Homebrew Water Cooling?

[aelfwyne]

I have sitting on my shelf a brand new, unused Hayden Transmission Cooler... for a v8 sized application. I keep looking at it and thinking "Damn, that would make an awesome water cooling radiator"...

Is that practical? What kind of pump/blocks, etc would I need, and can I get those things affordably and expect decent performance? I know that water blocks are available, but what about pumps, etc? Where I would I go to find parts like that alacarte, to build a homebrew water system without spending a bunch of cash?

I thought about just buying a cheap kit and using the pump/blocks but swapping out the small radiator included in the kits with this cooler, but I'm not sure if a cheap pump could move water through a system that large...

Any ideas?

 

[Talcite]

Sorry, to break it to you aelfwyne. There's no such thing as cheap watercooling.

I tried the same thing myself a couple months back. I even designed my own waterblocks. Basically you're going to have to cough up atleast $100 for 2 pumps, tubing, and valves and fans. The rad you're describing is huge. I wouldn't be surprised if you had to use 2 pumps in series for this system. For the blocks, it will be atleast another $50. You might as well cough up another $20 or so for a GPU block since you're doing the CPU anyways.

Ontop of these costs, be prepared to spend MANY hours setting up this system. Good watercooling's alot of work, and there really isn't any way around it.

In my opinion, it's not worth it unless you have a good system already for purposes of overclocking, or you want near absolute silence.