External water cooling?

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Jul 6, 2016
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Just curious, How come i dont really see a lot of external water cooling set up? I know number one concern is portability. like myself i have 2 Gaming pc. One is the cooler master elite 120 modified if i ever want to transport. Then I have my Fractal case gaming set up which doesnt go anywhere. I have The fractal with external water cooling set up.. the external cooler is in a different room so my fractal system is dead silent and no heat in my office, What do you guys think? BTW, I have my Fractal PC and External Water cooling Hooked up to A Wemo Smart Switch. I can turn ON/OFF system togerther at the same time via smart app from my phone.
My set up is similar to this just not in a basement...lol just the another room. will post pics when i get home.



 
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I've been using a pair of Koolance Exos 2.5 units on my test bench for a number of years. They have worked extremely well. I did some external cooling back in the day in a similar vein to what your talking about. I don't care for it because it's not as clean looking.
 
I have debated going this route so I can stick the radiator in a different location (under desk/wall mount) and pack up the old SMA8. The damn thing is too big and several PCSs later with a growing family have reduced my once luxurious man cave into a small office.

MO-RA3 (360/420) I believe the 120mm/140mm variant is highly praised for its performance.
 
Just curious, How come i dont really see a lot of external water cooling set up? I know number one concern is portability.
I'm actually moving to a MO-RA3 setup because my current rig, housed in a Core P5, is so damn bulky. I'm in the process of relocating for work and realized that if I need to custom crate my computer to move it, something might be wrong.

It'll be much easier to just disconnect the rad assembly when I need to do work, and then I'll have a nice small Meshify C to deal with.
 
I've been using a pair of Koolance Exos 2.5 units on my test bench for a number of years. They have worked extremely well. I did some external cooling back in the day in a similar vein to what your talking about. I don't care for it because it's not as clean looking.
Are those Koolance units you got from me or did you purchase others? If from me, holy hell have those been running a long time....
 
One of them I purchased myself. I bought it over ten years ago. The other one I got from you.
I bet that one unit is 15 years old. Koolance was always underrated.
 
The complexity of setting everything up is the reason why you don't see it more often. Running tubes into another room is not always an easy option, especially when doors and/or walls get in the way. Then there is also the fact that that room can't be used for anything but storage, but then that decreases the cooling efficiency of the radiator if its too small. Not too many people have large empty rooms. Outside is an option, but then you have the weather to deal with.

Watercooling used to help a lot with hot 125+ watt mainstream processors and multiple 250+ watt graphics cards, with CLCs not really existing at the time. Intel then made HEDT significantly more expensive than mainstream, and everyone began using 70-95 watt processors that weren't thermally limited by a reasonably good air setup when overclocked. At the same time, multi-GPU gaming fell by the wayside, first with focusing developing profiles for only two GPUs before dying out altogether. Hot power hungry processors have made it back with Ryzen, but multi-GPU gaming is still dead and PCI-E board power not likely to increase anytime soon. A large mid-size tower case can support enough radiators to relatively quietly cool a powerful gaming setup, let alone the need to go with massive external radiators.
 
The complexity of setting everything up is the reason why you don't see it more often. Running tubes into another room is not always an easy option, especially when doors and/or walls get in the way. Then there is also the fact that that room can't be used for anything but storage, but then that decreases the cooling efficiency of the radiator if its too small. Not too many people have large empty rooms. Outside is an option, but then you have the weather to deal with.

Watercooling used to help a lot with hot 125+ watt mainstream processors and multiple 250+ watt graphics cards, with CLCs not really existing at the time. Intel then made HEDT significantly more expensive than mainstream, and everyone began using 70-95 watt processors that weren't thermally limited by a reasonably good air setup when overclocked. At the same time, multi-GPU gaming fell by the wayside, first with focusing developing profiles for only two GPUs before dying out altogether. Hot power hungry processors have made it back with Ryzen, but multi-GPU gaming is still dead and PCI-E board power not likely to increase anytime soon. A large mid-size tower case can support enough radiators to relatively quietly cool a powerful gaming setup, let alone the need to go with massive external radiators.
If you pick your house well you can though, or build it to your specs of course. The room my systems are in is too small but it does share interior walls with 2 suitable office rooms and so with a portable 14k btu air conditioner in the room that comes on when it hits 80 degrees and runs til 72 every now and then, it works great. You just need 3 meter DP and USB cables and things, restricts your desk placement a bit. This way the entire system is out of the room and you don't have to dick around with longer pipes, hoses, or complicating moving the system out for dusting etc. This room is still cooled by the central A/C though it's return gap and duct size are insufficient for the installed TDP.
 
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If that's your build in the YouTube vid, it looks very good..

You don't hear a lot about it because watercooling is a niche thing, and external watercooling is even more niche..... In general, if you want watercooling to have a heavily overclocked build, you get a case that can handle it. Same if you want a quiet build. You're going to invest hundreds in watercooling parts, so why not get a case that can handle it? In most cases, it doesn't really make sense to go for external watercooling, so why do it? But watercooling isn't always about being sensible...

Anyway, for no particular reason I built an external watercololing setup a few years ago. I think I convinced myself to do it because I could easily reuse the setup for future builds (and never did). I've upgraded and thrown out the PC since then, but this might give people some ideas. Main advice I can give to anyone trying this is to always use good quality quick disconnects to seperate your external rad and PC; it makes everything so much easier. Thumbnails below....


2014-09-13 14.18.25.jpg2014-09-13 12.56.38.jpg
 
If you pick your house well you can though, or build it to your specs of course. The room my systems are in is too small but it does share interior walls with 2 suitable office rooms and so with a portable 14k btu air conditioner in the room that comes on when it hits 80 degrees and runs til 72 every now and then, it works great. You just need 3 meter DP and USB cables and things, restricts your desk placement a bit. This way the entire system is out of the room and you don't have to dick around with longer pipes, hoses, or complicating moving the system out for dusting etc. This room is still cooled by the central A/C though it's return gap and duct size are insufficient for the installed TDP.

How often do people have the luxury to do something like that...
 
I’ve been tempted just have wc finish in quick connectors in a pci slot. For me though not much advantage unless I run it outside the room, then I’m into all sorts of pain with pumps as garage to study is gonna need a pump that can do thousands of litres an hour to have the head to reach. Running that psi would scare the crap out of me.

It’s a thing though, someone linked Dan’s rad box earlier in the thread and you can get it as a DC solution ala https://www.coolitsystems.com/rack-dlc/ - problem with dcs generally being power availability not cooling it’s kinda meh.
 
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