Watercooling: aluminium case as heatsink works

The alternative to direct air cooling

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snutten
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Location: Sweden

Watercooling: aluminium case as heatsink works

Post by snutten » Fri May 16, 2003 12:59 pm

People with poor leisure time quality sometimes spend too much time pondering problems normal people never even are aware of. Alas, I was inspired by an odd CPU cooling solution and came up with this.

I modded five aluminum profiles to fit my watercooling tubes. The water is routed along the bottom, back and top of my g-Tower alu case. Flow goes through the alu profiles which are glued (with thermal adhesive stuff) on copper plates. The plates are glued on to the inside of outer walls to make the entire case act as a heatsink. Thermally isolated from interior by sound dampening panels. It actually works!

Probably not worth the the effort if you don´t enjoy the work. Personally I got a kick out of finally getting some moneys worth out of the aluminium case even from a practical point of view. Also, water temperatures are now lower with radiator fans working at minimal speed.
The HD is the weak point since it can´t handle temperatures as high as the CPU and GPU. I have a Raptor in a home-made water-cooler wrapped in loads of industrial sound dampening stuff.
If I really stress the HD I can push it to about 44C (Dtemp) with radiator fans (2xPapst 4412) at 5V. Normally around 36. Room about 22 I guess. (AMD 2600+, Radeon 9700)

I´m so proud of myself, I just don´t get it why my friends has started to give me that concerned look lately.


Edit: Total cost $13 +two tubes of thermal paste

Mezi
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Post by Mezi » Fri May 16, 2003 1:42 pm

Would love to see some pics ;)

pingu666
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Post by pingu666 » Sat May 17, 2003 7:38 am

yeah piccies plz :D

Liquidated
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Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 12:53 am

yes!

Post by Liquidated » Sat May 17, 2003 8:43 pm

The pics would be posted on the spr padded wall that we all droll over since there's not much else to do....
er

hehe if people at home giving you concerned looks, this is a good place to get support or co dependance, however you look at it.

Cheers!
-Liq

snutten
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Joined: Mon Nov 25, 2002 1:27 pm
Location: Sweden

Post by snutten » Sun Oct 24, 2004 8:27 am

My project settled down som 8 months ago and I haven't been around here any much lately.

Some perhaps valuable experienses have been made:

Having the case act as a heatsink still rocks. Since the Raptor is stuffed into a sound dampened water cooler and the case is internally tapestried with heavy sound panels, the PSU is the noisiest part..
The back-up hdds, a Barracuda V with AAM and a Spinpoint V, are suspended in elastic cords and cooled with aluminium side plates.

Pumps make noise!
My pump is hanging in silicone cords, not touching anything solid. The tubing is silicone too, or the vibrations spread through them. The pump was without doubt the most difficult part shutting up.

The water loop works better if split. In my case, into three different loops, each with better flow now than the original single loop ever had. My 1048 pump can pump quite a lot but is very sensitive to back pressure.

The loop running along the case walls need only a small flow. Clamps solves all flow directioning problems.

My setup featured 2xPapst 4412 rad fans @ 4V, one 92mm Papst intake fan cooling hdds, one Panaflo M1A in Seasonic PSU. This made the internals hot. Added anorther 4412 intake fan in bottom. Fans controlled with an Innovatek Fan-O-Matic, all at really low voltages.

To have the PSU shut up I constructed a duct from the front. Help fans, Papst 8412s, added to help PSU fan. The PSU fan still spinned up after a while. Turns out the air in the duct heated up, actually becoming hotter than the air in the rest of the case. Tried isolate the duct but it's not good enough. The case's warm top striked back, it seems.

Reversed fan in PSU, now a Nexus realsilentcasefan, blowing from the back and then into the isolated channel, out front. Some places in the PSU are not blown on of course but it's quieter. (These temps taken with DD5 thingie.)

Shall now open slots on top of side panels to duct in air to the PSU from there.

Concluded that water cooling has small benefits and I wouldn't recommend anyone to go there now that so good air coolers are available.


I remember taking lots of pictures during the process. Could it be someone is still interested in seeing this? It could take a while but the pics probably still can be found on a server somewhere around here.
Last edited by snutten on Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

peteamer
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Post by peteamer » Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:40 am

Pics would be good.


Pete

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