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Dangerous to leave water-cooled PC unattended all day?

H

HalosPuma

Banned
Is it dangerous to leave a water-cooled PC unattended all day long while I'm at work? I was thinking of getting the Koolance Exos-Al to cool the CPU, GPU, and Northbridge and leave it on 24/7. However, if it springs a leak or stops pumping, could it start a fire? Should I always be at my PC when it's being water-cooled? Thanks.
 
you never know when sh1t might happen, if you're not willing to take the risk, maybe water isn't a solution for you.
 
It's extremely unlikely that a leaking system or stopped pump will start a fire, but it wouldn't be the first time it's happened. If you have a P4 / Athlon 64 in the system, they'll automatically scale down if they start getting too hot, but a graphics card probably won't (however without and heavy duty graphics going on, they shouldn't heat up). The worst contender is if your psu fan fails - that thing likely can and will burn up.
 
Mine's been up working on a week now running foldingathome the entire time. It was 4 weeks before that. If all your fittings are tight, and you have good components there shouldn't be any major issues.
 
you're not going to start a fire unless you have gasoline sprinkled all along the inside of your case. Worst that can possibly happen is that smoke comes out of your computer. In general, if the pump fails, most processors (athlon xp, athlon64, P4) have thermal protection where they shut down if temps get too high, so you don't have to worry about that. The only problem would be if your system "sprang" a leak out of the blue...if that happens well.... you'll have a deep friend system worst case.
 
If you want to be really paranoid, go for two pumps with a pair of check valves. This should prevent any possible pump breakage issues.

And then, if you have a big enough water system, add a float valve which goes to a switch. If your water level drops, the power dies.

And don't forget the tin-foil hat over the CPU so the aliens can't control your processor 😉
 
This is one reason not to skimp on watercooling eqiupment. Dangerden stuff is expensive but I've used 2 custom kits from there without a leak yet in over a combined 4 years of operation.
 
I have a dual Athlon MP 2600+ system running in a Koolance PC2-C case that runs D2OL 24x7. I do have plexiglas sides on all my watercooled cases and a $9 UV case light that I turn on once a month or so to check for leaks or low coolant levels. Basically, if you spring a sudden big leak, whether you are there or not will not save you computer. Just use quality components and test for leaks BEFORE installing computer parts into the case.

That being said, I did have a leak in one of my PC2-C cases. It was a defect in one of the early versions of this case. The coolant slowly leaked onto the back of my GF4 TI4800 and into the motherboard. It caused a short where one of the card contacts touches the AGP slot. Melted the contact on the card and the wire in the slot. The computer shut off. Asus (A7V266-E) and MSI replaced the boards for cost of shipping. Koolance replaced the whole case and replaced the defective part in my other 3 cases.
 
For safety I would leave it on for at least 24 hours monitoring it to make sure all the tubes work properly and there aren't any leaks.
 
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