Watercooling FAQ

Or rather , Watercooling FACTS

One thing about technical discussions, is how everyone has an opinion why something is good/bad. (usualy both at the same time)

It is very easy to focus on the details, and completely forget the big picture.

If you have ever read through a forum thread,, about anything realy,, You know what I mean.

So here are a few facts that people completely forget when discussing water cooling systems.

#1 - Hose size doesn't matter.

The narrowest part in your whole loop, is what it going to determine the speed of your water. This part is usually the cooling block itself.

In other words, It does not matter if you so got fire hoses connected to your system, it's all gonna have to squeeze through that block anyhow. and we all know what happens at rush hour on the motorways. one person breaks, it creates ripple effects backwards until traffic comes to a complete stop. Same thing applies here.

It is true that you generally can get a lower flow resistance of the waterloop, but the difference that makes is so small that it just doesn't matter.

#2 - Speed doesn't matter.

Unless the water is actually standing still, it's going to work anyway.

The reason for this, is really quite simple.

If water flows faster over your cooling block, it will also flow faster through your radiator block.

Example, if you got a loop where the water flows through the whole loop in 10 seconds, it takes 1 second to flow through the water block and 2 seconds to flow through the radiator block, then you get 6 complete through flows in one minute, adding up to 6 seconds of cooling block time, and 12 seconds of radiator block time in one minute. Now if you double that pump speed to make the water flow twice as fast, you halve the time it takes to flow through the loop to 5 seconds. but you also halve the time it spends on the cooling block 0,5 seconds, and the radiator block, 1 second. The total times the water flows through the loop in one minute is then 12. now add up the cooling block time and the radiator block time and you get 6 seconds of cooling block time and 12 seconds of radiator block time. exactly the same.

In other words, speed doesn't matter, since the end result is the same.

#3 - It doesn't matter what kind of water you use.

There are many discussions about what kind of water to use and why it's better than others.

Let me just point out the following facts.

As soon as you open a bottle, and pour it into your system, It WILL get exposed to bacteria and molds and all kinds of stuff. so buying distilled water is a waste of effort. if you are really paranoid, feel free to boil the water first.

De-ionized water. Well , as soon as you turn your computer on, it will start pumping water through your Copper cooling block and radiator block, ionizing it as time goes.

And guess what, it doesn't really make any difference on your cooling performance.

Sure, highly ionized water conducts electricity better than un-ioinized water. but so does any water that is contaminated with, for example the dust in your computer. If you have a leak, your main problem is most likely to be that your desk is getting wet. (or your socks if you got it on the floor.)

The one thing you Should do with your water is add something that prevents bacteria growth.

Some Glycol usually is enough. you can find it at your local gas station.

As for water, just use tap water. some might say its bad because it causes scaling, but the one thing to remember here is that you got the same water flowing through the system. there just isn't enough calcium in that small amount water to build up scales. (boil it if you are paranoid.)

Normal tap water works just fine.

In the end , the BEST way to increase performance of your water cooling loop, is to add another cooling radiator. (or a bigger one.)

Homecooked DIY Heatpipes

This is something I made earlier, but I never really got around to posting any pictures of it. Anyhow,,

I was going to build my own heat pipes.

The basic principles of a heat pipe is quite easy. It moves heat from one end to the other, allowing you to cool a small area with a much bigger cooler which you can put elsewhere, where there is room.

For example in a PC the CPU has a tiny surface area, and the motherboard is usually cramped for space. that limits the size of the CPU cooler you can use. but if you can move the heat efficiently somewhere where there is room, you can use a much bigger cooler.

The Heat pipe is very effective at moving heat over a distance. in fact its estimated to be 80 times more efficient than a similar size solid copper rod.

High-end Coolers today pretty much have heat pipes as standard. and it's coming along in the laptops designs as well.

Ok, so that sounds pretty high tech and desirable. but here's the thing,, it's actually quite low tech.

A Heatpipe in its most basic form is pretty much a pipe that is sealed in both ends and has a liquid inside. at one end its warm and that causes the liquid to evaporate and flow to the other end where it condenses and then runs back to the hot end thanks to gravity.

What liquid is used depends on what temperature ranges you want to use it for.

