Custom Watercooling Guide

[CycloWizard]

After reading about the various exploits of water coolers in this forum, I'm thinking about building a custom water cooling system for my own computer. When I say custom, I mean from scratch, not buying components or anything like that (that costs money ). I'll go to Home Depot, pick up tubing, valves, sheet metal, and so on to build my own components.

I was wondering if people would be interested in me putting together a guide of how you could actually go about doing something like this if/when I get around to doing it. I'm also wondering if people could throw out ballpark figures of how much a 'typical' retail watercooling solution would cost. If it seems feasible, I'll probably try to work on it this summer.

 

[canadageek]

hell ya! sign me up!

 

[HardWarrior]

It's pie-in-the-sky to say you can do this without buying anything, Cyclo. The time you spend trying to rethink the wheel is going to be quite prohibitive in and of itself. Just designing and milling the fine structures of a CPU block is going to be a mammoth undertaking. My advice would be to save up for a nice entry-level kit and save yourself some heartache.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: HardWarrior
It's pie-in-the-sky to say you can do this without buying anything, Cyclo. The time you spend trying to rethink the wheel is going to be quite prohibitive in and of itself. Just designing and milling the fine structures of a CPU block is going to be a mammoth undertaking. My advice would be to save up for a nice entry-level kit and save yourself some heartache.

What fun is that? I have access to all the machining equipment and the knowledge/experience to use it. I'm really not interested in a store-bought solution. If I'm going to do something like watercooling, which doesn't have any functional purpose for me, I may as well try to really get something out of it.

 

[HardWarrior]

"Fun" is a relative thing. For instance, I get off on having a computer that runs anything I toss at it without a studder or hitch, whether I decide to run the AC or not. The best you can hope for is a LOT of work that comes close to what someone else has already done, without the polish inherent in mass (or near mass) production. I'm not offering theory as fact either. There are forums where "I'll make it from scratch!!!" people aren't shy about their exploits, and that includes pictures. Frankly, I've never seen or heard of a meatball water-cooler that didn't look, and function, like something that was dredged-up from the Titanic wreck site.

But to each his own. Good luck! :thumbsup:

 

[CycloWizard]

Thanks! I really don't care what it looks like or even how well it works. I just want to see if I can do it. I'd like to make it modular so I can mess around with some parameters and gauge performance to give other people insight on what things can be changed to obtain certain results. Like I said, it'll be a while before I actually have time to work on it, but hopefully this summer.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Are you going to get the radiator out an old car or somthing, or are you building that as well?

 

[HardWarrior]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Thanks! I really don't care what it looks like or even how well it works.

Come on, Cyclo! You can't really mean this. Would you really take a chance on ruining your machine or having a water-cooling system that that doesn't even exceed air in terms of performance? If you're serious about this you're a VERY interesting person. If you're even near Chicago look me up. I'd very much like to slam a few with you.

I'd like to make it modular so I can mess around with some parameters and gauge performance to give other people insight on what things can be changed to obtain certain results.

Like I said, there isn't a lack of information in this arena. I'm no punk when it comes to water-cooling, but because I'm not math-oriented I lack the depth of knowledge that more than a few guys have. Stop over at procooling or overclockers and see if you can start up a dialog with BillA or Cathar respectively. Bounce some of your ideas off their heads and see what flies back. These guys, and a few others in both forums, are giants.

Like I said, it'll be a while before I actually have time to work on it, but hopefully this summer

Please hurry! I can't wait to see what you come up with.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo
Are you going to get the radiator out an old car or somthing, or are you building that as well?

I actually have an old radiator from my car that I took out last summer while dropping in a new(er) engine. That's a lot of overkill for a PC though and would take some pumping power to work through it. Plus, I have other plans for that radiator (cooling the beer that will come out the taps that were the cylinders in the old engine ). A radiator is a pretty simple thing at its base - something with lots and lots of surface area for heat exchange. I doubt I'll build a typical radiator... I'll probably try to exploit some heat transfer principles to build something ridiculous.

Originally posted by: HardWarrior
Come on, Cyclo! You can't really mean this. Would you really take a chance on ruining your machine or having a water-cooling system that that doesn't even exceed air in terms of performance? If you're serious about this you're a VERY interesting person. If you're even near Chicago look me up. I'd very much like to slam a few with you.

