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HDD water cooling

K

kwest4peace

n00b
Joined
Jan 2, 2006
Messages
53
Is water cooling the HDD (74gb raptor) and Memory (DDR500) going to be benfitial or just a waste of money? Was going to water cool the video card but the bfg 7800gtxoc 512mb card comes with good air cooling already. I'm going to be building an opteron 170 system and oc'in it on an asus a8n32-sli deluxe. Either way I'm going to be cooling the cpu with water but haven't decided on the hdd and the mem yet.
 
I don't know...how hot do your RAM and HDDs run?
What cooling methods (if any) have you in place now?
 
ram and hd WC is a waste imo....

unless u have HORRIBLE case cooling, ur HD should be fine as is...

and a fan blowing over ur ram is more effective
 
If your going to leave that loud video card fan in there, you can afford to put some decent case fans in, thereby eliminating the need for HDD or RAM water cooling.

I don't have a Raptor, just a 200GB Maxtor, but it's cooled quite nicely by a Yate Loon 120 @ 1300 RPM.

Now if your going for a completely fanless system...
 
benificial, or waste of money? it can be either, depending on what your goals are. If you want to OC, then water on the CPU and GPU with good airflow for the rest is fine. If silence is your goal, and i dont think it is if you're happy with stock HSF on the GPU, then watercooling everything you cam has benifit. Figure out what you want as a result, and go from there.........
 
I don't really want to have any fans in the system. The chipset on the board is fanless using a heat pipe system. I talked to a friend and he said that if I was going to go fanless then the HDD cooler would be good. The ram cooling he said I wouldn't really need. The only reason I'm leaning away from the gpu cooling is the bfg 7800gtxoc comes with basically an arctic cooling silencer setup on it taking up another pci slot and blowing the air out of the case. I have the same thing on my 6800gt and it seems to work well. I would really like to go completely fanless.

If I do cool the gpu is the koolance anygood and does it work on the 512 version also? It says 7800gtx but doesn't specify for both 256 and 512. http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=29_46&products_id=174
 
topcat989 said:
benificial, or waste of money? it can be either, depending on what your goals are. If you want to OC, then water on the CPU and GPU with good airflow for the rest is fine. If silence is your goal, and i dont think it is if you're happy with stock HSF on the GPU, then watercooling everything you cam has benifit. Figure out what you want as a result, and go from there.........
Click to expand...

Even if silence is your goal you dont need to watercool the HDD and the RAM. You could probably cool both of them adequately with a silent intake fan and use the PSU fan as the outtake. If you have the radiator on or in the case then that is more fans providing more than adequate case airflow.

Will you see tangible, real world benefits from watercooling the RAM and HDD....most likely not unless you are running your rig under an extremely unusual environment.
 
my HDD and RAM are water cooled.. the case is very quite with 5 120mm fans at a low volt the rerason i water cooled my HDDs is because i was over heating them them my fans where running on low speed. as far as the ram i have never over heated them that i know i have killed 1gig so far in the computer so far and i think i dould blame my lack of ait blowing in the case.
 
Derrick70 said:
my HDD and RAM are water cooled.. the case is very quite with 5 120mm fans at a low volt the rerason i water cooled my HDDs is because i was over heating them them my fans where running on low speed. as far as the ram i have never over heated them that i know i have killed 1gig so far in the computer so far and i think i dould blame my lack of ait blowing in the case.
Click to expand...

I highly doubt you killed your ram due to lack of airflow, they can take some pretty high temperatures. Even if you have 5 slow speed 120mm fans, the Zalman TN500A uses only natural convection of air to cool the ram.
 
I don't plan on cooling the ram anymore although it looks nice. I'm still going to cool the HDD because I have a raptor now and it has problems when its really hot in my room, thats the only thing I can think of to explain the issue. I'm trying to decide on water cooling the video card, but I don't know if this koolance http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=29_46&products_id=174 product will work properly on the 512 version of the 7800gtx.
 
Erasmus354 said:
I highly doubt you killed your ram due to lack of airflow, they can take some pretty high temperatures. Even if you have 5 slow speed 120mm fans, the Zalman TN500A uses only natural convection of air to cool the ram.
Click to expand...


ok well then how about you tell me why my set up burns out ram or why a hds would heat up so much you couldent touch it?
 
WD740GD dissipates less than 7 watts of power at idle, and less than 12 watts under full load. A 92mm fan @ 7V or an aluminum heatsink of any size at all will keep WD740GD well within acceptable thermal tolerances.

