Invitation to write Quiet Watercooling Article!

Post by **MikeC** » Sat Nov 02, 2002 1:31 pm

It's a topic that everyone would be interested in, but as the SPCR staff have no experience, we thought it would be best to see if there are any members who have already done this -- or would like to quiet their exisiting watercooled system and share their experience.

There was some prelim work on an article by SPCR forum member Matt, but multiple emails failed to rouse any kind of response so I have to assume he is MIA on this.

So what's in it for the intrepid author? Fame, fortune & offers of love & marriage.

Is that enough or do we have to offer more? Seriously, email me & at the very least I can probably get you parts as review samples. Besides, think about the kudos you'll receive from everyone here -- and from all over the world.

On that note, BTW, SPCR had 1.6 million pageviews from 150,000 unique visitors in Oct. Just bursting to share this -- it broke our previous high by quite a margin!

Zergling · Post by **Zergling** » Sat Nov 02, 2002 2:29 pm

I know a lot of water cooling junkies hanging out at overclockers.com forums, we might as well advertise there:)

maskedgeek · Post by **maskedgeek** » Sat Nov 02, 2002 2:57 pm

Hey guys, I run a quiet watercooled system MOST of the time, sometimes i feel like throwing 2 120s on my heatercore both pushing thru, what is it what you wanted to know?

maskedgeek · Post by **maskedgeek** » Sat Nov 02, 2002 2:58 pm

btw, i also run wc101.com go check it out...

ill prob loose this site, if you need anythign email me, maskedgeek#wc101.com

BladeRunner · Post by **BladeRunner** » Sun Nov 03, 2002 4:50 pm

True silence is not easy if you still want performance. most systems that are touted as silent are far from it.

If you don't count things you can't silence like CD / DVD rom, printer, scanner etc, then other than the 20db from the Seagate drives my system is silent. The hdd's will get isolation soon so the system will be true silent. I'm sure even then if you listened very carefully in a silent room, some mobo coil or cap will make a slight buzz

Here's my contribution to the silence goal

http://www.zerofanzone.co.uk

quokked · Post by **quokked** » Sun Nov 03, 2002 5:46 pm

Welcome to silentpcreview bladerunner, if u look round your article's have been quoted a bit round here for the basis of silent cooling

BladeRunner · Post by **BladeRunner** » Mon Nov 04, 2002 2:25 am

Sorry I quickly posted that before bed last night, it was late as I'm at GMT +/- 0 in the UK.

It has an arrogant tone now I've re-read it which wasn't intentional

. I suppose what I was saying is to get real silence you've either got to accept lower performance, or make a system along similar lines to me, which is both a lot of work and quite impractical for most people. You can get very near it with good quality low speed fans, and a well thougt out system, but I still haven't found any fans that are "silent" regardless of their DB rating. To me fans have a type of sound that is annoying. Not the actual same sound, but the type of noise is kind of like when an old TV get's a component that "whistles" when it's first turned on. I bet that "whistle" wont register much on a db meter if at all, but it can still be incredibly irritating to a human.

The design work and effort making my PC silent is just a memory now, (although there is more to do to get it the way I really want it). The plus side is I've lived with silence, or virtual silence for almost a year, and it just seems the norm to me now. I can't EVER imagine going back to forced air cooling again.

Sitting at my desk the only things I can hear are the printer if it's powered, (not printing noise, it has a buzzy transformer). With this switched off the monitor's cathode ray tube buzz is just detectable if I turn my head sideways. This is in a silent room / environment.

I suppose some could argue I have accepted lower performance as I don't have 15K SCSI HDD's. Possibly, but I'm happy with the Barracuda 4's for my uses, I now have enough ram to make HDD accessing delays a minor issue. If they can make 15k SCSI hdd's as quiet as the IDE Cuda's then I'll have them.

The main thing about my solution is with a few mods to the blocks it will work with virtually any upgrade I do to the system in the future.

My Current Spec, while not cutting edge, can be classed as performance I think.

Althlon XP 2000 (1666mhz) @ XP2200 (1800mhz) 9 x 200fsb
Abit KX7 Raid
1GB Corsair XMS 3500 at cas2
Radeon 9700 Pro (currently being water-cooled)
2x Seagate Barracuda IV 40gb (single platter)
Enermax 550 watt PSU

Water cooling

Home made or modified blocks for everything
Pump, Eheim 1060 (remoted)
Radiator, "bomb" 100 litre propane tank underground
external header tank above PC level for filling, bleeding and circulation.

