Watercooling

The alternative to direct air cooling

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r3v
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Watercooling

Post by r3v » Thu May 08, 2003 9:22 am

I am thinking seriously about the various methods for cooling my PC, wich is VERY loud (I'ts a 2.4GHz Intel) and the first step I've decided to take is reducing the CPU-fan noise, wich i think is one of the major contributors for the unbearable loud noise.


My Question is: do watercoolers help effectively in reducing the CPUcooling noise ALOT? Do watercoolers make noise whatsoever?

Please give me some sugestions on how to cool my PC at low-medium costs! Without loosing alot of performance...

Mr_Smartepants
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Post by Mr_Smartepants » Thu May 08, 2003 9:28 am

Water cooling is one of those things that I've considered but never tried (like drugs!) :P
The simplest approach is just regular air-cooling. Get a really efficient heatsink (SLK-900, Alpha PAL8942, Zalman 7000) and a quiet fan (L1A) and you should be fine. Check my sig. I have a similar setup and you can see pics here.

Water cooling has it's own disadvantages (spring a leak and you're hosed! pun intended)

r3v
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Post by r3v » Thu May 08, 2003 9:47 am

hmmm you guys all seem to not like watercoolers..
why is that?

Mr_Smartepants
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Post by Mr_Smartepants » Thu May 08, 2003 9:52 am

I'd say we are about split 50/50 on the watercooling thing. There are a few in here that are hard-core watercoolers but I'm not. Don't make any decisions until you hear both sides of the debate from many people. Don't base your choices on just one point of view.

rpc180
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Post by rpc180 » Thu May 08, 2003 10:46 am

Got a similar setup, P4 2.2. Get a good heatsink and 1 quiet fan and eventually you're left with noise from the PSU and the hard drives.

As far as I know from water cooling, you're left with the same (if not more) noise from the PSU*, noise from the hard drive, and noise from the pump**.


*due to lower overall airflow, higher internal ambient air temps for the thermally controlled PSU to deal with

**granted, the last source is considered quiet/silent by many

PaqMaster
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Post by PaqMaster » Thu May 08, 2003 11:01 am

If you're not planning on OC'ing your P4 that much then you won't need water cooling to get quiet cooling.

I have a small water cooling setup since I OC'd my XP1700+ to 2.1GHz (~XP2700+) but if you don't plan on pushing your CPU that hard then go with a good heatsink and fan.

Like rpc180 said, once you get things quiet your PSU might drive you crazy like it did with me. I replaced it with the Forton 120mm model. :D

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Post by pingu666 » Thu May 08, 2003 1:17 pm

im thinking of having a hole in top of case for hot air, and a duct for the psu to draw cold air. if i dont watercool the psu aswell :)

Zhentar
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Post by Zhentar » Thu May 08, 2003 1:30 pm

I'm planning on doing water cooling myself. It has a lot of potential to be much quieter than standard air cooling if done right, pulling all the heat from your CPU, Northbridge, GPU, Hard drives out of the case through a very large surface area with slow fans or even passive cooling. I'll leave just my temp controlled fortron PSU pulling a bit of cool air through for those few remaining hot components, and while doing this, I will probably over clock as well....

The downside? breaking US$300 while doing that stuff will be trivial.

r3v
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Post by r3v » Thu May 08, 2003 7:57 pm

Can you guys recomend me some models of fans, power sources, coolers, that are very quiet and work with a hard-core 2.4GHz+ system wich are not too expensive?

Thanks a lot for your help

JSealy00
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Post by JSealy00 » Fri May 09, 2003 10:06 pm

My experience with water cooling is that it DOES help reduce noise a lot, but this comes at a price....of money, safety, and its a bit more complicated...

Looking back, it would have been cheaper (and probably just as efficient for not overclocking...) to have just gone with a high quality heatsink and fan...

Don't get me wrong though...I love the fact that I can say my computer is water-cooled:)...people always give me the funniest look when I say that....

Bottom line: Water works great, but if you aren't planning on seriously overclocking....air can work just as great and be (almost) as quiet.

jinu117
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Post by jinu117 » Sat May 10, 2003 9:57 pm

JSealy00 wrote:My experience with water cooling is that it DOES help reduce noise a lot, but this comes at a price....of money, safety, and its a bit more complicated...

Looking back, it would have been cheaper (and probably just as efficient for not overclocking...) to have just gone with a high quality heatsink and fan...

Don't get me wrong though...I love the fact that I can say my computer is water-cooled:)...people always give me the funniest look when I say that....

Bottom line: Water works great, but if you aren't planning on seriously overclocking....air can work just as great and be (almost) as quiet.
Imagine what kind of looks I get when I mention petlier water cooled machine... :shock:
Unless you plan to do moderate OC'ing with quietness in mind, air cooling is cheaper and easier. (Granted you don't really go extreme on air cooling...) Now, anyone who plan to go extreme on air cooling... might as well get low end water cooling as it will cost about same while getting simlar (if better) results.
I veered away from extreme silenece (I can't imagine anyone being able to be absolutely silent with peltier cooling...), but my fans still are running @ 8-10v max while maintaining temps way below ambient under load. (I would say mysystem right now is as quiet as $100 spent on air cooling). I am quite happy with that noise level for 2.4 running @ 3.6 and video oc'd to extremity... and running 24x7 stable... :) Planning to add another heatercore over next couple of weeks and it should be quieter and cooler).

jackal2513
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Post by jackal2513 » Sun May 11, 2003 10:16 am

Okay heres my views:

you only really need to consider WC if:

1) you want to overclock CPU and indeed the GPU
2) you want a full-on proper silent system as oppsoed to just a "quiet" system






lest look at that closer:



1) if you want a basic quiet PC with no overclocking then IMO you can get some good passive cooling for cpu and NB and gpu far cheaper and simpler as other people have said. Job done .... youre left with the psu and HD noises and you will still need a fair amount of airflow inside the case to cool the HD's, and heatsinks on the NB, GPU CPU. If you want a simple life then thats fine but you wont have cutting edge performance, you wont have proper silence and you will not get much fun out of learning about it and installing it etc.. Depends if you are the tweaking DIY type or not.

