Water-cooled 0 Db Game Developer PC

Intro: Water-cooled 0 Db Game Developer PC

I wanted to get an absolutely silent but also powerful PC system for my home office.  I am a computer game developer and spend around 7 to 14 hours a day in the same room as my computer.  So building a silent powerful system has been something that appeared to me as worthwhile. This is the third water cooled system that I did build and the first where all components are water cooled including the  700w power unit.

These are the specifications of my Water-cooled 0 Bd PC Workstation:

Processor: AMD FX(tm)-8150 Eight-Core Processor            (8 CPUs), ~3.8GHz
Memory: 32768MB RAM (32GB)
Mainbord: GA-990FXA-UD3 Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
GFX Card 1: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024 MB
GFX Card 2: NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 2048 MB
Shared Memory: 3071 MB
Display Memory: 4065 MB
HD0: SSD OCZ VERTEX PLUS 120GB
HD1: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 2TB
HD2: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB02TB
HD3: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 2TB

I build it based on an old Aluminum server case that housed previously a Dual Xeon System from 2002. I did build the system under the assumption that no fans would be used within the case. Hence I came up with a cooling solution that cooled everything from the mainboard over the power unit, memory, the hard drives as well as the GFX cards with water. I did buy some coolers and build others myself out of copper pipes.  The system holds about 14 liters of water and utilizes 4 car radiator units and a hand build copper pipe grill. I came up with a regulation and refilling system on top of the computer to regulate the water levels. The water is moved by 2 pumps on internal and one external pump that can be added if higher water flows are required. The car radiator units on the side and on the top have 8 silent fans attached to them that can be triggered on a hot summer day to drastically improve the cooling performance by switching from passive to active cooling. I painted the aluminum case with copper color out of esthetic reasons to get an overall look that fits the copper pipes.

The system can run with 100% CPU and GPU load and an air temperature of 25°c with a water temperature of 28°c in passive and 26°c in active cooling mode.

I have 4 monitors attached to the 3 with 1920x1200 and one with 2560x1600. I use this system as my main work PC. I am using the system now for about 5 month without problems, I just had to add about 100 ccm of new water.

Comments

[shaun.allardice]

Sorry, but what a horrible, messy build, the copper braising is shocking not to mention how awful everything in general looks, why is this even on Instructables, If I built something like this I would go out of my way to hide it and make sure no one ever lays their eyes on the monstrosity again. Damn

[JesusG33k]

Zip tie mounted blocks and water cooled VRMs... Seems like a LinusTechTips build for sure...

[ghmk]

What is a “LinusTechTips build” I don’t
know what you mean with that? I just ran out of fitting, screws, brackets and
holders so I used cable ties instead while building this system about 4 years
ago.

[yelkady]

so i wonder does the pump uses electricity direct from the power supply or from an another external power supply
pleas inform me with the way you power them (pumps)

[Taffy_The_Third]

Nice Work, a little messy and over the top but a dedicated build all the same.

[tehborreh]

Why's everything attached with zipties?

[nils311]

Fantastic project! Some would call that overkill, I consider it thorough. The drone of computer fans on a regular PC can get annoying, so I can only imagine the kind of heat your rig must dissapate. The copper pain was a nice touch too.

[hg341]

i don't know if something is wrong with me but over the years ive come to enjoy the drone of fans(anything over 3" is too loud though)

[zorwick]

cool and chillin'

[buirv]

For being in the IT industry for over 25 years, this is a little over the top... for the amount of money you spent on cooper plumbing you could have bought a CRAY.

[ghmk]

Hello buirv,

Actually the copper has been not that expensive the copper plumbing has been about 60 euro or so. So the cost for the copper plumbing has been halve of the price for the factory build CPU, 2xGFX, north and south bridge coolers. The big tubes without the corners have still been leftovers from the pubbing work in my house so no extra cost for them. But I did get a good price for the copper plumbing parts ;) And I did buy the factory build coolers from e-bay. One big copper plumbing corner element has been about 2 € and a t junction about 3€ for the big tubes and for the small ones about 1 € and 1,5 €.