How to Watercool a PC

Why would you want to water cool a PC? First of all it can much more quiet and it drops the temperature of your computer greatly. My quad core went from 50C under load to 28C Idle and under load! It is also good for overclocking. When you overclock the components of a PC get hot. The more you do it the hotter they get. It gets to a point were air cooling just won't cut it.

I really enjoy water cooling and it recently became one of my new hobbies. A water cooling rig requires maintenance. You need to know your way around a computer pretty well to be able to do this. I've been building computer since I was 10 and this really pushes you to the limit. I want to go even farther and try vapor phase change cooling. It's pretty much building a refrigerator inside of your computer. Drops things to around -20C

The image shows my build before I cleaned up the wiring.

Some more pics of my computer here

Step 1: Finding your way around.

First know your way around a computer. Refer to the pictures.

Comments

[ewolvin]

Another pre-built water cooler ! I had hoped to see "home made" water blocks instead of store bought ones. Anyone with $$$ can build this. Had you made a vid with water blocks made from scrap around your home Now that would have been a video !

[kumaran512]

very nice idea.....but if any pin hole leak happens...........omg

[Omnesty]

No, your all wrong, nvidia may have been the best before, but now its ATI, much better than nvidia, ppl just stuck on it cuz no one wants to change and try something new. :P

[Bartboy]

ATI doesn't exist. It's AMD now.

[hleon]

Crap!!! I better grab an ATI for my desktop I'm going to order (iBUYPOWER is the bestest custom computers ever)!!

[hintss]

not dell? :P

[Miles Tails Prower]

Please update this ible. The 8800GTX is not the king of graphics cards anymore! It even wasn't back in 2008. There were the 3870 x2's, etcetera.

[razzlekunai]

But the point of this ible is to teach someone how to watercool their desktop, not inform what the king of gpus is

[CowGuy]

Of course its outdated this guide is 3 years old

[virgil22]

Actually deionized is purer than distilled. Distilled has just been boiled then collected in a condenser, but deionized has gone thru' a lot of filters and ion-exchange resins to remove things. Specifically, if you have any metal parts in your system, DO NOT use deionized water, as it will corrode the system, and shorten its life. All manufacturers of water baths (e.g. for use in scientific labs) specifically recommend not to use deionized water for this reason. Tap water will do, but bugs will grow in it. You can get various products to keep the system free of bugs (algicide / bath-clear etc). Having a lot of lights around will also promote bug growth, so black/colored tubing will be better than clear.

[xirekaj]

how can you get purer than pure water? I think in the water he is thinking free of contaminates. distilled water has nothing but h2o in it unless you happens to have some other liquid in the water that boils near the same temperature as water

[CowGuy]

I am a little confused, but you want distilled. It's pure water with nothing else. It keeps your system alive longer and keeps from clogging(I highly doubt some small minerals would clog your system before corrode the metal) As stated before deionized is just past through filters. Distilled is steamed and condensed so any impurities will be taken out.

[bmlbytes]

OK heres the deal. I did say that distilled and deionized were the same. And they are. It's just the method they use to get PURE water. Distilled is boiled and the steam is trapped and cooled. When water is boiled at 212 degrees F (100 degrees C) all imperfections are left behind. Only the water will turn to steam. They use sterilized tubes to move that steam to another container that is cooler than the hot one. The water condenses and turns to liquid again. Deionized water is a little harder to explain as to how the process works. Basically they pass the water through a filter to remove any bacteria, viruses or other organics. Then they start the deionization process (some examples are triple filter or reverse osmosis). This, in theory, will remove every non-organic material except H3O+ and OH- (which will not hurt your system). It is essentially pure water, as it does not have any other material in it. Neither distilled or deionized water will hurt a water cooled system. Even tap water won't if you add things like anti-rust to the water.

[virgil22]

You're kind-of correct... Yes, distilled water will theoretically get rid of impurities, but it won't get rid of ALL the salts and ions. For most applications (like cooling systems, car batteries) it is enough, but for some scientific applications (like making up solutions in a biochemistry lab, like I do), distilled is not good enough - it contains significant amounts (low micromolar concentrations) of ions such as calcium, potassium, and nitrite. When you need really well-defined ion concentrations to do biochemistry experiments, distilled is not good enough. You're correct that deionized is made by "filtering", but that's not the whole story. Deionized systems (e.g. MilliQ, made by Millipore) work first by filtering out organics and viruses etc, and then they pass the water through a series of cartridges packed with Ion-Exchange Resins. These resins are not filters per-se. They work by swapping the ions in the water (sodium, calcium etc.) for H+ and OH-. Thus, these resins eventually wear-out (e.g. their ability to soak-up Na+ and give-out H+ becomes exhausted). The resin beads are typically about 1mm diameter and the cartridges are 10cm wide by 30 cm long, and cost several hundred $$ to replace. In typical usage (10 liters a day), our cartridges last about a year before they need to be replaced. They can also be "re-charged" by passing through solutions of concentrated acid or base. Good deionized water systems will include a resistance meter, and for most life-sciences applications you must have water with greater than 18 mega-ohms of resistance, in order to be sure it has virtually no ions. Reverse osmosis (RO) is a completely different system altogether. It works by forcing the water through a selective membrane (a filter) at very high pressure. Only the water molecules can get through, nothing else. RO systems are pretty expensive for lab' use, but are sometimes used on an industrial scale to purify drinking water from sea water. The membrane technology is a pretty closely guarded secret, due to the commercial implications. Some hand-held water purification systems for camping etc. work by using RO. Regardless of the system used, it will only be as good as the water you put in. Thus, in some parts of the world with very "soft water", single distillation is enough. In other parts with hard water (i.e. a lot of calcium, lime) double-distillation is necessary. You'd be silly for example to put tap-water into an RO or deionizing system - it would clog up very quickly. We currently feed distilled water from a house system into our deionization module. You're wrong about deionized water not damaging things (just google "deionized water corrosion" if you don't believe me). Read the instruction booklet of any water-bath, incubator etc. that is designed for laboratory use. These things are built of stainless steel, and they specifically instruct you NOT to use deionized water. It has no ions at all, so will act to pull ions out of whatever it can (i.e. any metal parts of your system), thus corroding those items. The amount of corrosion will depend on the quality of the system, the coatings over the metal parts, and the specific alloys used. For example, aluminum parts will corrode very fast. Distilled water will not exert such pressure on these things, because it already contains a few ions to begin with. In addition, since some deionized systems use the acid/base back-flush method to regenerate the cartridges, this can leave residues of ions in the system that might end up in the final water. Bottom line, distilled water is better, cheaper, and safer.