In the more hightech NASA version of a heat pipe, it also has a wick on the inside of the pipe which sucks the liquid back to the hot end, this way it can operate in zero-gravity, or at any angle.

For more information on heat pipes, just look it up on Wikipedia. =)

Anyhow, I decided to make myself a heat pipe. well it became 3 heat pipes actually.

The first one I made used water as the operating liquid.

Water evaporates at its boiling point, which is 100C at sea level pressure. this sounds like a bad idea for a heat pipe that is going to be used to cool a CPU which shouldn't get warmer than 65C (depending on make and manufacturer). But there is a trick to it.

But before I get into that, I have to post a picture to keep the readers (you) interested enough to read the rest of the text.

Here is the raw material and tools used.

A roll of 6mm copper tubing, solder, pliers, wick, pipe cutter, pipe bender (unused) and curious cat.(which can easily be substituted for curious dog, neighbour, brother, or anything really.)

The trick to using water, is that water boils at 100C at sea level.

But if you can lower the pressure in the pipe, it will boil at a much lower point.

The actual Trick is to heat up the water so it's boiling before you seal the pipe. Steam is (iirc) 1600 times bigger volume than normal water, so by boiling the water you get a lot of steam in the pipe, so after you seal the pipe and the water cools down and condenses, you end up with a much lower pressure in the pipe, which in turn will make the water boil at temperature lower than 100C.

I don't know the exact math for calculating how much lower the boiling point will be, but I imagine it has something to do with volume of the pipe and amount of water in said pipe.

Anyhow, I just wanted to have a go at making a heat pipe, so I wasn't bothered with details at this point.

So after doing my best to straighten a suitable length of pipe, I cut it off using a pipe cutter.

You tighten the cutter around the pipe and turn it around, tightening the cutter as you go along.

Quite handy these cutters, I highly recommend one.

A saw might get the job done as well.

Curious cat tail is optional.

So after cutting a piece of pipe, it was time to seal the ends.

There are many way's of sealing of the ends of a pipe. if you happen to have a cap that fits snugly on the top, use that.

Otherwise you can flatten the end with a pair of pliers and solder it shut, (like the back on a tube of toothpaste.)

Or, do it the way I did here.

First I dug up an old axle from some piece of dismantled,, something.

The next step was to put it in the pipe.

This is to prevent the pipe from becoming completely shut when I squeeze the end shut with the pliers.

The tool of choice here is a cable stripper which happened to have gaps suitable for this operation.

Although the picture is quite blurry, this picture should be fairly obvious.

After squeezing shut so that I end up with a small hole in the pipe end, It's time to replace the axle with something smaller, which is this screwdriver.

After squeezing it again, I end up with a tiny hole in the end of the pipe.

By squeezing it slightly below the end of the pipe, the end remains larger, thus forming a nice cone which will help keep the solder in place later on.

The next step is to insert the wick.

The wick I used for this project is solder sucking wick, which is normally used for removing excess solder.

The reason I used this wick, is because I saw a picture of a Zalman heat pipe which had been cut open. The wick used in that heat pipe looked exactly the same as this.

The wick consists of a copper braid, and looks pretty much like a candle wick, or shoelace.

I inserted the wick in one end,,,

,, and kept inserting until it poked out on the other side.

I then soldered the end shut with a small piece of wick sticking out.

Then I filled it up with about 25% water, and soldered the other end shut the same way as the first. (although not quite the same way, as I will explain later.)

The 25% ratio was something I found on a site somewhere, I don't know if it

is the best ratio to use, but it's as good as any ratio for a first attempt.

The ratio of liquid to use can always be adjusted by unsoldering, refilling and soldering it shut again.

To actually make sure I got the right amount of water, I first filled the pipe completely with water. I used a syringe which used to be an ink jet printer ink refill pack, but feel free to use any old medical equipment you might have around. the thing about syringes is that they usually have exact scales of volume printer on the side, which is quite helpful in this project.

So I just took the total amount of water, and refilled the pipe with a quarter of the total volume.

The next bit was to heat up the water in the tube until I get some steam and solder it shut.

Which sounds a lot easier than it actually was.

The thing is, to solder a pipe shut you have to heat it, when you heat a pipe with water you get steam. The steam wants out, but the end is covered with solder. so what happen's is that you get large solder bubbles, because the steam tries to escape before the solder hardens.