But if you want to overclock then short of having loads of high performance fans then to get a decent sound level you'll need to watercool. A simple inexpensive WC setup to cool GPU & CPU will be totally silent in itself (once you submerge or decouple the pump) and with overclocking temperatures will still be better/safer than highend aircooling solutions. The only noises you are left with are case exhaust and intake of which you probably only need x4 moderate sound level 80mm fans in a well vented case to deal with the NB and HD's. The psu is then the final thing to solve.



2) WC is all well and good but unless you go completely passive with your WC radiator (which is very tricky) then you still have to have fans on the rad. You can run slow and quiet 5v or 7v fans on the rad but then you seriously limit the airflow. This is waht happened to me and i found that 'cos of the single slow fan on the rad teh WC setup was performing way below par and was simply not good enough to cool both my GPU and CPU (games kept crashing). Yest at teh same time i DID NOT want to increase the rad fan speed or indeed, add any more fans to teh rad.

So whats the answer. Well my answer is:

- to run more than 1 rad in the WC system with very slow fans on both rads as opposed to roaring fans on 1 rad.

-to add a completely independent second WC system inside the case to also take care of the northbridge and the harddrives. By water cooling the HD's you can basically put wrap them and encase them in 100% soundproofing enclosures (theres no other way to silence them otherwsie if you have very limited case air flow). This means that you rely much less on internal airflow and you can seriously reduce all those fans and their speeds. You can also have no worries about adding in sound absorption material.



so to address someone comment:

"As far as I know from water cooling, you're left with the same (if not more) noise from the PSU*, noise from the hard drive, and noise from the pump"

yes, you are correct partially, but the difference is that your system is overcloked and a better performer and also you can then go on to silence the psu and HD's with more watercooling. The pump is also completely silent if you get the right one.


also watercooling is a hell of a lot of fun and great to tweak and mess about with. When you start logging your water temps and working out your flowrates with a garden hose then you know that you're hooked. I've got an immense amount fo pleasure putting mine together and im not exactly mr. DIY, never have been.

When im finally done my PC will not only be extremely quick but it will be almost silent. To be fair though, its another inconsequential and pointless way to spend ones time. If i wasn't into the idea and teh creation of it, the hobby and challenge aspect of it and just wanted a silent overcloked PC that i didnt have to think or worry about, then i'd put x20 100cfm fans in a case and keep it in the garage in a wooden box and then buy some long VGA and PS2 cables.

Bat
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Post by Bat » Mon May 12, 2003 12:53 pm

Jinu? Jackal? What pumps are you using, and how audible are they when you run them on their own (no fans or HD) at night?

jackal2513
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Post by jackal2513 » Mon May 12, 2003 2:11 pm

Bat - eheim 1048

providing you decouple it properly its inaudible (that includes teh power cable not touching any part of the case). You can also submerge it which will make it totally silent.

the way i did mine (after trying oy other methods which failed) was to mount teh thing on a huge sponge then secure it with two rubber bands that go through the sides then through teh case floor and ae fastened with other bits of soft rubber:



Image

Image

Image

rpc180
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Post by rpc180 » Mon May 12, 2003 8:06 pm

Ya definately get props for the ingenuity of that pump mounting! My watercooling theory is actually visited more in depth in other forums :) I would love to try watercooling if a PSU company ever built a PSU to be installed into a water cycle out of the box (probably should patent that idea...) I've played inside of them just to replace fans, but I'm definately not confident enough to actually go and mod a PSU for watercooling (HDs may be a little easier, just gotta figure out the design). The other part of watercooling, if you want total silence by some standards it means 0 fans ... but there are other parts of the motherboard/PSU, etc ... that get hot and depend on airflow (mofsets, monitoring chips, even the southbridge), and all get hotter still with overclocked performance... right now I still can't stand the sound of just airflow :roll:

Bat
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Post by Bat » Tue May 13, 2003 2:07 pm

Eheim 1048? In that picture, the label says "[Something]-Nr. 1046 21 993" and "Typ 1046A". Are you sure it's not a 1046? Oh, and it says 5W, and a maximum head of 1.2m. That's a 1046 for certain then. Thankyou! Oh, but watch out for the rubber bands perishing. They never last very long if they're stretched.

jackal2513
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Post by jackal2513 » Tue May 13, 2003 2:28 pm

the pump is a 1046 but ive since changed it for a 1048

as for the rubber bands they are hardly stretched, nice and loose. thats the whole idea


RPC,

your right about the other components, thats why my post states my theiry about watercooling everything with 2 systems and with all rads runinng 5 or 7v fans. A papst 120mm at 5v is VERY hard to hear unless you put your ear to it.

You can always run an external copper coil completely noisless in a bucket of water ... works very well im told.

Zhentar
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Post by Zhentar » Tue May 13, 2003 3:24 pm

an evaporative cooler like some simple ones I've seen can be simple, quiet, and cheap. But the downside is you have to refill it.

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