ChiefWeasel · Post by **ChiefWeasel** » Mon Nov 04, 2002 3:09 am

Yeah, welcome to the forum Bladerunner! Its a privelige to have you here

As quokked said, your articles have been highly praised around here, some really nice work you've done

I really have to sort my monitor out, I can hear the CRT buzz clearly at even 12' away

ChiefWeasel · Post by **ChiefWeasel** » Mon Nov 04, 2002 5:19 am

And congrats on the 1.6M page views Mike, you must be pretty proud! Thats quite an achievement! I hope a few of these would be due to the plugs i give your site on the various music forums im on as well, whenever appropriate tho of course

gmat · Post by **gmat** » Tue Nov 05, 2002 5:03 am

Some Pro/Cooling members such as myself often come here as well :p
I am currently in the (long & expensive) process of building a silent watercooled PC. It's been long because i bought each part after each other, since i'm not a millionaire.
I set up a few progressive goals, given that the main goal was to have both maximum performance and maximum silence.
1 - watercool the CPU and buy main elements (pump, etc) (done 2y ago)
2 - watercool GPU & Northbridge (done a few months ago)
3 - buy silent & powerful HDDs (done this month)
* it's the point i'm at now * (rather quiet PC already... but not quiet enough !!!)
4 - suspend, insulate and watercool HDDs (in progress...)
5 - either watercool the PSU or buy a fanless one (more likely the fanless one)
At this point i'll be down to 1 and only 1 fan, on the radiator. It's a PAPST 4412 N/2GL.
6 - buy a 2nd rad and go passive, zero fan.
At this point i'll consider building a custom enclosure for all the gear, specially to accomodate the 2 passive radiators.

There's been a lot of case modding in between, buying other non-cooling-related parts, and financial problems so it's not going quite fast.
I'm not sure i'm appropriate to write reviews, as i'm in France and shipping HW to me would be expensive ! But i'm already writing something that i'll probably send to both Pro/Cooling and SPCR.
Anyways i have now some experience in watercooling, so if i can be of any help, i'll be glad to.

Red Dawn · Post by **Red Dawn** » Tue Nov 05, 2002 12:12 pm

I don't have any real input on this subject at hand, I'd just like to welcome you BladeRunner to the forum, I enjoyed reading about your projects (although I haven't read about all of them yet).

It's kind of sketchy at this point, but I may go with a watercooling setup for my next computer that I will build probably next summer. I'm hesistant however, as I have no previous experience with watercooling, but you have to learn somewhere -- somehow, right? I will look into this matter more in depth at the time of purchase, but what has discouraged me in the past was the imagination (?) that the pumps would produce a lot of sound that would irritate me, a lot. After that, there's the radiator problem, but I guess that's a lesser problem, considering you'd have fans on 'regular' setups as well. The third issue that came to mind was the cleaning of the system, how often do you actually have to do that?

Anyway, that was my rather uninformative post.

gmat · Post by **gmat** » Wed Nov 06, 2002 1:26 am

" I'm hesistant however, as I have no previous experience with watercooling, but you have to learn somewhere -- somehow, right?"
Yes

It's the only way to learn about PC watercooling... Take the plunge

(pun intended)

" pumps would produce a lot of sound that would irritate me, a lot."
Good pumps produce a deep, low hum. It's not noticeable if enclosed in a good case or behind HDDs or even 1 fan. Even if you manage to hear it (ie you've got a killer silent system) it's more soothing than annoying.

"cleaning of the system, how often do you actually have to do that"
Depends on the additives, and if you mix different metals or not. In my all-copper setup i do it about once a year, although it's overkill. I'd say once every 2 years with a 1-metal system, to get rid of deposits due to water impurities.

ChiefWeasel · Post by **ChiefWeasel** » Wed Nov 06, 2002 3:11 am

Eheim pumps are apparently the best for watercooling, and are supposed to be really quiet too as long as you decouple them from the case (on a rubber mousemat at the bottom of your case or something). Steer clear of Rio pumps, as i have heard lots of people say that they have failed on them. Danner ones are quite good too i think.

I was gonna go with water cooling, but since a papst NGML at 9V is enough to cool my P4, i didnt really think it was worth it...