This is a good time to mention that hot solder bubbles popping, will splatter hot solder around, so be Careful when doing this.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures so you'll just going to have to imagine it, or find out if you decide to try this your self.

The Next pipe, which I made exactly the same way, was going to use Acetone as a liquid.

The reason for using something incredibly flammable as acetone in a heat pipe is quite simple, It has a much lower boiling point than water.

Acetone boils at around 56C at sea level, which makes it almost perfect for a heat pipe which you will use in a computer which is full of electrical circuits that can easily reach its boiling point.

ehm,, yeah, that sounds a bit like installing a pipe bomb in your PC.

But fortunately acetone's autoignition temperature is 465C, So It wont blow until it reaches that temperature. and if it ever does, it's most likely because your house is on fire, at which point you probably have a lot larger problems to deal with.

Anyhow, a boiling point of 56C and extreme flammability sounds like great fun.

I did the previous steps the same way I did with the water heat pipe. except for the last bit.

The last bit which involves boiling the acetone, and soldering the end shut, was done by simply putting the other end of the pipe in really hot water. since acetone boils at 56C ordinary warm tap water gets the job done.

As with the water, I had some problems with bubbles forming, with the added twist that the bubbles contain acetone vapour, and I'm trying to solder the end shut with an open flame. (I highly recommend using a soldering iron for this, and no open flames.)

But after completely failing to ignite the acetone vapour and have my face splattered with molten solder, and creating a small rocket of the pipe, spraying flaming acetone all over the kitchen, I finally got the thing shut. ( I really, really recommend a soldering iron, I didn't have one since I managed to break it while working on another project. this is something that can end badly in so many many ways.)

The 3rd, and last heat pipe for this project was going to use something even more dangerous than acetone.

Butane Gas!!!

Butane has a boiling point of 0,5C and an autoignition point of 500C

Now, I had done some research for the acetone project, and found it is quite common to use it for solar array heat pipes. but so far I haven't found any hard info on using Butane in a heat pipe.

Well, First of all, I will not be able to fill the pipe by normal means, since the butane would blow out long before I could ignite the gas with my blowtorch. never mind trying to solder it shut.

So I would have to install a gas valve on one side of the pipe.

Luckily, there are plenty of those around. In your normal cigarette lighters.

So after dismantling a lighter and removing the gas valve from it, and finding it actually fit perfectly into the pipe, I got to work.

This was actually A lot easier, because I could now seal both ends of the pipe before putting anything in the pipe.

This time I didn't use a wick, mostly because I had used it up on the other 2 pipes.

And I figure that if you are making a heat pipe for use in a PC, you can be fairly certain which way is going to be up, since a PC usually doesn't do much moving around while in use. so a heat pipe the relies on gravity should work just fine unless you install it the wrong way around later.

Here is the sealed end of the pipe with the gas valve in place.

Filling the pipe is simply like filling a lighter. with the added bonus that you can release the gas or fill more gas as needed.

The drawback is that it is tricky to know exactly how much gas you got in the pipe.

I used the normal gas cans you use to fill lighters, and made an unsuccessful attempt at weighing the pipe to keep track of how much gas i had in it. unfortunately the scale I had at hand was not accurate enough to even weigh the empty pipe, so that trick failed.

To make sure that any air inside the pipe is removed, I first filled it with some gas, and then released the gas. this should eject any air still inside the pipe.

The trick to this pipe, is to figure out how to fill just enough gas to have liquid in the pipe even when its hot. because when it gets hot all the liquid might evaporate, stopping the flow inside the pipe, making it no more efficient than a normal copper pipe.

Luckily this is easily adjusted by releasing gas or filling it with more gas.

Once the pipes was done, I did some quick and unscientific testing of them.

This was done by taking a length of normal copper pipe, a heat pipe , sticking the ends in a cup of hot water, and see how high the heat would travel on the heat pipes compared to the normal copper pipe. this was done by simply feeling the pipes, and going lower until it started to hurt. (I used boiling water in the cup.)

The heat pipes was much warmer, much higher up than the normal copper pipe. So that indicates that they actually work.

However, it still remains to see how well they will work when cooling something.

That is a project for some other day, as I then started fiddling with water cooling my PC, so I will not be using these heat pipes for this PC at least. =)

Out of the three heatpipes I made, The best one definitely seems to be using Butane gas.

