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M00Dawg's Watercooling Adventure

From Loud and Hot To Sorta Not Loud And Cool

Overview of Components : Leak Test : Installation : Problems : Future Work

I have been wanting to really watercool a PC for sometime. I played around with it on an old Pentium 100 rig, but it was never quite to my liking. Last March I decided to really finally take the plunge, and while there were a few bumps along the way, it was well worth it. Want proof? Well my average CPU temperature dropped over 10C (and sometimes dips below the System temperature) and the noise of my system was cut in half (and I could make it even more quiter if I so desired with little effect on the cooling performance). Is watercooling for everyone? Heavens no! But with some hard work, a little know-how, and a desire for a better, quieter, system, it can lead to excellent results. How did M00Dawg become watercooled? Well, keep reading!

Overview of Components:

The pump was originally purchased at Pet's Mart some time ago with my first attempt at watercooling. More recently, I have replaced this with a more powerful and arguably more reliable pond pump from the Home Depot, which is where the tubing and wood, which was also purchased. The reservoir is basically just a juice bucket, although the pictures provided show my older reservoir that I used until the new pump, which was noticably bigger then the old Topfin I was using. All the other components were purchased from DangerDen. I think they make some quality waterblocks and have kept up with their developments long before I attempted my first stab at watercooling.

Perhaps the most important component is the coolant. I found out the hard way that you should always add coolant to the water. This serves to prevent corrosion if you are using different types of metals in the watercooling system; but it also prevents build-up of unwanted living things such as algae. Note that you generally only need a capful or so per gallon of water. Using too much is wasteful and can even impact the cooling potential of the water. The Radiator was initiall by far the most expensive thing I bought. However, if you don't mind hunting around a junk yard, using a heater core from a busted old Chevy will work just fine too. You can even buy them off DangerDen if you prefer. I went with the radiator because I originally wanted to put the entire setup inside the case. That did not work out as well as I had hoped but the radiator works quite well just the same, although I would opt for the 120mm version if you have the room and pocketbook.

Initially, I had some very good luck with the cheap $24.99 special at PetsMart. It was a Topfin 250gph submersable. An the first one lasted for years. The second one? Lasted about a month. Maybe it was just bad but I coudln't return it since I spliced the power cord. The new Beckett I purchased recently is perhaps even a bit more quiet and has no problem pusing water through my system. Again, if you can afford it, I would go with this or even an Eheim, particularly if you want to run an inline setup.

The Leak Test

Before assembling any watercooling system, you should always test it for leaks. Even with non-conductive distilled water, a leak can do quite a bit of damage as the water is conductive enough to short out components costing you that new $300 video card. As such, I spent some time leak testing the setup.

Installation

The final installation took only a few hours. Planning took a while since I found out rather quickly that the radiator would not fit in my case without some rather severe modification. What I decided to do, instead, was build a box that the computer would sit on top of and house the watercooling components there. This proved to be quite useful as I highly doubt putting all the components inside the case would have been very successful even if the radiator fit. It also let me create a bigger reservoir without much worry.

The wooden stand was created almost entirely by my step-dad, Paul. It is quite sturdy indeed! My future father-in-law helped me with the front mounting holes for the radiator fans. He had a really awesome drill-press! The only modifications I have made to it are that I drilled some holes in the back of the stand so that I could feed the tubes in from there, saving some space and making it look a little more clean. I also drilled the screw holes for the radiator fans in the front. All this make it a bit more difficult to transport, but it would have been a pretty big project either way (no LAN parties for my Linux box until I fix that issue).

The waterblock installed very easily, although I had to search on the Internet for a guide on how to do it properly. It is pretty common-sense, but when working with a processor that requires adequate cooling, it is better safe than sorry. You can see from the pictures below that I used the mounting holes over the socket clips. This, while being more of a pain to take on and off, seems to be a much better solution instead of the sockets. While the pictures are a bit blurry, you can see that I have applied Arctic Silver 3, just like I would with a normal heatsink.

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With the original setup, the tubing was run down from the waterblock, through a free expansion slot hole and down to the reservoir which sits under the stand. I now have it running from the reservoir to the radiator to the waterblock and back. I heard this might help the cooling potential since the pump generates a small amount of heat. Doing it this way over an internal system required me to use twice as much tubing, but the flow rate is still tolerable. I placed a good bit of electrical tape around the tubing and the expansion slot hole where the tubes are fed through. I highly doubt that the tubes could be cut in some way, but you never know. In any case, the complete work is below:

Problems

Other than the issue of not being able to fit the components inside the case, there were a few bumps here and there along the way. Perhaps the biggest concern I had was with the buildup of algae. When I first filled the system, I did not use WaterWetter, and while corrosion was not an issue, an algae-like substance started building up in the water and even began to clog up the Maze4. I ended up having to completely drain and re-tube the entire system as well as flush the components out with alcohol. I was unable to get all of the buildup out of the Maze4, partly because I opted not to open it up and risk voiding my warranty and the greater possibility of it leaking. Fortunately there is only a little left and it does not seem to hinder performance much at all. After adding a small bit (probably only a capful or so) of WaterWetter, I have not had any problems.

Future Work

Eventually I plan on adding a video block and/or northbridge waterblock. The video block in particular so I can get rid of the somewhat loud Crystal Orb which serves to cool the GPU. I would also like to install some barbs into the case itself to avoid cluttering up an expansion slot but that will have to wait until after I install the other waterblock(s) since that may inpact where I install the barbs, as well as how many I will need.

I would also like a semi-portable system. As it stands right now I have to drain the entire system in order to move it more than a few feet. Really, the only component that is unsecured is the reservoir. I thought about adding a bottom do the stand and mounting the reservoir to that. If I can find a way to seal the reservoir better, this may be a viable solution. Integrating the system inside a case would be great, but it would require a rather large case and they seem to be fairly expensive. For now, I am quite satisfied with my current setup.