BladeRunner · Post by **BladeRunner** » Wed Nov 06, 2002 3:40 am

Thanks for the welcome all

I second that emotion on the Eheim pumps, I've had an 1250 which was almost silent, now using a 1060, (enormous), and for it's size very quiet, (remote in my set-up anyhow). I also have a 1046 for testing stuff. I'd say a 1048 is enough for a CPU / Northbridge water-cooling system. If you intend to go further with VGA / HDD etc then a 1250 is probably a good investment.

Like ChiefWeasel says isolation from the case is a must if you mount it internally, I use anti vibration equipment mounts, essentially a rubber piece with a thread at each end.

If you want to try water-cooling just go for it!! I spent ages fafing about not doing it, finally took the plunge and look where I am now

Try to start simple with say just a CPU block to begin with and make sure you take the time to do it well & test it all properly before fitting to the PC, leave the beer until afterwards.

I'd also recommend you source all the part separately rather than buying a kit, firstly you'll learn more about it all because you'll have to work things out as you go, and you'll more than likely get a better system selecting each part for your set-up.

MikeC With regard to the actual topic of the post, I'm willing to assist if I can, but my experience of a "standard water cooling system", (if there is such a thing), is pretty limited. I mean I've never used traditional air cooled radiator for instance.

Red Dawn · Post by **Red Dawn** » Wed Nov 06, 2002 4:40 am

Thanks for all the advice!

I think that starting out small is a very good idea, because simply, I am no master at this thing.

All copper was also my intention, and if I only have to clean it every 1~2 years, that's perfectly acceptable, at least by my standards!

Just one small question, if I cram in say; two to three radiators in my case, will that be enough to cool passively my system (I know, hard to say because most things I intend to buy aren't on the market yet)?

Sometimes I do get carried away easily, this is, after all, a project that I won't disembark on for a long time to come. I guess you can compare it to window shopping...

BladeRunner · Post by **BladeRunner** » Wed Nov 06, 2002 5:11 am

Passive cooling will not be easy with anything crammed in the case, the case ambient will generally be higher than the room ambient. It really depends on what your goals are. Mine was silence, while still keeping performance. Others want highest possible overclock, and others portability is a very important factor. You'll have a much better chance of cooling passively with either a very large rad outside the case, (can be fixed to the side of it) or with a large coolant capacity.

Like you say It would be impossible for me to say if you do X + Y it will work because, it depends on so many factors, not least the room ambient and temp variations throughout the year where you are.

The best thing to do is get something up and running that is not too expensive, then improve it as you go if need be. If you used a large rad maybe the same size as a tower PC case from a lorry, (older trucks in breakers yards can have brass or copper rads), then you could probably get away with passive most of the time with perhaps a temp controlled fan that only cuts in when the coolant reached a certain temp,

here is a large all brass & copper rad from a 1972 JCB (I have a plan for this)

I could go on and on about this topic but It will still come back to the original point, make yourself an attainable goal.. .... do it....... and then see how you go.

I started with one CPU block running tap water through it just to see what happened, (I have my own personal water supply from a artesian well so I wasn't wasting water), I had pipes running everywhere but it worked and so made me want to carry on and do it properly.

Red Dawn · Post by **Red Dawn** » Wed Nov 06, 2002 5:30 am

Yes, a radiator from a truck/lorry would be nice, I'll have to take a look around to see what I can find, at least it's never too early or too late to get one regardless of when you're putting together a watercooling system.

I have one small question however, how can a radiator be both all brass and all copper?

My plans are reasonable performance, although not bleeding edge, I'll leave that for people feeling wealthy, or something. Although not related, TFT is a must for me now! Enough with those CRT's!

BladeRunner · Post by **BladeRunner** » Wed Nov 06, 2002 6:58 am

What I was trying to say is don't mix metals in the system if it can be avoided. Most modern radiators for cars and trucks are Aluminium cored with plastic end caps, which is not what you ideally want with a copper waterblock. I'm still mixing metals in my set-up so have to use an antifreeze mix, but I am slowly working towards all copper / brass.

I also never said ALL Brass & ALL Copper I said ALL brass & Copper, meaning it is made exclusively from both, the coolant tubes being copper the end caps being brass

Copper & Brass are similar enough not to suffer galvanic corrosion when used together.

