Hello,

I am thinking about getting a watercooling solution. The goal for me is to have a computer that makes no compromises in speed but which is still extremely silent.

Until recently I was going for the usual array of undervolted fans solution that seems to be the norm. But lately I've been thinking about trying the watercooling route instead.

What I'm thinking about is making a system where the CPU, GPU, HDDs and the PSU are all watercooled. For making the PSU fanless, I thought I would just attach a watercooling block to the main PSU heatsink. For cooling the HDDs I was thinking about making a soundproof metal box, in which I could place my HDDs together with some watercooling solution, perhaps something like this.

My initial design for the HDD box would be a metal box, completely coated with sound dampening lead mats on both sides, inside of which I would suspend the drives in rubber straps. I have access to a decent metal workshop, so making a box of the right size should not be an issue.

Firstly, do you think a watercooling setup could be used to effectively silence and cool a PSU and HDD as well as the GPU and CPU?

Secondly, do you think that a fanless radiator, either a full size automobile radiator used witout a fan, or a Zalman Reserator would be suited for water->air heat exchange? As far as I can tell, the componernts I have planned for the system (Athlon64 3000+, Decent GPU, dual raid 10K RPM HDDS, PSU) should use somewhere in the neighbourhood of 150W, putting it at the limit of what a Reserator can handle.

be careful about modding the psu.. most have two heatsinks and one of them is on the primary side, and probably "live" (not insulated). Touching this can result in death..
I suggest not modifying a PSU unless you know exactly what you are doing and what you are dealing with.

There is a project in the SPCR diy-section which has a dual cpu system cooled with an automobile radiator fanless, and with the radiator set up vertically (not ideal for convection).
An interesting approach..

There are a few water cooled PSUs available from various vendors (at least 2 that I have found). Do some googling and you will find them. These have been asked about on the forum in the past and there does not appear to be anyone here that has used these. So if you get one PLEASE let us know what experience you had with it.

I would be very careful about moding an air cooled PSU to water cooling for a number of reasons. Safety being number one. But also because there are other components in the PSU that require some air flow to keep from over heating that are not cooled by the heat sinks. So even if the heat sinks are kept cool some components in the PSU may still overheat.

The other option is a no fan PSU and to date only one of these has proven to be any good. Please see the review on this site of the Silerstone ST30NF. The system you have in mind may be close to the limits for this PSU however.

There are other vendors that sell HD water cooling "blocks". Koollance and Innovatek are two that come to mind and there are likely others. Hardrives are not hard to cool since they have large surface areas and are using less than 10 watts. But if you want to seal the drives in a sound proof box then you will need some way to stop the build up of heat and water cooling should do a very good job. There is a thread on this site about a home made WC setup for two hard drives and is much like the one you referenced and the Innovatek units (cooled the sides of the drive(s)). The cooling results were reported to be very good.

There are other vendors that sell passive water to air heat exchangers besides Zalman. Innovatek has three models that I know of (different sizes and configurations) and there was a post on this forum in the last few weeks that had a link to a vendor in the UK that offered units somewhat like the Zalman unit in different sizes. Since there are folks on this forum that are using a single Zalman unit to cool more than one PC I think this will handle the system you are thinking about.

I personly think that if you want a very high power PC and silence that water cooling with a well designed box and passive heat exchangers is the way to go. There was a thread about two weeks ago where this was talked about at some length. You might want to search for it (it was in the water cooling section).

I've decided to go with aircooling for reasons of cost, simplicity and low maintenance, but I was tempted enough by watercooling to give it some serious research. Here are a few keywords that may help you:

Silentstor (or was it Silentstar) do water cooled, noise damoening boxes for one or two HDDs that mounts in one or two 5¼" bays. Not horribly expensive (HD-Dual is around £60-70) compared with the effort of building your own solution.

Innovatek HTCS - a passive cooling tower like the Reserator, but much more effective - allegedly comparable to a dual 120mm fan radiator. Quite expensive (£150-200?), and it's just a radiator (no pump, pipe, blocks etc. included). Fantastic if cost is not an issue.

CSP750 pumps - new, but promising. Can be run in pairs - you'll want yours in series to produce plenty of head, to overcome the flow resistance of all those extra blocks you'll be using. Swiftech MCP-650 is a good, high head alternative.

Don't forget that if you're running fanless, you may need extra waterblocks or meaty heatsinks on your northbridge, southbridge motherboard MOSFETs & capacitors and video card RAM. Check what gets hot after a few hours of stress testing with the case closed.

www.Asetek.com They have both 3.5" & 5.25" hard drive coolers. And they are copper, not aluminum for the metal parts, so no corrosion risks & better cooling. A large protion of the drive blocks are plexi to save weight.

www.snt-systems.com

Also has copper/plexi drive coolers. The 5.25" cooler looks to be a higher head loss design without any advantage in cooling. But this is just my opinion of the design, and would for sure be better than mixing of metals.
SNT also carrys both 350 & 450 watt PSU that are water cooled.

Hey, thanks you for all the great replys! I've looked in to Innovatek myself, but the only comparative review between the reserator and the Innovatek HTCS implied that the Reserator is actually slightly better than the HTCS and it is (much) cheaper. There are, as others here said, a whole range of passive radiators on Innovateks site. The Konvekt-O-Matic ULTRA seems to be slightly cheaper and noticably better than the HTCS, so it's a serious contender. If you look closely at all the Innovateks, they are actually made of the same 5x5 cm aluminum "pillars" in different configurations, the only difference is how many meters of these pillars are used in the different radiators. The ULTRA seems to have 2-3 times more cooling surface than the HTCS. But I could almost affors two Reserators for the price of an ULTRA.

I guess I'll have to be very, very carful if I go about watercooling a standard PSU. Since I already have one, I guess all I have to loose by trying is my computer and my life, but i shouldn't come to that. If i fail miserably but survive, I guess I'll look in to the Innovatek PSUs...

Those HDD boxes look very promising, though. Good to know it can be done. And I'll be sure to read the passive car radiator thread. I would love to pay $30 for a used car radiator instead of $200 for a Reserator.

Also the http://snt-systems.com/ site has 350 and 450 watt water cooled PSUs. This site had WC stuff that I had not seen before. Great selection of hard drive cooling solutions even though these are a little pricey.