Also, the human sense of temperature is a good judge of heat, not temperature. Since the metal of the drive chassis conducts heat rapidly into your fingers/hand, the drive feels "hot." However, in reality, the drive chassis is doing what it is designed to do, rapidly dissipate heat away fro mthe drive's vital mechanical partsinto the outside.
 
Watercooling is about taking heat from one place and dumping it in another place. Lots of people say that you don't need to watercool HD's or RAM, but many people do. I guess it depends on what you are looking for and what your cooling philosophy is about. I personally think watercooling HD's is an excellent idea. Watercooling RAM is also a good idea IF you are doing something with the RAM that makes it get hot enough that you can't do what you want with it. If you are juicing your ram up with lots of voltage or you have less than stellar air flow (As might be the case if you are looking for silence) then you might want to consider ram cooling too. Watercooled ram looks nice too. :D
 
i say that watercooling ram would be only be needed if your running 3.3v or more...
 
DougLite said:
WD740GD dissipates less than 7 watts of power at idle, and less than 12 watts under full load. A 92mm fan @ 7V or an aluminum heatsink of any size at all will keep WD740GD well within acceptable thermal tolerances.

Also, the human sense of temperature is a good judge of heat, not temperature. Since the metal of the drive chassis conducts heat rapidly into your fingers/hand, the drive feels "hot." However, in reality, the drive chassis is doing what it is designed to do, rapidly dissipate heat away fro mthe drive's vital mechanical partsinto the outside.
Click to expand...

that is understadable but when the HD gets hot enough to cause data coruption some thing is wrong. I did turn around and add a 120 papts fan to the front of my case to aid in cooling them and it worked. it worked great but the noise was more than lame. that is why i went with water cooling them. i could turn the fan down at a low speed and have it blowing through a rad and let the water and blocks take up the heat with lil to no noise.
 
thanks for the feedback guys. I decided to water cool the video hd and cpu and forget about the ram water cooling. I'm going to be oc'n the ram but i don't have to mess with the voltage much to do what i want with it.
 
kwest4peace said:
I don't really want to have any fans in the system. The chipset on the board is fanless using a heat pipe system. I talked to a friend and he said that if I was going to go fanless then the HDD cooler would be good. The ram cooling he said I wouldn't really need. The only reason I'm leaning away from the gpu cooling is the bfg 7800gtxoc comes with basically an arctic cooling silencer setup on it taking up another pci slot and blowing the air out of the case. I have the same thing on my 6800gt and it seems to work well. I would really like to go completely fanless.

If I do cool the gpu is the koolance anygood and does it work on the 512 version also? It says 7800gtx but doesn't specify for both 256 and 512. http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=29_46&products_id=174
Click to expand...
FYI: I'm using this Koolance cooler on my 6800 ultra and I'm happy with the temps. To determine if this cooler will work for you just check the back side of the video card. If it has any ram chips on it you will need to continue to use the ram cooling from the stock setup as the Koolance unit only cools the front of the video card. There are better cooling units out there but you will spend more than double the money buying most of them. The Dangerden unit is $179 and the Koolance is $79... Easy choice when you get 95% of the performance and save $100. Of course, there's no accounting for taste and I have to admit that I think the DD cooler is way sexier than the Koolance... But, the Koolance is certainly cool enough. (Pun intended)
 
A five-volted fan blowing on the bottom of a HDD is going to cool it better than water, and you won't hear it.
 
thewhiteguy said:
A five-volted fan blowing on the bottom of a HDD is going to cool it better than water............
Click to expand...

care to prove that statement, or were you talking out of your........well, you get the idea. Please provide verifiable proof of your statment. ;)
 
topcat989 said:
care to prove that statement, or were you talking out of your........well, you get the idea. Please provide verifiable proof of your statment. ;)
Click to expand...
Waterblocks cool the top and sides of the drive, not the chips and motor on the bottom, which are where the heat is actually produced.
 
thewhiteguy said:
Waterblocks cool the top and sides of the drive, not the chips and motor on the bottom, which are where the heat is actually produced.
Click to expand...

i think you are still talking out your ass on this one. The sides of HD are designed to do a major amount of sinking for the entire drive. The PCB chips don't get much, but the spindle motor and rest of the HD transfers the majority of heat through to the sides, and
(bottom of some drives, like WD) Another thing you are wrong on, is that some HD blocks cool the sides, but some cool the bottom as well.

That being said, for WC i would perfer a block that cools the sides and the bottom of the drive at the same time. If cooling only the sides (as will be in my new setup) then a mild airflow will take care of the PCB....

BTW, I got my info from a person who used to design HDs.
 
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