my new passive setup works great!

The alternative to direct air cooling

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afrost
Posts: 141
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my new passive setup works great!

Post by afrost » Tue May 11, 2004 7:32 am

I got my first water cooling setup done last night. I used an RBX waterblock with the jet nozzle and an ehiem 1048 pump.

The radiator is my design for a cheap "reserator" type. I used a 5 gallon fish tank and 50 ft of 1/2" copper pipe. I cut the copper pipe into 30 lengths of 20" and put 10 bundles of three pipes into the tank. The bundles are spaced and held up by a wire grid. The wire grid was cut from the bottom of a basket type thing used for storage in closets.....very common. The diy reserator only cost me $40 in materials and an hour of cutting while I watched the Sopranos.

In a room that's about 21 degrees celcius, my SLK-800 with L1A @ 7V was giving me idle temps of 45 degrees and load temps of about 53. With the watercooling setup I was getting idle of 33 and load of 37 after 3 hours of Prime95. This is with the crappy motherboard sensor on my Abit KT133 motherboard, so it only gives a rough idea of the improvement.

I need to do some more long term cpu load and idle tests, and most of all I need to get a new motherboard and processor. I'm waiting for some good nforce3 250 boards to come out. Right now I have an XP 1700 clocked at 1.8 Ghz with 1.5V. I am completely limited by my crappy old motherboard for overclocking.

I'm pretty happy so far for something that cools the CPU without any fans. The Ehiem 1048 can very faintly be heard if the room is completely quiet, but when the computer is on the VGA silencer on my 9800 pro on the low fan setting is louder. Suspending the 1048 should make it silent....when I pick it up I can't hear it at all in a dead quiet room.

When I get stuff cleaned up I will try to take some pictures.
Last edited by afrost on Tue May 11, 2004 7:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

toiletduckuk
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Post by toiletduckuk » Tue May 11, 2004 7:35 am

with a tank that big can you not just submerge it?

afrost
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Post by afrost » Tue May 11, 2004 7:41 am

I did consider that, but everyone says that it just adds heat to the water. I also would be worried about it vibrating the whole tank and copper pipes. I might try it at some point if I watercool the GPU, but right now my PSU (Nexus 3000) and VGA silencer are much louder anyway.

Maybe I could suspend it in the tank from the wire grid that is holding the copper pipes.....that might work. The problem is that right now the copper pipes just sit on the glass at the bottom of the aquarium so I think any vibration will cause the pipes to resonate.

Gooserider
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Post by Gooserider » Thu May 13, 2004 9:44 am

I don't want to rain on your parade, but I'm not sure how well that setup would work for long term testing under load. Your description sounds like it would do a great job of transferring heat from the CPU to the fish tank. but how do you get the heat from the fish tank into the air? I would also be concerned about evaporation, and possibly contamination of the water in the tank.

Gooserider

afrost
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Post by afrost » Thu May 13, 2004 9:55 am

The copper pipes disipate heat into the air. from my calculations I have twice as much surface area in contact with the air as a zalman reserator, and I have way more copper in contact with the water. so far over the past three days it has been working really well for me. I have run an 8 hour load test and the CPU was cool as a cucumber.

as far as contamination i'm not sure. i put a stainless steel wire mesh over the input to keep any large particles from going into the water block. i'm not very concerned about evaporation, i'll just keep a gallon of distilled water in the room and top it off when needed. a bit of radiator fluid will prevent any algae growth.

This setup definately wouldn't be ideal for many people, but for me it is a perfect blend of performance, silence, and cost.

If it doesn't work out in the long run I'll just pick up a heater core, but for now it is exactly what I hoped for.

afrost
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Post by afrost » Thu May 13, 2004 10:16 am

http://www.villagephotos.com/viewpubima ... d_=8746745

here is a link to a picture of the setup
Last edited by afrost on Thu May 13, 2004 10:30 am, edited 3 times in total.

eniacs
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Post by eniacs » Fri May 14, 2004 12:23 am

So hang on is your setup a fish tank being cooled by the copper pipes in it? Does water flow up the pipes, or just into the tank, i guess the heat could conduct up the copper pipes and act like a large zalman thing?

(Reservoir/radiator = reserator! i think i have also just solved the reason for the weird name of the zalman passive setup.)

Im impressed with your low load temps, my passive setup (see the wc section for my thread) gets about 40-43 degrees now on full load for hours on end

afrost
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Post by afrost » Fri May 14, 2004 4:40 pm

yep, fish tank and copper pipes, the water just flows into the tank. I have holes drilled into the pipe to sort of ustilze the inside surface area as well. one of the benefits of my setup right now is that the ONLY restriction in the loop is the cpu block itself.

my setup gets into 40 - 43 if the room temp gets above in the 23 to 25 degree range. remember that the sensors on motherboards vary greatly from setup to setup, so for all we know our temps are exactly the same.

Gooserider
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Post by Gooserider » Sat May 15, 2004 6:27 pm

Ahh... The picture helps a lot! I had misunderstood, thought you were pumping water through the pipes instead of using them as radiator surfaces. What you are doing should work well as a cooler, but I'd still worry about contamination to some degree.

The primary problem with contamination would be clogging up the waterblock, especially if you are using one that relies on jet impingement type operation. A secondary issue would be any corrosion problem caused by dissolved contaminants. (BTW, I don't know how much good it will do you to use distilled water in that setup, IMHO you're going to get enough crud in the water from dust, etc. to make it kind of a moot point....)

It would be difficult to get a good filter on the intake that wasn't over restrictive. Best I would suggest is to position your intake so it is at midlevel in the tank - most crud will either float or sink, so sucking out of the middle should help avoid some of it. Secondly try to seal up the top of the tank as much as possible, including the insides of the pipes.

Radiator coolant is reasonably good as an anticorrosive, but it isn't real good as a biocide (the temp changes in an automotive cooling system are what keeps the wildlife under control) so you will probably need additional biocides. Airspirit over on Pro-Cooling speaks highly of non-chlorine / non bromine hot tub and spa sanitizer. You might also try some of the anti-algae stuff you can get in aquarium stores.

Gooserider

Nowhere_man
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Post by Nowhere_man » Sat May 15, 2004 7:35 pm

"a picture is worth a thousand words" :)

Very interesting. :wink:

afrost
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Post by afrost » Sun May 16, 2004 4:24 pm

thanks for the advice on contamination gooserider. the stainless steel screen that i put over the intake is pretty a pretty fine mesh. i made it in a big sphere shape and clamped it on the end of the hose so that it won't be restrictive. It should keep anything from clogging the block.

I will take your advice about some anti-algae stuff.

This was mostly sort of a test to see if it even worked well enough for cooling. What I might do now when I get time is to make a plexi top with holes in it for the copper pipe and seal it all up with some silicon caulk.

hydroxyhydride
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Post by hydroxyhydride » Mon May 31, 2004 7:38 pm

Distilled water is still a good idea for that fishtank and any water cooling setup. Tapwater has minerals like calcium that may precipitate when heated + impacting a surface at high speed...clogging up your water blocks over time. It depends on how "hard" the water in your area is. Also, the lack of minerals in distilled water still helps reduce the risk of nuking all your equipment if you develop a leak inside the case.

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