How built water cooling

P

Palatzo

New Member
Home built water cooling

I've been thinking about building my own water cooling system. I don't have the resources to make my own water blocks, so I'd have to go retail there, but the rest of the system I think I can do myself. I was planning on using a car radiator for it. I know they have to have high water throughput, and have to be very efficient. I'm going to start doing some testing with one I got sitting in my driveway right now to see what the rate of flow is on it. I'd also like to be able to put the radiator outside during the winter, since it would obviously do a much better job of cooling when the air temp is -20C.
Has anyone ever done something like this? I'd like some info before I risk frying my test system.
 
Last edited:
I was planning on using a car radiator for it. I know they have to have high water throughput, and have to be very efficient.
Click to expand...

the amount of water flow a car radiator has is the eqevilant to the size of the water pump. it might work just remeber air needs to be moving throug the radiator to cool the water. make sure to flush the radiator so no foren matter gets in to the system. the only problem with putting it outside is that water freezes and you will need some type of antifreeze to keep it from freezeing. try it out if you get it to work let us know.
 
Hey

You could get condensation issues when the cooler liquid would be so cold in the winter. Just imagine.....you could get it to kill your mobo or something else. It would be a better idea to have it somewhere inside. As to the car radiator, I know one person who uses it on his comp. It's a small one but does its job very well.

JAN :D
 
Another thing I was wondering, if I were to put the rad outside, I know flowing water freezes at a much lower temp than standing water. So what if during the winter I had the rad between the water pump and the CPU block instead of after? The water would be flowing pretty fast when it hits the rad, since its right after the pump, and it would be at the coldest point when it reaches the cpu.
As for condensation, I was thinking about experimenting with submerging the whole board in oil. It would help out with cooling the rest of the board, and there wouldn't be any condensation at all on the board.
 
Hey

Are you sure about the oil experiment? Have you ever considered that it could leak into the wrong places? I mean it may sound reasonable as oil should not conduct electricity, but what about heat transfer? How good is oil at that?

JAN :D
 
All of these concerns are why i am using an old K6-2 system to test it on. If things don't work and I fry something, I don't care.
As for oils cooling properties, according to my father (who is an engineer) oil will be slightly better than air. I'd still prefer the input of someone who has done this or something similar.
 
Proper insulation will work to minimize condensation but its not guaranteed. Insulating the hose and the block and using dielectric grease is a must to do this same thing that they do with phase change. theres gonna be a lot of work doing this and to tell you honestly, its not worth it, but its up to you to experiment :P
 
oil will be slightly better than air.
Click to expand...
oi. should be a lot better than air - which is not a could conductor of heat at all.


Have you ever considered that it could leak into the wrong places?
Click to expand...
dont think this is too much of an issue. You not gonna put you hdd, cd/dvd, floppy in there so it should be ok.

I love these soughts of experiments. i dont have the space to do them myself. This should work just fine. It will look a pig though.

You graphics card may be a prob, if it has a fan you will prob need to turn it off as the oil would be too viscous. Same goes if you have a northbridge fan (doubt you will on your k6-2 board)

keep up posted
 
Last edited:
I'll be using an old vid card without a fan, and the northbridge doesn't have a fan.
I can't wait to try this out. I don't care much about the performance, I'm just bored with some parts and some time. But, of course, if it does work well (20c or more drop in load temp) I will consider refining it further and putting it on my main system.
As for looks, well, if you saw my room, you'd see that it doesn't really matter to me.

One question, as I have no idea what dielectric grease is. If I were to submerge the motherboard in oil, would this still be needed?
 
Palatzo said:
One question, as I have no idea what dielectric grease is. If I were to submerge the motherboard in oil, would this still be needed?
Click to expand...
If you gonna submerge it, there is no need for dielectric grease, use this if you gonna put your rad out during winter, this keeps condensation at bay.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top