Watercooling: aluminium case as heatsink works
Posted: Fri May 16, 2003 12:59 pm
People with poor leisure time quality sometimes spend too much time pondering problems normal people never even are aware of. Alas, I was inspired by an odd CPU cooling solution and came up with this.
I modded five aluminum profiles to fit my watercooling tubes. The water is routed along the bottom, back and top of my g-Tower alu case. Flow goes through the alu profiles which are glued (with thermal adhesive stuff) on copper plates. The plates are glued on to the inside of outer walls to make the entire case act as a heatsink. Thermally isolated from interior by sound dampening panels. It actually works!
Probably not worth the the effort if you don´t enjoy the work. Personally I got a kick out of finally getting some moneys worth out of the aluminium case even from a practical point of view. Also, water temperatures are now lower with radiator fans working at minimal speed.
The HD is the weak point since it can´t handle temperatures as high as the CPU and GPU. I have a Raptor in a home-made water-cooler wrapped in loads of industrial sound dampening stuff.
If I really stress the HD I can push it to about 44C (Dtemp) with radiator fans (2xPapst 4412) at 5V. Normally around 36. Room about 22 I guess. (AMD 2600+, Radeon 9700)
I´m so proud of myself, I just don´t get it why my friends has started to give me that concerned look lately.
Edit: Total cost $13 +two tubes of thermal paste
I modded five aluminum profiles to fit my watercooling tubes. The water is routed along the bottom, back and top of my g-Tower alu case. Flow goes through the alu profiles which are glued (with thermal adhesive stuff) on copper plates. The plates are glued on to the inside of outer walls to make the entire case act as a heatsink. Thermally isolated from interior by sound dampening panels. It actually works!
Probably not worth the the effort if you don´t enjoy the work. Personally I got a kick out of finally getting some moneys worth out of the aluminium case even from a practical point of view. Also, water temperatures are now lower with radiator fans working at minimal speed.
The HD is the weak point since it can´t handle temperatures as high as the CPU and GPU. I have a Raptor in a home-made water-cooler wrapped in loads of industrial sound dampening stuff.
If I really stress the HD I can push it to about 44C (Dtemp) with radiator fans (2xPapst 4412) at 5V. Normally around 36. Room about 22 I guess. (AMD 2600+, Radeon 9700)
I´m so proud of myself, I just don´t get it why my friends has started to give me that concerned look lately.
Edit: Total cost $13 +two tubes of thermal paste