It's fairly easy to make, doesn't involve creating bubbles of solder. and has the added bonus of being adjustable. (although the drawback being that its difficult to know how much gas you have in it.)

The boiling point of 0.5C is of course going to be higher after you filled it, since the pressure inside the pipe will be higher. I don't know what the pressure or temperature will be, but I'm sure the internet knows.

One other thing.

Don't get too hung up on boiling points, since even water evaporates at room temperature if given enough time. heating it up just makes it evaporate much faster, and even boiling water takes time to evaporate. It is however a good indicator of what temperature ranges the pipe will be best suited for.

At the moment, I'm quite happy with the water cooling I have in my PC.

But be assured, this is not the last heat pipe project from me. Eventually I will get around to building a silent system, and heat pipes will definitely be integral in that project.

Meanwhile,, don't blow yourself up, Always play it safe! (heh., that's definitely going to make some anti-terrorist filters kick in, if they haven't already. =)

Watercooling Case Mod

It's that time again.

The time when I get sufficently bored, and happends to lay my eyes on something moddable.

This time I was thinking about how to make the watercooling case mod, a bit moddier.

And I just happend to have a digital photoframe.

So I removed the front of the Watercooling case, (hereby known as Heart case.)

The white front on the photoframe might reflect light, So I decided to mask it with tape, and paint it dark.

The tape was used just in case it didnt turn out as good as expected, I could always just remove the paint and be back with a nice white frame again.

Here we can see the painted frame displaying a random picture.

Originaly i was going to dismantle the photoframe and just use the LCD screen, but it fit so good with the frame, that I decided to use the whole frame.

The USB connector didnt quite fit though, so I had to butcher the cable a bit to make it fit.

And then I glued it in place.

Testrun of the front.

The USB cable I had was very short, and I didnt have an extension cable around, so the thing ended up on the floor next to the PC until I go buy a longer cable.

I added some random art which is displayed on it.

The screen is powered by the USB and since its plugged in, It's quite easy to just upload new pictures to it without having to dismantle it again.

The software to update the pictures are located on the photoframe usb disk, so its just a matter of running it directly from the USB disk.

And here is the Finished results.

Not bad. =)

Heart watercooling build part 2

The build continues.

So I finaly got around to finish my watercooling build the way I intended it from the start.

Watercooling blocks for Graphics cards are not cheap.

So I figured I'd have a go at making my own block.

One good thing about this card is that it already have a good solid copper base.

Dismantling it reveals a big copper base, plastic fan, and a piece of aluminum to top it off.

The Card is a XFX Geforce 9600 GSO with 768MB ram.

The GSO line is more like an in-between of 9600 and 9800. (And there are ways of modding the BIOS so it turns into a 8800 GT 512MB)

Anyhow here's a picture or it never happened of the card in pieces.

So the First thing I had to do was make a way for water to flow over the copper base.

What I'm using here is a copper pipe 6mm (atleast I think its 6mm)

The copper pipe is tricky to bend, even with a tool, because the tool makes large bends, and I had to shape it smaller by hand. Something that can easily ruin the pipe, because if you bend the pipe too hard it will just fold.

This is what I finaly ended up with.

I was a bit worried that the hose connectors would be difficult to solder onto the pipe.

But it turned out to work just fine.

Next up was to solder the pipe onto the copper base.

It takes quite alot of heat to warm up the whole thing to the point where you can solder it. I used a small blowtorch, I'm not sure if a soldering iron might be enough on this much copper.

Here it is after that's all done and mounted back onto the card.

Next up is to dismantle the whole watercooling system and rebuild it with a few additions.

Here is a picture of the pump and water tank standing ontop of the Heart case.

The Heart case used to be an old printer server which I got from a friend, I've been saving it for a project like this. and you can also see the bigger radiator at the bottom of the picture.

I have the old fluid in the bottle there, and used that to top up the new liquid I bought.

oh yeah,, I should mention here that in order to ensure airflow in the Heart case, I unscrewed one of the 120mm fans and turned it around, so it will create an in-out flow in the case, as the Heart case does'nt have any air holes.

A Picture of the insides, before I remembered to mount the graphics card.

And here is the insides with the card mounted.

