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How can I improve my setup?

J

JPGR87

Gawd
Joined
Aug 24, 2002
Messages
640
I've been watercooling for a little while using a custom setup made from auto parts and parts i had laying around. I was getting pretty decent temps until the ancient 12v power supply I was using decided not to work anymore, leaving me to revert back to air cooling for the time being. At the moment I have everything out and apart, so before I fix it all i was wondering what people thought.

Housing: This is an external system so I bent an enclosure out of stainless steel that measures about seven inches wide, eight inches high, and maybe twenty or so long. Its got a flip-up lid on it that covers everything but the radiator I use, so all air escaping the box goes through the radiator. Its ugly as hell, but it gets the job done and its out of sight, so that's not really an issue. Is there anything readily available that would make for a better enclosure though? Or should I try to incorperate everything into the case?

Pump: Its something called a Jabsco Mini-Puppy. Its an industrial in-line impeller pump that my dad got (two of) for free since they were "broken". It works pretty well, i think its rated for 108gph, but its definately got a lot of oomph. My only major beef with it is it's friggin loud. I've put two inches of foam under it but it still makes a nice low humming noise. It might also be the fault of it sitting in a big metal box though. I'd like to try to keep this pump, unless there's something ridiculously better.

Radiator: I use an aluminum transmission cooler, about five by seven by one inches. Its got two 80mm fans attached to it staggered in two corners. Since this whole system hides in an eave in my house with the excepton of the waterblock, its ambient temperature is relatively cool so the two fans do a nice job of pulling the heat out of the rad and away. I also have one of the imfamous bonneville heater cores laying around that's available for my use, i'm just wondering if it would give me better performance. I'd have to cut the ends and JBWeld some fittings into the holes which is a lot of work, not to mention retrofitting it into my enclosure. Would it give me much better performance?

Reservoir: Right now I'm using a rubbermaid latch top plastic box glued shut with RTV silicon. Its also got two fittings forcibly threaded into it, which are also sealed with the black RTV silicon (Permatex Ultra-Black). Its very prone to leaking though. I really hate it and I want to replace it (i'm a fan of high capacity reservoirs), but I can't really find something big enough that shuts and is sturdy. I have to be really careful when playing with the pump so as to not break the seal on the barbs and spring a leak. Any suggestions would be awesome.

Tubing: Using black 3/8" Gates Fuel Line tubing. I actually like it, its really durable and has nice thick walls. Its kind of an eyesore but transparencey isn't really important to me. This stuff can handle high temps and gasoline, so i'd like to keep it.

Waterblock: It only cools my CPU, so i have a DD MAZE 4. I got this right before the RBX came out, but it gives nice temps.

Water: Actually I just play it simple and use 50/50 of antifreeze and disilled water. I had a bunch of prestone laying around, so i figured "what the heck". I like the green color of it, even though I can never see it.

So what i'm really looking for is suggestions and feedback. I run an Athlon XP 2500+. OCed to 11*200, and my temps under load pushed but never broke 100degrees F (monitoring using MBM5). I'd like to have a quieter system (stupid loud pump), and if possible even mod it into my case (its a pretty generic enermax). The only thing really stopping me from doing that is the reservoir though. Your thoughts are appreciated, sorry about the length!
 
for quieting it down, line the inside of the metal with something...preferably rebuild the chassis. bare metal vibrates like mad unless it's heavily braced with a material with lower vibration properties.

Start off with wood, the make your metal skin and glue the entire sruface area of it to the wood. This will drastically reduce vibration noise. If you add internal bracing, then you will have an even lower noise floor. they key to cutting out vibration noise is stiffness, as well as isolation.

The isolation part, is isolating your pump from the chassis floor. You can do this by using rubber mounts (McMaster-Carr and HighspeedPC sell them), and if you want, you can teir them using multiple peices of wood as mounts for each tier, and get further vibration damping...i would not go more than 2 sets of dampers though....one works fine enough for me.
 
I decided to go with a wooden box for the power supply and pump, and i'm going to mount my reservoir outside of it. I made the res out of 3" PVC pipe about 16" high. Then i drilled holes and threaded some brass barbs into it with teflon, so they're not going to leak. Hopefully. Its been sitting full with the barbs connected to each other overnight, i'm going to go check it and make sure the seals are all good. If not i'm busting out some silicon.

Would an old 250 watt power supply be sufficient to run this setup? I measured the amperage draw of the pump and fans, and it comes to about 3.9 when the pump is under minor load (mimicing a waterblock). I figure it can't break five amps, since its only rated for four and the fans add about a half an amp. The power supply i have is rated for 9 amps peak on the 12v rail, so will running it at a constant four kill it? Its going to be dedicated to the pump so i don't think it should be a problem.

I took my bonneville heater core, hacked off the bends in the tubes, and JBWelded some brass barbs onto the end, so that's getting leak tested today too. I'm making a metal bracket and a shroud out of foam pipe insulation. I figured i'd mount it onto the back of my box, suspended, so its got some airflow around it. And the res is going to stick up on the side of the box, kinda like a snorkel I guess.
 
Your PSU seems beefy enough for the task. Just be sure it's putting out the wattage it claims on that rail.

For a second I thought you had a 110v pump. anyways, folks run 12v pumps off their PSUs all the time, so you can give it a whack.

It doesnt matter where you mount your heatercore in an external box so long as it has a good solid airflow through it. So as long as you have decent venting on whatever side the radiator is not on as well, you should be good.
As far as the res...why not just drill a hole in top for the fill cap and mount it under the top...or jsut cut out a section in top and flush mount it?
 
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