe stuck out of the aquarium a foot, and put it in the aquarium in a big bundle........that way it would act like a radiator but the water wouldn't be restricted by having to flow through the pipe at all.

the cost of it would probably be stupid for how much it would actually help.

you could make a cover for the aquarium with evenly spaced holes so that each tube has as much air convection around it as possible.....

it would be like a super huge non restrictive radiator

screw the reserator.....diy bitches!

one more thought.....if you drilled some holes in the copper pipe slightly above the water you would get more convection up the pipes.

I don't think you'd get enough convection off the pipes to make a big difference, so I don't think it would be very cost effective. OTOH, having the water flow through the pipes would probably be quite effective, especially if you can get pipe with fins of some sort on it (perhaps take apart an old copper baseboard???)

Gooserider