I'm wondering if anyone has come across (or modded) a split system for cooling PCs please?

It's all very fine going water cooled but if the fan and pump are still in earshot, what's the point?

I'm envisaging a system with attachments, preferably modular, for CPU, GPU, north and south bridge, RAM modules, possibly hard disks. The coolant liquid will then be pumped from somewhere remote and cooled (like the outside of the house, similar to air conditioning units - but with a quieter fan! )

Hell, why stop there?! We could move the last fan (PSU) outside too and just run the 12V, 5V lines in.

Oh oh! I can see where this is going.... forget all that, why don't we just move the whole PC with its 'noisy' components outside (under shelter of course) and just run the on/off button wiring to the inside, together with the other necessary cables. Will be a bit of a pain having to walk out to change DVD's but that's a noisy bit too isn't it?

I wonder why nobody's made a self-contained water-cooled PSU that simply has 3/8" quick connect fittings for inlet and outlet and no moving parts. Such a thing would certainly sell like hotcakes to the "enthusiast" crowd.

I think we'll eventually get to a point where networking and remoting technology will allow using one main, powerful server-like machine stashed wherever out of the way and silent, unobtrusive thin terminals to connect to it scattered throughout the house as convenient, either in laptop/netbook or desktop forms. But we're not quite there yet, not with mainstream solutions anyway.

Lower voltage cables have higher current for the same power delivery, and thus higher power loss (current*resistance). Power loss in the cable means voltage loss also, so if you would try to run your 12V, 5V and so on lines from far away, you would experience a lot of power loss in those cables and would also see the voltages drop below allowed values, unless you made the cables ridiculously thick.

Moving the PC itself is a much better idea. Mine is in a walk-in closet next to my study.

The max length of usb 2.0 cabling is 5m. Longer than that and you need a powered usb hub in between (for every 5m). Do note that the mouse and keyboard already have maybe 2m of cable on them, so the extension cord can be only 3m or so. There are also solutions which use a different type of cable and have an adapter on both ends to extend the distance, but they are expensive.

For display, the maximum length of DVI cables is not really defined, but by my personal experience a 5m long dual link cable works ok on my 2560x1600@60Hz display.

For audio, you might want to use optical connections. However I just have a 5m long 3.5mm <-> 2xRCA to my amp.

You could also have an external optical drive on usb, but a better idea is to ditch optical disks altogether. Buy your games from steam so you don't have to switch disks at all. Rip your movie collection to hard drive.

One of my friends has his watercooling reserator+fan hanging outside from his window. I guess this is exactly what you were after? It seems to work fine, even though I would never use water cooling, too much effort.

Not quite what your after OP, but an intersting read none the less.

http://www.procooling.com/index.php?fun ... s&disp=143

You can run tubes from your PC, into another room/outside/to the shed and have the rads/fans/pumps in the "noisy" location. Several people have done various different implementations of this. The most ambitious I saw included valves to allow a ground loop, bong, outside rads/fans and inside rads/fans to be selectively enabled/disabled -- which meant he could get the best cooling depending on the weather (or heat his study in winter).

This would give you silent cooling, and these days, the other components can be made pretty quiet.

Alternatively, you can semi-sound proof a closet and stick your PC in there... hopefully not too far from your desk -- might need some airflow in there, but it would mean the runs of power/audio/monitor cables are not too long.

Hey thanks for the interesting and informative replies and link people!

My further contribution :
Keyboard and mouse - Logitech (and others I'm sure) has a great range on their newer wireless ones (handy if using as a remote control for your media centre pc)

Display cabling - I think HDMI, etc lengths are doable.

Printer can share the same soundproofed space.

Memory stick, iPod and other mobile plug ins may be a bit more inconvenient.

Optical media - you're right, I hardly use it these days and mainly to download to the HDD.

Still glad for any further contributions to the main question re: split system cooling.
[Thread a bit OT now but interesting. Could link to the approp section.]

Both of these you can connect via usb so you just need a simple usb hub. No problem there.

if they made 1 i would def buy it, but i would want 1/2" barbs

You could replace the PSU heatsinks with waterblocks, but you still have a lot of little things left to cool. My guess is that airflow makes for a much more reliable system overall.

I just saw this recently:

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/9638/psu-422/Koolance_1000_Liquid-Cooled_Power_Supply_PSU-1000ATX-12N_Available_NOW.html?tl=g11c26s87

So something like that?