Meh, my comp is almost 4 years old anyway. It's a P4 1.6 OC'd to 2.4 with stock cooling. In any case, I would have to screw up pretty bad to actually ruin it. Like I said, I'm just thinking about doing this because I want to toy around and actually apply some of the things I know rather than just having them take up space in my brain for no good reason. I have quite a few friends in Chicago so I'm sure I'll be up that way before too long.

Like I said, there isn't a lack of information in this arena. I'm no punk when it comes to water-cooling, but because I'm not math-oriented I lack the depth of knowledge that more than a few guys have. Stop over at procooling or overclockers and see if you can start up a dialog with BillA or Cathar respectively. Bounce some of your ideas off their heads and see what flies back. These guys, and a few others in both forums, are giants.

See, part of the reason I want to do this is to generate my own ideas. If I look at what others have done, the ingenuity will be lost. I'll definitely do it if I get stuck, but as of yet I've never even seen a water cooling kit or its parts. I'm all about wasting time, money, and effort to create something novel.

Please hurry! I can't wait to see what you come up with.

I really doubt it'll be before this summer. I have a major project going on for my dissertation research (something much fancier than this will be - I'll post some pics as soon as the patent clears ) that is consuming pretty much all of my time.

I was thinking about this a little more today and was wondering if any water cooling kits had temperature control circuitry. I.e. you actually have a thermostat that could control CPU temperature. If not, I'll definitely include it just to show off, if nothing else.

 

[canadageek]

hmm.....why not seal up the stock heatsink (build a water chamber around it), drill two holes in it, and connect hoses? might be worth a try, and it'd be waaay easier than building the whole waterblock
just an i dea

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: canadageek
it'd be waaay easier

That's exactly why I don't want to do that. I'm just thinking about doing this for the challenge. Taking the easy way out defeats the whole purpose.

 

[HardWarrior]

See, part of the reason I want to do this is to generate my own ideas. If I look at what others have done, the ingenuity will be lost. I'll definitely do it if I get stuck, but as of yet I've never even seen a water cooling kit or its parts. I'm all about wasting time, money, and effort to create something novel.

I didn't suggest you intereact with these guys just to copy what they've done. A lot of what happens in high-level conferences that tailor to water-cooling is simple brain-storming. The choice, or course, is yours, but why not use a design methodology that leans towards positive results, instead of just achieving "something novel" and wasting time and resources?

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: HardWarrior
I didn't suggest you intereact with these guys just to copy what they've done. A lot of what happens in high-level conferences that tailor to water-cooling is simple brain-storming. The choice, or course, is yours, but why not use a design methodology that leans towards positive results, instead of just achieving "something novel" and wasting time and resources?

Hehe... I'll consider it, but I am a glutton for punishment. I thought of doing this because I wanted to build something completely on my own. The goal I guess is to teach myself (and hopefully others) how these systems work in practice. Even if it doesn't work, I'll have learned quite a bit from the process.

The only limiting factor is money, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do the whole mess for < $100, unless I decide to try the temperature control/thermostat idea, in which case it will be significantly more (unless I can really pull some kind of hack). Even on a grad student's salary I can hack that. The facilities and equipment are free for me, as is my own labor. My time could be spent better on other things regarding my research, but I'll be working on that 60-80 hours a week already in the summer, so taking a little break to do something creative will probably help me stay focused on work more. I guess what I'm saying is that even if it fails and I lose a lot of time and effort on the project, I won't consider it a waste. I appreciate your concern and even share it, but I'll probably hold out on asking for help until the next iteration unless I really get stuck. Maybe isolating myself makes me a stubborn bastard, but then, I am a stubborn bastard.

 

[Greenman]

I think you should do it, I'd do it myself if I had access to a machine shop. Be a fun project. And lets face it, were talking about water running through a heat sink and radiator, it?s not like you?re developing new technology. And you're right, most of the things you need you can get from home depot, the only part that requires any real thought is the water block, and that could be done in a couple hours in a good machine shop.
I often wondered how well water would work without a heatsink, just bond right on top of the cpu. Be a cast iron bitch if you ever had to change out the cpu, but you'd prolly get some very low temps.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Greenman
I think you should do it, I'd do it myself if I had access to a machine shop. Be a fun project. And lets face it, were talking about water running through a heat sink and radiator, it?s not like you?re developing new technology. And you're right, most of the things you need you can get from home depot, the only part that requires any real thought is the water block, and that could be done in a couple hours in a good machine shop.
I often wondered how well water would work without a heatsink, just bond right on top of the cpu. Be a cast iron bitch if you ever had to change out the cpu, but you'd prolly get some very low temps.

