Who has a fanless watercooled computer ?

The alternative to direct air cooling

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Gerco
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Who has a fanless watercooled computer ?

Post by Gerco » Fri May 21, 2004 6:29 pm

I was curious to know who else has a fanless watercooled computer here. I do, and I am very happy with the dead silence !
Altho honestly for now my PSU still has two temperature controlled papst fans, but in my encased case I have a hard time hearing them. And I have 4 regular fans in my case, but by default I have those of. Just when my system is working hard or doing work overnight do I turn them on.
Soon I will add another passive radiator (Innovatek Konvekt o matic ULTRA) to my watersetup which should lower the temperatures far enough never to need fans anymore. And I will be getting a watercooled PSU very soon as well. That will add heat to my system so the extra radiator is somewhat needed then as well.
Here is some more information about my case:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=8680

But who else has a passive watercooled system running smooth enough not to need any fans anymore ?

ao
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Post by ao » Sat May 22, 2004 12:51 pm

I ran for quite a while with a fanless watercooling setup in one of my work machines. It was stunningly quiet, and still kept my 1.4 ghz athlon cool enough to do hardcore numeric simulations on stably. I just kept the radiator outside of the case, and enough air convected through it that temps stayed reasonable. I've been selling off all of my old machines like mad, of late, though, so I put the whole WC setup up for sale in the classified forum.

(caveat, it wasn't completely fanless, I did have a 120 mm quiet fan in the PS. The only noise I could hear was the hard drive. )

Making a machine that's really quiet is getting easier and easier with sites like this one, but getting to within that last 5% of silence still seems to require doing things like fanless WC if you want to have a fairly high speed chip.

maxw
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Post by maxw » Sun May 23, 2004 2:08 am

yeah, I think its pretty acheivable with a reasonable sized radiator that sits out side the case but trying to make it all fit in the case and still work is tricky :roll:

I figured using 2x radiators like mine:

Image

and having them in a series in the right places in a case might create good passive airflow.

Or..

One big-ass radiator on the side of the case but external
EDIT: I found the link but the pics have gone:
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showt ... genumber=1

Gerco
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Post by Gerco » Sun May 23, 2004 7:08 am

That last link I cant access unfortunately, needs password or so ?
But indeed a big-ass radiator on the side of the case is also what I have currently, that does the job well.

Going fanless AND having all inside the case I dont think is very possible since you still need to dissipate the heat somehow. Altho I dont think there is anything wrong with a pretty radiator on the side of the case. I even added extra "side plates" so technically the ratiator falls within the boundaries of the case.

Creating passive airflow with normal "meant for fans" radiators I think is very hard. It might be possible but since the air channels are so thin air will hardly flow naturally there. But if you have a few of those way outside the case with free air on both sides and dont push your watercooling too hard it should be possible. But dont expect great temperatures.

Maxamus, I am using the HD O Matic from www.innovatek.de to watercool my hard drives. They work great, and are suspended in some rubber already to help fight vibrations.

herosformula
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Post by herosformula » Thu May 27, 2004 9:39 pm

My external radiator watercooling setup has been running for about half a year now. The only fan in the case is slow 80mm fan in the PSU. Constantly runs either games or folding@home for 100% CPU usage.

Copper
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Post by Copper » Fri May 28, 2004 4:10 am

I just started running a pair of computers off a Reserator and it works great. Both computers have external fanless PSU's and highly modded cases to allow passive ventilation. One already has a notebook hard drive wrapped in foam and enclosed in a Smart Drive. The other soon will. Exceptionally quiet!

hwsboss
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Post by hwsboss » Mon May 31, 2004 10:01 am

my pc has only one fan, (the one for the PSU)
my cpu is cooled with a reserator, the northbridge has a zalman flower heatsink (yes, I know it is supposed to be used on a cpu, but the holding things on my northbridge heatsinkbroke, so I had to use whatever was handy) my graphics card has a zalman passive heatsink with heat pipes.

cpu = amd athlon xp 1900+
graphics card = gforce4mx
mobo = nforce2

maxw
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Post by maxw » Wed Jun 02, 2004 12:43 pm


moparchris
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Post by moparchris » Sat Jun 05, 2004 2:05 am

im getting there.. i still have the PSU fan and 2 small 40mm fans on the NB and GPU, ill sort them out soon enough though :lol:

gonna sort out my hdd's first, im making a 'U' thing that prettymuch goes aroun the edges of the hard drive like.. http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showth ... hlight=hdd ..that but ill have 2 running in parallel, for one drive each and itll go inside a box the same size as a CD drive with some sound proofing foam stuff in there.

the PSU, i think ill just have the fan on 5v and put some massive heatsinks on the mosfets.

i gotta make a block (yes i make all my blocks) for my GPU yet and ill just slap a big heatsink on the NB and have it passively cooled :D

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