water cooling

Does anyone here have a system that uses water cooling? Is it very difficult to pull off? My new system just gets so fkn hot. I've got 2, 120mm case fans an 80mm case fan and a case blower and it still heats up hot as shit. I'm wondering if this is a viable alternative or not. I'm using a program called speedfan to check my temperature at the moment. I don't really know how accurate it is though.

What kind of cpu, how much RAM, what kind/how many gfx cards, how many drives? Are you overclocking?

The more video cards you have, the more things you need to hook up the your water pump. If you overclock, you're probably heating up other things in your system besides your CPU. You might make the CPU & GFX card nice and cool with the water-cooling, but the rest of your system will still run hot.

I've got p4 3ghz, Radeon x800xl, 4 drives, and 2 gigs memory, and I'm doing OK with 6 80mm fans. . .and they're not cranked up all the way, so it's not so noisy.

How hot is it where you're at, and are you using AC? I think AC helps your computer as much as it does you. Some placed I've worked had the mainframe room cooled much lower than the rest of the building, and I've had some heat issues with this system when the temps went up above 85 and I had no AC. With AC, no problems.

I never did any watercooling, so I can't help you there.

If heat is the problem, watercooling won't help you much for the reasons doc points out. Watercooling is more for keeping the temp of your CPU down so you can push it as hard as you want.

A couple of things to look at:

How hot is your Power Supply running?

How many devices are in the case and how close together are they?

How are your fans set up? This can be really, really important. It's not how much air you push, but how efficiently you push it out of the case.

For example, I bought 2 80MM fans when I built my new system a few months back. I have one in the back pulling in air. It is right under the power supply fan that is also pulling air. They push the air over the CPU and Video card. I have the second fan on the side, in the middle. It pulls the air out of the case, so the net affect is that I am pushing cool air immediately over the hottest parts of my computer.

As for drives, I have one HD and on DVD drive. They are spaced very far apart. If I was to add more drives, I would probably put some sort of cooling system in the front, pushing over them towards the fan on the middle side.

I can actually tell a difference with this set up. I can also feel a real temp difference in the air coming out of the case after it has been running for a while. It is not nearly as hot as it was.

I think you are right about the room temp. Our room is pretty hot normally which definately doesn't help. Maybe I need to work on my placement of my fans. I was hoping to put a fan in the top of the case to shoot the hot air out the top but there is no place for one. I may stop and pick up one of those tools to cut into a case.

I haven't overclocked anything. I think it is mainly just my gfx card that is running hot. If I open up the case and run it open it cools down enough to where it isn't an issue. I'm using a gforce 8800 GTS 640 MB. I was actually checking on the Supreme Commander forums and there was a thread on this exact problem with the card heating up.

I'll try another fan, thanks.

If you think your Video Card is putting out that much heat, you could get an after market cooling solution. I have a Zalman heatsink/fan on mine. It's a big boy.....

Bubba also has an aftermarket cooler on his video card. I don't remember what kind it is, but it's a big one and it makes a big difference.

On my old vid card, I forget what it was but it was amazing. I once tried to watercool a computer. Shortly after I pour the water into the machine from my cup... there were sparks and sizzles and pops. ;-)

Fknrambo wrote:
I think you are right about the room temp. Our room is pretty hot normally which definately doesn't help. Maybe I need to work on my placement of my fans. I was hoping to put a fan in the top of the case to shoot the hot air out the top but there is no place for one. I may stop and pick up one of those tools to cut into a case.

I haven't overclocked anything. I think it is mainly just my gfx card that is running hot. If I open up the case and run it open it cools down enough to where it isn't an issue. I'm using a gforce 8800 GTS 640 MB. I was actually checking on the Supreme Commander forums and there was a thread on this exact problem with the card heating up.

I'll try another fan, thanks.

Sounds like an after-market graphics card fan will help.

I currently have 2 80mm fans blowing in the front of my case over my hard drives, which have an empty slot between them to let the air flow. I have 2 80mm fans in the back, as close to the top as I could get them, to exhaust air. I have a top blowhole with an 80mm fan blowing out, and an 80mm fan on the side of the case blowing in over the cpu. I think the side fan tends to disrupt the flow of air from front to back, and so I usually have it set to low.

If you cut into the top of your case, you know, of course, you should empty the entire case and be sure to get the little metal scraps out before putting everything back in. The space in between things that should NOT be shorted is often very small. Get a bit of metal "sawdust" or scrap in your CPU, RAM or card slots, you'll not like the results.

DocJon wrote:
I have a top blowhole with an

He said 'Blowhole'

Bubbaspanky wrote:
He said 'Blowhole'

EXACTLY what i was thinking... does this mean I'm fruity too? 😳

Wrong thread Sindy..... This is the, I'm too hawt for my computer thread.... Fruityass is in the Introduction forum....

As a last ditch effort, I hear building your computer inside an old refrigerator does wonders for the cooling.... :-)

ok screw cutting a hole in it.

http://www.coolerguys.com/840556068167.html

and i'll see how that works out. Thanks for the tips.

Holy Snikies... You'll be glad you did it though

Da'yamn!

Look at the pipes on that sucker!!!!

Just remember to think through the airflow. Just one fan in the wrong direction can create air pockets that sit there.

LOL yeah, I accidentally put one pan in backwards once and i was overheating in a matter of a couple minutes. Keep an eye on the flow of your powersupply. I bought a ps that pulled air in instead of out. I returned that one pretty quick, it caused more problems pushing hot ps air over the cpu. 😮

It should be here by next weekend. I'll be up and running it by Sat or Sunday. I'll take a look at my fans and see what I can do to get some better air flow going. I'm doing my best to push the hot air out the top. Hopefully I can make it work. This should take care of my heat issues though.

Thanks again

Let us know how it goes....

It's running a hell of a lot cooler now. I'm pretty happy with it. I'm surprised I didn't fck anything up installing it lol.

That thing would cool a CAR.

I've had no problems yet, day 2 and still going strong. I'd recommend it to anyone that is having video card issues. I only wish i'd done it with my last computer. I had an ATI radeon 9700 AIW that overheated like a little bitch. I ended up replacing the card 3 times. Nvidia has been a lot better.

You could duct tape it closed, and fill the whole thing with canola oil. I saw a guy do it on youtube.