[X] My Assistant

[StealthSigma]

Indeed. My understanding was the liquid-cooling systems usually use a non-conductive alcohol-based coolant, not water, for the very same reason.

However, a mercury cooled system certainly would LOOK neater.

Well, pure water is a better coolant than any sort of alcohol mixture. It's around 4x as efficient, I think, while mercury is about 14x as efficient as water. If you can manage the coolant flow rate and provide radiator that is of a metal that mercury doesn't react with, it would be pretty good. Mercury was used as a coolant for nuclear reactors on ships... it just presented some significant maintenance issues.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone should make a mercury cooled computer. The risks aren't worth it.

Also.... pure water is basically non-conductive for the purposes of cooling electrical components. A computer can be submerged in pure water with no problem. You can also submerge a computer in baby oil for cooling.

[_Pax._]

Oh and PAX !! come on man .... Piccies ! .. show us the rig

Your wish is my command:

http://s30.beta.photobucket.com/user/GMPax...New%20PC%202013

Well, pure water is a better coolant than any sort of alcohol mixture. It's around 4x as efficient, I think, while mercury is about 14x as efficient as water. If you can manage the coolant flow rate and provide radiator that is of a metal that mercury doesn't react with, it would be pretty good. Mercury was used as a coolant for nuclear reactors on ships... it just presented some significant maintenance issues.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone should make a mercury cooled computer. The risks aren't worth it.

Also.... pure water is basically non-conductive for the purposes of cooling electrical components. A computer can be submerged in pure water with no problem. You can also submerge a computer in baby oil for cooling.

Mineral oil - 5x better than air, 1.25x better than pure water, see-through unlike mercury. Plus it's nonconductive, unlike merkury. (Also, I don't think you'd want to have SIX GALLONS of mercury in a largely OPEN TANK. That stuff is a bloody NEUROTOXIC heavy metal .... a tank rupture would produce a HazMat site!!)

Anyway; the OEM I bought this computer from, Puget Systems, has built and rebuilt a mineral-oil-cooled "fish tank" computer several times now, and sells DIY kits for customers who want one of their own. Their recommendation is for clear "white" mineral oil, the same kind used by veterinarians as a laxative, in fact: http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

[Stahlseele]

There IS a Liquid-Metal-Cooling Solution actually.
It's Mercury/Silver or something like that. And it works like a smaller Version of one of these AIO Water cooling Solutions too.
There is one big hunk of metal, the actual heat-sink. And through that runs, what ammounts to, basically, a really thick circular heat-pipe.
In there the liquid metal is moving around. And it's moved by a Magnet on top of the Heat-Sink. So all it does is move Heat away from the CPU
faster to the top of the Heat-Sink. Which is still, all in all, a Tower-Cooler needing a Fan.

And no, water, even distilled water, is no good for cooling hardware.
And even de-ionized water is bad. It may not lead a current as well as normal water, but what it does is, it binds ions like nobodys business.
So as soon as the Water gets something in it, like, say, a bit of dust from the Air and the surface of other components, which is very likely to have
accumulated on the inside of your case, it goes STRAIGHT back to normal water which leads a current perfectly well again.

Another innovative cooling idea was to implement a peltier element to the system. Which gets colder, when a current is applied and produces a current when heat is applied.
This does not work all that well either, sadly and never reached consumer level application.

The next innovative idea was to do away with Fans which produce the noise and vibrations, which is annoying, and to move the air by using electro-static currents to move
the ions and elektrons and thus the air itself through the cooling fins without the need for actually moving parts . . this did not reach the market in a consumer product either.

The best looking and most impressive cooling solution is, as mentioned by Sigma, the Oil-Submerged-Computer.
Aside from the HDD and Optical Drive, everything goes into the liquid, which dampens vibrations and noise from fans while being a better heat conductor than air.
This is a pretty expensive and invasive cooling method and no good at all for people who like to tinker with their stuff from time to time, because getting all that oil out is . .
ugh, frigging annoying is the mildest word that comes to mind . . basically, you have to hang your hardware out to dry for several days before you can do anything with it.
It also immobilizes a computer pretty well, because it gets fucking heavy and the pressure inside makes the whole system inherently sensitive to movement.
Especially the walls of the case. Which need to be 100% airtight on the seams and thick enough to hold in the oil without breaking. making the whole case even heavier.
Also, the oil useable for this is frigging expensive, at about 25 bucks per bottle and a bottle being about 0,5l. To fill a 10l tank you need 20 bottles, which comes up to 500 bucks in oil alone.

Liquid Oxygen or Nitrogen Cooling the the crown of all cooling, with which the benchmarking and overclocking records are achieved . . like a CPU going to 8GHz from it's base of 4GHz for example.

These are extreme cases though and not really needed.
Water-Cooling on the other hand lowers System-Temperature, Component-Temperature AND noise and vibrations produced by the System, if done correctly.
Comes at the price of being hugely expensive and invasive and maintenance heavy and inherently dangerous to the Hardware because of the water . .

I right now sit on a compute that has 10 Fans from 90 to 250mm running in it.
Which makes it fairly loud and vibration intensive . . but seeing how the computer cost 2500€ and i already had one melting down in a summer once, i would rather deal with this than with risking my hardware to overheating failure again . .