I guess you are not an avid gamer then?, as I've looked at TFT's (in the £2000 to £3000), range but none offer good enough pixel response time or quality of colour definition across the spectrum for me. another irritation is the amount of dead pixels the manufactures of TFT's seem to believe is acceptable in a new product....... none is how many I'd accept personally. They can be very nice for surfing and text apps, but anything graphical you can't beat a good CRT imo. I certainly don't intend to pay 5x what a good CRT monitor costs to downgrade my display

rally · Post by **rally** » Wed Nov 06, 2002 3:23 pm

Whoaa...bladerunner welcome dude

I'm glad you found SPCR yourself, I was gonna drop you an email about SPCR, mike's done an awesome job of putting SPCR together for ppl who are serious about real silence.
I am very optimistic that your input on these forums will be of great interest and appreciation

Red Dawn · Post by **Red Dawn** » Thu Nov 07, 2002 6:38 am

BladeRunner wrote:I also never said ALL Brass & ALL Copper I said ALL brass & Copper, meaning it is made exclusively from both, the coolant tubes being copper the end caps being brass

Sorry, my bad, I wasn't paying enough attention to detail.

I'm going for a TFT because of my subjective experience that LCD screens are easier on the eyes. I used to own a small celeron based notebook, and I absolutely loved the TFT, it never gave me the kind of "irritation" on my eyes, that I got sometimes while using CRT's. All this is of course my own experience, and I guess that maybe I have more sensitive eyes than others, but flat screen is definitely the thing for me.
Contrary to what you may think, I use/used to game a lot, and will probably continue to do so... if the monitor doesn't live up to my expectations during gaming, I'll have to temporary switch to my old one during such activities. This is one of those times that I like that new video cards often have two connectors.

That radiator of yours; how much did you pay for it, or did you get it for free?

BladeRunner · Post by **BladeRunner** » Thu Nov 07, 2002 8:16 am

Red Dawn wrote:That radiator of yours; how much did you pay for it, or did you get it for free?

Errrhhh Not quite........ I've got one of these

........

......and it came with it as a leaking spare. Being Brass / copper leaks can be soldered up no problem

It's covered in gunge so it needs to be steam cleaned and the pipe connections need reducing down etc but If you can find any old truck, of 1970's vintage, (possibly even a large American car as my 70's Plymouths had similar rads), in a scrap yard chances are it will be brass or brass / copper, because aluminium was more expensive back then and the type of plastics and equipment was not around to make the car rads we have today.

Monitor's are a very subjective thing I guess, The CRT I'm using is flat screen but I'd really like a TFT because of their reduced size and weight. They also tend to have much better screen geometry than CRT's, but the drawbacks outweigh any benefits for me at the moment. If you were getting irritation from a CRT then it was possibly running in a too low refresh rate, 60HZ for prolonged periods will make your eyes "bleed". I run with 100hz vertical refresh but it depends on what the monitor supports, older monitors probably wont go that high at a decent resolution Ideally I'd say 85hz, with 75hz absolute minimum, (although I can still detect slight flickering at 85hz occasionally). If you buy a TFT however, make sure you find out the specific manufactures policy on stuck / dead pixels, you'd be surprised how many they think is acceptable.

Red Dawn · Post by **Red Dawn** » Thu Nov 07, 2002 11:57 am

Thanks for the newsflash (my knowledge about old cars/trucks are somewhat limited), I didn't know copper was cheaper than aluminium, what a world to be living in...

I'm not sure if we have a lot of old american cars around here, so my best bet will probably be to find a larger (and older?) vehicle. I'll take a look at that right this weekend, I also planned going to a "computer graveyard" and see what kind of fun things you could find there.
Oh, and by the way, nice tractor you've got there.

The monitor I used before was indeed with 60hz refresh rate (which I could not modify with my operating system, I probably did something wrong during install), with win98SE and win2k I am able to use higher refresh rates though, but not higher than 75hz. It's probably not too hard to imagine that I want a new one considering all this. The problem before has been a lack of money, something that I am now less concerned about.
I will take your advice and look up the dead/stuck pixel issue before buying my monitor, it just never occured to me that it might be that big of a problem, thanks for bringing light on that subject for me.

chiahaochang · Post by **chiahaochang** » Thu Nov 07, 2002 5:49 pm

Red Dawn: Max refresh rates depend on screen resolution too. My monitor can display at 85Hz at resolutions up to 1280x1024, but at it's max res of 1600x1200, it only does 75Hz. 75Hz on a CRT is too low for me. I've used LCDs (laptop LCDs specifically) running at lower refresh rates (60Hz) for hours and it's not as bad as a CRTs. It's probably the pixels slow fall time (time for a pixel to fade) that makes up for it. That (and raise time -- time to light up a pixel) also makes it poorer for gaming. But, there are some LCDs that maybe okay for gaming. I'm looking for a Viewsonic VX2000, as it's fairly fast (25ms), large (20.1"), has good refresh rates (75Hz vert), and has good resolution (1600x1200). It specs well, but I haven't seen one in person and I don't know their dead pixel policy.