[shawnlogan]

so, then it begs the question; does anyone sell dionized distilled water? Why not double up for better results?

[_Scratch_]

You can get a reverse osmosis water system for a kitchen, only costs about 250$, and all you taste is water. Water, and nothing else, it's fantastic.

[James (pseudo-geek)]

you got that a little backward. light kills bacteria. look it up if you don't believe me.

[Mexicoman]

Very correct! Some light kill everything that pass by. Like for drinking system. Bug grow in dark, wet, warm. Not live in light, dry, cold.

[mrwizard4570]

ultra violet light kills bacteria and algae but regular light makes things grow

[James (pseudo-geek)]

white light contains all spectrum of light, including uv. Think about this: have you ever seen mold growing in a very bright place? I haven't.

[CowGuy]

The black tubing has been proven to cut down on the mold. Someone did a test on a forum. They rotated tons of different types of tubing. I don't know the scientific reason as of why. Black tubing tends to look better too.

[James (pseudo-geek)]

interesting. maybe mold needs light to grow, but not much, and too much kills it.

[dsaw]

light doesn't kill all bacteria, if it did, we wouldn't have photosynthetic organisms.

[!Andrew_Modder!]

UV light does kill bacteria. anyone who has taken 9th grade physical science should know that. plus they use UV lights in hospitals to steralise equipment and keep infection from happening.

[James (pseudo-geek)]

why don't you look it up on a university website before you post comments.

[technodude92]

Mold = fungi. fungi don't like light.
While white light does contain the full spectrum of light, the amount of UV rays emitted is very little. There is much more UV emitted from sterilization lamps than from lightbulbs.

Referring to a comment earlier, white light only helps plants and other photosynthetic organisms to grow. humans grow the fastest in the womb, not much light in there.

And finally, what many are/may be seeing in the tubes is algae. Algae DOES need light as it's a photosynthetic organism. Black tubing will stop light and therefore algae can't grow.

[Cyto]

Fungi don't all need light, most are not photosynthetic, but Fungi are a very wide range of organisms, and some do require light to survive. Btw light does not hurt all fungi, take your average everyday mushrooms for example, they'll grow right in the middle of your lawn even if you live in the brightest, sunniest place in the world, as long as your soil is somewhat acidic.

[James (pseudo-geek)]

thanks for the thorough explanation.

[sparkynf12]

ok first i like the design. now im in the prosess of building a pretty nice gaming board and i came across a useful tip for every1 on this page. instead of just the cpu fan you should have added a tec peltier those white boards in car refridgerators. thats sorta how im doing my pc but instead of just acting as a cpu cooler mine is also acting as a trusty mtn dew holder built into an old pentium II sever tower. I will be posting some pics of my computer in about a month if any1 wants to see my progress.

[stephin99]

it increacing water flow
increaced

[franzwa]

NO! THE KING OF GPU İS GTX 295 YAAAAAAHHHH  i got 1 and it didn't  fit the pc case so i got a new pc case!

[stephin99]

if i had 2 grand i would buy the king of kings video card (no its not god) the ASUS ARES/2DIS/4GD5 Radeon HD 5870 X2 4GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity
so ha

[Miles Tails Prower]

No. It's the HD 5970. That is the fastest card right now.

[franzwa]

welll ur good sir as u might know nvidia has the new gtx460 or something like zat and its simply the best so far

[_Scratch_]

The GTX 460 is nothing compared to the HD 5970, or the new 6000 series, to compete with that, you need the nvidia GTX 500s series, which still cant beat ATI's best card now. For a budget build, nvidia is good, but if want some real power, you need a high end ATI.

P.S. -My Nvidia GTS 450 can run Crysis at max detail, no lag easily. And thats only a 100$ card, so I'm not sure what the point of getting a card much better than a low 500s series is.

[_Scratch_]

Also, back when the 8/9K series for nvidia came out, the 8800 and the 9000 2x or what ever it was were the best cards i believe.

[computer_guy]

Does it really matter? everything is concealed. It's like, saying, bacteria will grow in a completely airtight, recently sterilized environment, nothing's going to happen.

[ZeroXL91]

actually, there's a good chance it will. Ok so distllied water and UV light? Im goin with that.

[chakra]

dude..!!! i wonder why u ppl are so concerned about bacteria!! wanna avoid those bugs??? just add ALCHOHOL..!!!!

[nemaster203]

If there's any acrylic stuff in your water cooling loop, such as a reservoir, alcohol will chemically react with it and cause it to break, leaking all over everything.