In a closed loop cooling system with no resevoir except the volume of water in the system, does the pump suffer the same reduction of flow caused by the effect of head?
My instinct says it does not reduce the flow. I'm thinking the force of gravity on the water in the system on the way up cancels the force of gravity on the water on the way down. Also, the force of the pump drawing water in should equal the force of pushing water out. Since a closed system wouldn't be affected by air pressure, that should not be a factor. It seems that the only way to check this would be to check the flow
with some kind of flow gauge while varying the head height. Any thoughts?
The reason for this speculation is that I would like to run a linear radiator vertically to take advantage of the chimney effect. It fits better into the room that way, too. See below for radiator details.
My first water cooled computer gave good, but not great results with a homemade copper waterblock, Danner magdrive pump, and a 120mm fan mounted to a Toyota Supra heater core. I pulled it after running for about a year and went back to air cooling. The noise is getting to me, so this time around I'm going for quiet. I realized that the heater core was restricting the airflow too much for the fan to push much air through it. For better efficiency, it needs a less restrictive radiator.
The plan:
- Home built copper/acrylic waterblock on 1.4 Ghz Athlon
- Home built copper/acrylic waterblock on Geforce 2 GTS/Pro video card
- Home built copper shroud on 80Gb Barracuda IV hd
- Home built radial fin radiator
- Water/air cooled power supply
- Danner magdrive pump driving it all
- 120mm fan blowing on the radiator
Here's a look at one of the designs for part of the radiator. It's made with a 28" length of 3/4" copper tube with eight 24" long copper fins 1-3/16" wide. Next to it is a detail of the fins on the first prototype. The fins are held on with zip ties. The finished radiator will probably have four of these units in a box.
That's all for now. More posts will come as the project proceeds. All comments are welcomed.