BladeRunner: You've done some really neat stuff. Makes me jealous.

I'm thinking of watercooling my next PC, but I never even imagined doing some of the stuff you've done. Water cooled PSU? That's too cool.

I was just going to buy a kit. Big thing I don't like about most kits are the radiators with the high CFM 120mm fans. Maybe I'll look for a car radiator at a junkyard or something. I'll have to figure something out.

BladeRunner · Post by **BladeRunner** » Fri Nov 08, 2002 1:42 am

If you don't want a huge rad like the one in my previous picture then a popular choice seems to be a Chevette, Fiesta, Capri heater core from again an old version of that model. I'm pretty sure all modern heater cores are alu / plastic now, but again back in the day most of these were brass / copper.

You could ask a question on hard ocp or oc forums something like If you are using a heater core as a rad that is all copper or copper & brass which make model and year car did it come from? I know quite a few people are using them. Not sure how big and fast the fans would need to be with one, like I've said I have never used a standard rad.

I'm not sure if Copper was ever cheaper than Alu, what I was trying to say is making rads out of Alu was more expensive back then or the type of production required for alu rads not easy, I think European cars were beginning to have ALU based rads but early 70's American cars were based on 50's American car technology, I guess, otherwise they would have been making them like they do today.

Thanks for the TFT input I'll check that Viewsonic VX2000 one out if I see it over here

Asmordean · Post by **Asmordean** » Sat Nov 09, 2002 10:23 pm

I just went water.

All I can say is - WHY DIDN'T I DO IT SOONER!

I haven't installed the radiator yet and I am still testing my setup but it is so quiet.

My radiator is from an airconditioner. Pretty large and aluminum. It will work in parallel (as opposed to serial) with the CPU waterblock to allow for less flow restriction.

Jaeger · Post by **Jaeger** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 12:31 am

I got a very silent water cooled system. But it's nowhere close to Bladerunner's system (nice work). It still has two fans, but both are running at 7 volts and are silent Pabst (12dB) fans.

Barracuda IV is silenced with aluminium waterblock and with the IBM software that allows manipulations of seek noise. It's barely audible.

Pump is Eheim 1048, which is enough for cooling CPU, northbridge, graphics chip and HD. So one does not need very powerful pump...

Go check it out:
http://personal.inet.fi/koti/sami.ranta ... ooling.htm

Asmordean: Good gor you

One suggestion: you should place radiator serial to CPU. The flow restriction issues should cause much less problems, than the higher water temperatures that are caused by having radiator parallel with CPU.

Radiator works best when the temperature difference between ambient and water is as high as possible. Which means that you need less airflow through the radiator to cool it. Which means less noise.

Asmordean · Post by **Asmordean** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 6:27 pm

Well orginally I was going to go parallel because the pump rattled when there was a great deal of flow restriction but I was pointed in the direction of a solution which is to glue the impeller so that it has no play in the blades.

I will most likely not even install a fan on the radiator. With 16L of water in the resivour I can run my PC for almost 15 hours before the water hits 40°C (starts at 23°C). A fanless radiator should extend this time to the point where I need not care since I turn the PC off at night and when I am at work. Though I will likely keep a fan handy just incase I need to leave the PC on for a long time.

Jaeger · Post by **Jaeger** » Fri Nov 15, 2002 8:44 am

MikeC, did you get anyone to write the article?

Post by **MikeC** » Fri Nov 15, 2002 8:54 am

No real offers to write a piece yet; I am looking for an email with an article proposal...

silentbob · Post by **silentbob** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 11:37 am

BladeRunner, I bow to your greatness.

I'm going to start another watercooling project, soon. I'm sure mine will pale in comparison to yours, but I'm trying

(Has anyone ever seen a waterblock as shiny as BladeRunner's? I think not.)

MikeC, YGM.