Watercooling a PSU: Questions

[Shadowchild]

So in a few weeks I'm going to start building a watercooling kit for my A64 tower before the SoCal summer hits. I've got a heatercore on it's way from my dad's truck shop (he's ripping one from an old diesel engine, it'll handle a LOT of heat really well), and I'm planning on getting rid of most of the fans in my PC-60, as they're quite loud. My goal is only to have one or two for cooling the RAM and MOSFET's. What I'm wondering, is whether or not I can water-cool the power supply effectively? I'm running an Aspire 500 watt PSU. It's got two 92MM fans that are louder than the other 4 casefans when everything's at max rev, and the air coming out of it still feels hotter than the blowhole fan that's right over its intake, and the rear case fan next to the mobo. Is this a feasible idea, and if it is, how should I go about it? Anyone else out there done this, or do I get to forge ahead?

 

[FunkStar]

You can buy pre-made water cooled PSUs, i dont have the shop site address sorry. If you were to do it you'd have to get ALOT of heatsinks and an effective water-flow going to make sure you got all the heat you possibly could out of it, but yes, it can/has been done.

My advice would be to open the PSU (try not to die) then change the fans to more quiet ones. you could add even more fans by drilling out another side or something.

You could of course just get a zalman psu that makes pretty much no noise at all, plus they're pretty good quality. The Antec phantom is another idea as it has no fans at all. You could probably fab something to push water down its heat sink fins which would be a cool idea. This is how you could get a phantom psu to work nicely.

||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_|| -- thats the antecs outer casing, just a big heatsink.

_________________________________
||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_|| ---- You could put metal plate over the top of it and seal it then just run water through it . Bit over the top and dodgy but hey, thats why we're here.

 

[Thor]

theres a few issues with w/cing a psu.. mainly the mosfets, most mosfets are conected to 2 heatsinks, but are electricly insulated from each other by a special membrane that still conducts heat, now... some psus need this some dont, if yours is the type that needs it you can w/c cool it by makeing shure you eather a: remove the membrane intact, and when reapplying it that it isnt wrinkeled scratched or nicked, usually getting the mosfets loose will ruin the membrane, also you have enougth torque in the screws holding the mosfets in place to make proper contact for heat transfer (the lastr psu i took apart was torqued to better than 80ftlbs your may be different thow.. ) or b: that you have more membrane that you can use to reattach the mosfets incase you screw it up (you really should reattach with new membrane reuseing any TIM is always a bad idea, but... i have no cluse where to get this stuff.. so your on your own there)

now.. if yours is the type that dosent have the membrane, the mosfets mostlikely use the heatsink as a common (ground?), meaning there is live current in the sink itself, if you where to attach them to you watercooling system it would electrify it as well (not a good thing... it would mean that your water blocks are live and well as your rad, the rad wouldnt be a hugh problem to isolate from the case... still if you touch it.. your getting zapped in a big way... but the water blocks.. i dont think youed want that kida current sitting right on your cpu ) you could get the TIM membrane and use it to isolate the mosfets, but this would mean that the psu wouldnt opperrate correctly unless you connected them together and back to the mounting holes the orriginal heatsinks used, and who knows how much curret is desgined to flow through the sinks.. the more current and the further it has to travel, the thicker the buss has to be to handel it, (lets just use 80 amps on the 12v only rail... keep in mind your also dealing with 5 and 3 v too... 12v at 80a is about 6guage wire... (about the thickness of a number 2 pencile) have fun getting it to bend in a tight space)

long story short... if you want a water cooled psu, buy one.. they've done the math and know its "safe" other wise grin and bare it

thore

 

[gclg2000]

Antec has those new power supplies out that are ALL HEATSINK.
They are freaking beasts. Have a look at them here .

Called "Phantoms" i think.