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6 months ago I started building my first water cooled setup for my computer, just the CPU. But instead of using a reservoir that attaches to the back of the computer in a cylinder type chamber or a double bay Perspex tray type of deal I thought I might as well make something different because at the time I was also half way through building an MDF prototype case for the computer but thats another story. See below for image of the MDF case.
In the end I ended up getting a NZXT Phantom case and adding a 200mm fan to its already multitude of fans.
Back to the reservoir, I hit a price range of between 500-800 to get the below imaged (its easier to describe stuff with pictures instead of words)
cone-cylinder shaped reservoir milled out of 316 Stainless Steel which I obviously avoided even if the shape did match my Altec Lansing Speakers and would hold about 11 litres of coolant.
So I looked for what other people were using for un-conventional reservoirs and came across things like 44 gallon drums parked outside in the yard with tubes over the window sill, swimming pools and a vast array of people cutting holes in plastic coke bottles. People mentioning beer kegs sprung up here and there but nothing to look at and they were focused on actual liquor supplier beer kegs 19 litre -90 litre pressurized kegs.
The postage for them is a bit above me ontop of their already ridiculous price for the keg itself (plus Australia Post and Couriers are a bit hesitant transporting metal cylinders with valves on them and thats being very understated) plus I dont particularly think something that looks like a beat up gas tank sitting on my desk is all that great.
So I went to the shops to find me a consumer friendly party beer keg. Dan Murphys (a liquor retailer) only had Heineken which I believe is a gas pressurized 5 litre keg with a strange straw outlet and a whole pile of over complication to deal with. So I went on to some other grog store that I can't remember and picked up a Bitsburger 5 litre keg which was much more simple and had more grunt to its outlet.
The accessories that came with it were great like taking the top plug and using it as plug in my Tygon 3603 Tubing 1/2 ID was a great help during building and bleeding and its surrounding rubber housing was moved to the bottom outlet and I inserted a barb fitting into it and havent had a single leak yet even with pulling it side to side and around and around.
The beer contents were reasonably useless too me, I mean I drunk one glass of the stuff and remaining the 96% of it went down the kitchen sink. I use to be big on drinking but those days are behind me.
To fill up the beer keg I used about 4.9 litres of Demineralised Water and 500 millilitres of Coolermaster Coolant Blue which is now discontinued I believe (and I will refer this concoction as liquid from now on). As for hardware I used:
* Bitspower G1/4 Matte Black 1/2 Compression Fitting CC5
* EK-DCP 2.2 12V DC Pump
* Black Ice GT Xtreme 240 Radiator
* a very stubborn EK-Supreme HF Full Nickel Water Block (which took over 4 hours to install that part alone using a heap of sticky tape their products physically are great but how they assemble them is terrible the rubber gasket would not stay in shape). See below for picture of how to use sticking tape inside a CPU water block.
As for the cooling result previously I had a Noctua Heatsink and 120mm fan cooling the CPU which was great with a temp of 38 degrees Celsius on a warm night with this water cooling setup and about 5.4 litres of liquid flowing through it knocked 9 degrees off the temperature (obviously the more then 2m of tubing and radiator I used stored a bit more liquid to get it over the 5 litre mark). Storing the liquid in the beer keg thats made of thin metal (aluminium in this case) means the entire reservoir acts as a heat sink to dissipate heat that comes back into it.
Both those temps (Air cooled & Water Cooled) were taken on same temperature nights, same time of night, doing the same amount of (playing Torchlight) CPU workload.
Going from air cooling to water cooling didnt decrease the noise level. The quiet sound of the fan was basically replaced by the quiet sound of the pump (both of which are drowned out by other much nosier interties like my Velociraptor hard drive and domestic violence shouting from down the street Ive lost count how many times have I heard Im not going to jail for that this week).
Feel free to ask me any questions you might have relating to the cooling nature of this post.
In the end I ended up getting a NZXT Phantom case and adding a 200mm fan to its already multitude of fans.
Back to the reservoir, I hit a price range of between 500-800 to get the below imaged (its easier to describe stuff with pictures instead of words)
So I looked for what other people were using for un-conventional reservoirs and came across things like 44 gallon drums parked outside in the yard with tubes over the window sill, swimming pools and a vast array of people cutting holes in plastic coke bottles. People mentioning beer kegs sprung up here and there but nothing to look at and they were focused on actual liquor supplier beer kegs 19 litre -90 litre pressurized kegs.
The postage for them is a bit above me ontop of their already ridiculous price for the keg itself (plus Australia Post and Couriers are a bit hesitant transporting metal cylinders with valves on them and thats being very understated) plus I dont particularly think something that looks like a beat up gas tank sitting on my desk is all that great.
So I went to the shops to find me a consumer friendly party beer keg. Dan Murphys (a liquor retailer) only had Heineken which I believe is a gas pressurized 5 litre keg with a strange straw outlet and a whole pile of over complication to deal with. So I went on to some other grog store that I can't remember and picked up a Bitsburger 5 litre keg which was much more simple and had more grunt to its outlet.
The accessories that came with it were great like taking the top plug and using it as plug in my Tygon 3603 Tubing 1/2 ID was a great help during building and bleeding and its surrounding rubber housing was moved to the bottom outlet and I inserted a barb fitting into it and havent had a single leak yet even with pulling it side to side and around and around.
The beer contents were reasonably useless too me, I mean I drunk one glass of the stuff and remaining the 96% of it went down the kitchen sink. I use to be big on drinking but those days are behind me.
To fill up the beer keg I used about 4.9 litres of Demineralised Water and 500 millilitres of Coolermaster Coolant Blue which is now discontinued I believe (and I will refer this concoction as liquid from now on). As for hardware I used:
* Bitspower G1/4 Matte Black 1/2 Compression Fitting CC5
* EK-DCP 2.2 12V DC Pump
* Black Ice GT Xtreme 240 Radiator
* a very stubborn EK-Supreme HF Full Nickel Water Block (which took over 4 hours to install that part alone using a heap of sticky tape their products physically are great but how they assemble them is terrible the rubber gasket would not stay in shape). See below for picture of how to use sticking tape inside a CPU water block.
As for the cooling result previously I had a Noctua Heatsink and 120mm fan cooling the CPU which was great with a temp of 38 degrees Celsius on a warm night with this water cooling setup and about 5.4 litres of liquid flowing through it knocked 9 degrees off the temperature (obviously the more then 2m of tubing and radiator I used stored a bit more liquid to get it over the 5 litre mark). Storing the liquid in the beer keg thats made of thin metal (aluminium in this case) means the entire reservoir acts as a heat sink to dissipate heat that comes back into it.
Both those temps (Air cooled & Water Cooled) were taken on same temperature nights, same time of night, doing the same amount of (playing Torchlight) CPU workload.
Going from air cooling to water cooling didnt decrease the noise level. The quiet sound of the fan was basically replaced by the quiet sound of the pump (both of which are drowned out by other much nosier interties like my Velociraptor hard drive and domestic violence shouting from down the street Ive lost count how many times have I heard Im not going to jail for that this week).
Feel free to ask me any questions you might have relating to the cooling nature of this post.