It turned out to be very very tight at the bottom with the hoses from the card.

Note to self, Next time, remember to angle the hoseconnectors sideways.

More pictures of the snakes nest of cables and hoses the insides of the PC has turned into.

Here is the inside of the Heart case after mounting the radiator and pump.

Notice the difference in color of the hoses, the realy green ones are new, and the yellowish one is a piece of the old hose. well , I say old, but it's only about 2 months old.

I have no idea what made it go Yellow, and it only affected the hoses on the outside of the case. the hoses inside of the case was still green. I got a UV LED inside the case, so it's probably not because of UV. Odd.

And Finaly after assembling the whole thing, Making a 2 powercable to power the fans and pump, and rebuilding the whole cooling system, here is the finished result.

Front and back pictures

I have to say that the Heart looks great. and looking at it like this I can realy see how ugly the PC case is.

It was alot of work , but in the end it was worth it.

And it works just Great!

I was worried that the copper pipe did'nt have enough coverage area on the copper block , but turns out to work just great. After running the system at MAX ,, with 100%CPU and Furmark to max out the card, The peak temp of the card was only 56C with the CPU at 54C. Not bad considering that the same water is used to cool both.

Before the build the graphics card easily hit peaks of over 76C, So a 20C difference is not bad at all for a first try DIY waterblock =) . And the Heart case looks great.

Update on the server

After some time of mainly boredom and GTAIV, I finaly installed most of the software for the server, and mounted it on the wall, on the balcony.

One thing I am planning on doing in the future, Is adding a light to the latern, powered from the server.

Scanny Flatbed ..uh.. PC

Yay!

Finaly got my mini ITX motherboard

The box measured 22cm,

The motherboard itself is 17x17cm.

The CPU is an Intel Atom 330 which is Dual core and it also got Hyper threading.

In the single DDR slot I will stick an 2GB DDR2 667mhz.

Ok, So having satified my Need of "I Got To Have One of THOSE!!!",

I immediately starting thinking, "Ok, So now what do I do with it?".

Some quick thinking turned up a few ideas, but after searching the web for a bit, I found that the C64 PC had been done, same thing with a Guitar PC.

After some head scratching I found a nice wallclock case, but unfortunately i couldn't locate the actual clock parts for it, so that idea didn't work either.

Eventualy I found this old flatbed scanner, which I had already stripped of parts for the Lamp I made (see my blag history).

The first thing I had to do was to remove one of the spots for the screws to the lid,(see yellow rings) and using that material I made 2 spots for the motherboard to be screwed into.(see red rings)

Next thing to be manhandled was an old PSU I had.

300W is more than enough to power this ITX build.

Ofcourse the PSU was too big to fit, So I had to remove the casing and strip it clean.

After soldering an extension of the power cable (which was extremely short.), I mounted the power cable connectors and power switch to the lid.

This is also where things started to go downhill.

I had told myself that This build isn't gonna be using ANY ducttape at all.. nooo way!

So after taking this picture i realized I had used ducttape to insulate the soldersing of the wire.

Doh!!! ><;

Here is the circutboard mounted in the flatbed case.

Also mounted the HDD which btw is an old PATA 120GB I had.

Mounting the Motherboard.

Ofcourse only After mounting the boards and HDD did I remember that the big fan will need a big hole.

Anyhow, here's the picture of that mess.

After having used ducttape already, I just chucked any aspirations of making a nice and clean build out the window and just repeatedly stabbed the plastic until I got my holes.(with a dremmel tool)

Found an old microswitch and a LED which I glued in place for the power light and to-be power button.

And eventualy everything was installed and connected.

Here is a folded picture of the Sides, Top and bottom of the build.

If you print it out on paper, you could make your very own origami version of this build.

(it would probably even look nicer than my build)

Final shot of everything installed, including the Lid for the scanner.

And here is the obligatory "Yes It's Running" Picture.

(background has been removed to protect the innocent.)

Also I might add that I am using the scanner lid as a mouse mat at the time of that picture, so even that part found a use. =)

I might add here that this build was not realy meant to be a serious attempt, more of an warming-up until I can find something nicer to place this in.

But in the end it turned out pretty good after all.

I'm thinking of adding lights inside the case and placing a poster on the glass, and hangit on the wall. but that's for next time.

until then. Have fun!