As you can see, i invested a bit of thought into the whole matter . .
And i have come to the conclusion, that a real water cooling solution is too bloody hard to do for me, too expensive for my taste and too work intensive while inherently dangerous for my computer . .
AIO Water-Cooling is, for people like me, the ideal solution to these Problems.
Which makes it all the more annyoing, that there is not a single GPU with pre applied AIO Water-Cooling on sale damn it x.x

[StealthSigma]

I right now sit on a compute that has 10 Fans from 90 to 250mm running in it.
Which makes it fairly loud and vibration intensive . . but seeing how the computer cost 2500€ and i already had one melting down in a summer once, i would rather deal with this than with risking my hardware to overheating failure again . .

My case has three air zones for cooling. It also has filtered grating on the bottom to allow cool air to be draw up into the case and grating on the top of the case to permit warm air to rise out of it naturally. The power supply is mounted in the bottom of the case and has a firewall separating it from the motherboard so the power supply is drawing air up through the same grating in the bottom without cannibalizing air from other components. I have a 120mm fan in that firewall that draws the cool air from the ground up into the motherboard section with a 120mm fan that expells air outward along with the GPU fan and the case ceiling grating. Then my harddrives have their own dedicated 120mm for cooling and are also firewalled from the power supply and motherboard. The loudest fan on the case is the GPU fan.

[Stahlseele]

No, sadly this case is not really optimized for heat management . .
ThermalTake Armor 8003 BWS
it doesn't even have a cutout in the mainboard tray to make swapping heatsinks with back plate mounting easy . .
which is why i still have the god damn awfull intel stock cooler on my Q9650 CPU <.<
meaning it does, after 2 hours of hardcore gaming, go up to 105° Celsius x.x

[StealthSigma]

No, sadly this case is not really optimized for heat management . .
ThermalTake Armor 8003 BWS
it doesn't even have a cutout in the mainboard tray to make swapping heatsinks with back plate mounting easy . .
which is why i still have the god damn awfull intel stock cooler on my Q9650 CPU <.<
meaning it does, after 2 hours of hardcore gaming, go up to 105° Celsius x.x

My case would let me use a backplate mounted heat sink if I wanted to, but the stock options for cooling are quite effective even after playing Total War for hours.

[X-Kalibur]

Note to self - get pictures of my tiny, self made computer for you folks that runs stuff on max or very near max setting without heating/cooling issues using only built in fans and heatsinks and 1 large, low sound fan. I can't even hear the damn thing running.

[CanRay]

Hydrogen Cooling, what could go wrong?

I'll name the system "The Graf Zeppelin"! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Stahlseele]

Well, usually, liquid nitrogen is used, not Hydrogen . .

[All4BigGuns]

Hmm...got me thinking. If I ever win a MASSIVE lottery jackpot, maybe I'll look into liquid nitrogen...

[Stahlseele]

i won't.
ain't worth it.

[Halinn]

Hmm...got me thinking. If I ever win a MASSIVE lottery jackpot, maybe I'll look into liquid nitrogen...

Keeping it from evaporating would be really difficult. The amount of power needed to keep re-cooling it so that it stays liquid will be immense.

Also, the components very likely won't be able to handle temperatures of around 77 K

[StealthSigma]

Note to self - get pictures of my tiny, self made computer for you folks that runs stuff on max or very near max setting without heating/cooling issues using only built in fans and heatsinks and 1 large, low sound fan. I can't even hear the damn thing running.

I trend towards LARGE desktops to maximize how much air space the computer has. It also provides a lot more room for cable management to avoid airflow issues. I also like cases that have built in cable management options. My current case has a lot of rubber buttholes to run cables on the backplate rather than running them throught the motherboard region.

[nezumi]

i won't.
ain't worth it.

Bear in mind, liquid nitrogen is also the superior option for battling T-1000 robots. Firewalls won't do that, no matter how many buttholes they have.

[Stahlseele]

Bear in mind, liquid nitrogen is also the superior option for battling T-1000 robots. Firewalls won't do that, no matter how many buttholes they have.

Yes, there is that . . but how things are right now, i'll probably be on their side anyway . .

[Mach_Ten]

Yes, there is that . . but how things are right now, i'll probably be on their side anyway . .

I also welcome our new robotic overlords, (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

PAX that looks so clean and well built ! they did a fab job of cable management and air flow. you done good !

Some one said summat about a lottery win ? were I to have unlimited funds it'd be intel i7 with multiple Nvidia GPU's all watercooled and built by this guy !

seriously I love the look of this machine

[Stahlseele]

Yes, that looks pretty nice.
Which is the one thing i miss about the AIO-Cooling . .

[Bigity]

Ordering this soon: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...;Tpk=G75VW-NH71

I'll slap in a SSD at some point after I decide if I want to ditch Win8 for Win7 Pro (which I already own)


Hurry up IRS

[_Pax._]

PAX that looks so clean and well built ! they did a fab job of cable management and air flow. you done good !

They really did do a good job, but to be fair, newer (should I say, "modern" ...?) mid-tower cases tend to provide space(s) for the cables and such to go BEHIND the main tray, so it's harder to have bad cable management now.

[Stahlseele]

*kicks case*
yes, i know what you mean <.<

@Bigity
looks a bit like my old gamign notebook, but that only has an 460M and 16GB RAM and a 120GB SSD plus an 500GB HDD.