Bad To The Bone

[tthurman]

This is one bad rig!

[hansolo77]

Interesting, but I gotta ask... WHY?

[tthurman]

Why not?

Seriously, the rig inside looks completely tricked out, liquid cooling everywhere. I wish they shared the specs of the build.

[hansolo77]

I've still not ventured into water cooling yet. From what I remember reading, it wasn't really perfected (although it does look like it now, it's been years since I read up on it). You have to have specific parts for the different things you're going to connect to it (like, the right kind of CPU for the provided CPU cooler, and the right kind of video card for the GPU cooler). I don't think it's available generic (everything fits everything) but I could be mistaken. One thing I'd like to maybe do is some kind of water cooling for HDDs. My home server is in desperate need of upgrading (running a "Designed for Windows 98" cpu....). When I finally get around to do it, I'm going to get a massive Full Size case, all with hotswap drive bays. I'm sure there are things like water cooling "sleeves" you can put each drive into, if not they need make some. My server only runs hot because of all the heat from the HDDs.

Also, how cool does it really make everything? Are you running liquid Freon through the tubes? I'd imagine not, that it's just water. Over time, that water's gotta get warm and then it really doesn't do any better than fans. I suppose you could put ice cubes in the reservoir. Or are those now temperature controlled like a fridge? The coolest (heh cool) mod I ever saw was somebody running their computer from inside a deep storage freezer. And then I saw one where some guys had some sealing spray can and basically sprayed down their mobo/ram/etc then submerged the entire thing in an ice cooler full of liquid nitrogen, then they ran a modified version of their overclocking program and were running a 2.4 ghz cpu at like 50ghz and the temp stayed around -300 or something. That was sick.

[tthurman]

I don't know exactly on a CPU based cooler, but based on what I do know, it is likely just water treated with some sort of rust, algae and bacterial inhibitor, or at least it should be (perhaps no rust inhibitor if it's all stainless steel). The water is just a catalyst to move heat to the heat exchanger (radiator basicaly), and the cycle repeats. In a commercial mechanical system you woud have a secondary loop that also runs through the exchanger, which basically just creates a cool side of the exchanger to reject the heat, they never physically touch, but instead work in close proximity of one another via the heat exchanger. This side would be cycled through a cooling tower, or chiller in order to keep it returning at a lower tempurature than the load side. In these little setups I'm nearly certain it's just a fan, but it is an amazingly effiecnt system with even very warm water on the cold side of things.

Think of it as a really long heat pipe, only using water as opposed to a low boiling point liquid.

[stigzler]

Wouldn't all those gaps let a lot of dust in?

Fancy bells and whistles, though.

[tthurman]

I guess when you're hedging everything on liquid cooling, that problem is somewhat less than it is for us air cooling types. I dunno, I got such open ventilation you could lose a finger if you weren't careful.

I just blow it out with the air compressor every few months.....

[tthurman]

Wait a minute, doesn't this represent a much larger gap?

It would seem that I'm not the only one with a dust bunny breeding ground!

(sorry man, I couldn't help myself)

[stigzler]

I put a door on it.

smartass

(and of course that stopped all the dust :s)