I was thinking about flowing right across the CPU. There are a variety of problems that might arise that I would have to look into. I'm not really sure what the contact material on the CPU itself is, so it might not respond favorably to direct contact with a lot of water.

I'm not planning on a normal radiator. I was at first, but now I'm thinking of doing something drastic (fountain, waterfall - think big ). I know it will cost me some pumping power, but you'll have that. If I plan it carefully, it will have minimal effects on the power consumption of the system. Since I actually know how to determine pumping power requirements and head losses, I should be able to cut it pretty close. Oh, and there might be some pretty new ideas thrown in, depending on how much time, money, and effort I'm able to sink in. I'll be sure to keep a web site (with pictures hopefully) of what I'm doing. If I can figure out what's wrong with my scanner, I might scan in my insane rants from the notebook I keep for the project.

 

[Greenman]

I?d look at evaporative cooling, along the lines of a swamp cooler, where water flows through a very loose matt and air blows through it. I think you can get below ambient that way. The bummer is you always have to add water to the system.

 

[HardWarrior]

Greenman100?

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Greenman
I?d look at evaporative cooling, along the lines of a swamp cooler, where water flows through a very loose matt and air blows through it. I think you can get below ambient that way. The bummer is you always have to add water to the system.

Now there's an interesting idea... Instead of losing the water, I could actually run it through a turbine and use it to power part of the system - the pump maybe... I doubt I could get it to the efficiency required to spit out that much power, but how cool would that be?

 

[Greenman]

Originally posted by: HardWarrior
Greenman100?

Huh?

 

[HardWarrior]

Wondering if you're someone I know.

 

[Greenman]

Originally posted by: HardWarrior
Wondering if you're someone I know.

I don't think so. I ended up with Greenman because the 25 names I tried before that were taken, and I don't like names like Fred6384625385746.
Though now that we have exchanged a few words you could say that you know me. (Don't worry, no one will ask if you can get my autogragh...)

 

[cirthix]

i have made my own, all except for the pump and radiator, but the block leaked, so i bought a zalman one. works great, install was EASY, its super cheap and works on practically every socket however, when the wb leaked it killed my mobo

 

[CycloWizard]

So, instead of studying for my finals next week I decided to do some design work on this. I had a couple questions that I couldn't find answers for that I'm sure you guys can answer off the top of your heads:

1. What is the typical heat transfer surface for a CPU made from? I assume it's copper or similar, but I wanted to be sure, as a slightly different material could have a large impact on the design.

2. What is a typical volumetric flowrate for a watercooling system?

3. What are typical dimensions of the CPU spreader?

4. How much power does a typical CPU consume? Looking more for a range for general demonstration purposes, but knowing for a P4B would be nice in particular.

Thanks!

 

[essasin]

1.Copper is usually used but if you really want to get fancy you could get some silver (can we see your design?)
2.A good quaility pump will flow around 300 GPH but this does not consider the breaks in the waterblocks so it is hard to tell the exact flow rate.
3.I am not sure what you are talking about but the dimension of each different waterblock is easily found on their prospectice websites
4.Default voltage in the bios is around 1.4v

Good luck on your build.

 

[Tu13erhead]

I built my own system over break. Well, sort of. I bought a third party water block (Zalman). Then a friend got me an old water bubbler (drinking fountain) and we installed a circulator pump I found lying around the house, along with a PVC resevoir. Voila! Refrigerated WC! It worked fabulously, kept my CPU under 20C even when heavily OCd. I think it was actually lower but my CPU temp sensor seemed to limit itself at 16C. Anyways, it ran great until a window was left open in my room and a ton of condensation formed on the block and tubes inside the case. Some water actually dripped onto my 6800GT, but somehow that was fine...the motherboard was fried but an RMA fixed that

So anyways, it was a very fun experience. I've put the unit in storage until summer and am now using an XP-120 (which does wonders, but I miss my WC system!). If I can find a way to condesnse the kit into something smaller (it's the size of a cabinet) then I'll definetly use it more. I also want to rig my GPU to be in the loop as well. If I decide to not stay with the bubbler, I'll probably build my own unit as well.

Well that's my story! Good luck on your project!