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Loading ...(Mis)adventures in water cooling
garethogden
You may have read my previous post about water-cooling my PC, in which I described how I improvised a mounting system for a water block (since the original mounting kit had gone missing). At the end of this post I effectively warned against doing this, and it seems that this was good advice since my improvised mounting system broke over the weekend (cue sorrowful violins).
This meant having to completely strip-down the PC to almost a bare case (in order to remove the retention bracket from the rear of the board) and rebuild it again from scratch. However, rather than attempt to mod another mounting system (I was tempted, I have to admit, and even went to B&Q to eye up some screws) I resigned myself to defeat on this occasion and used an air-cooler instead.
However, I’ve only lost the battle and not the war, because I’m still planning to water-cool the rig in the future. This time, I’m definitely using a proper mounting kit though!
Image: ‘Screws’ by mfshadow
“…my improvised mounting system broke over the weekend (queue sorrowful violins).”
Woops - isn’t queue in this sense spelt “cue”? It appears this travesty is affecting your spelling Gareth!!
You’re right, but it hasn’t affected my ability to edit my blog posts, though 
Just a quick Question. Do you think that water cooling will still be a must to push the new Penryn chips? Thinking about designing my own system around a motor cycle radiator i’ve got hanging about down the shed.
I don’t think it will be a must, but it would certainly help, particularly for heavily overclocked quad-core chips, which will have the highest TDPs.
It would be good to see a comprehensive Labs test of water-cooling components as heat and noise are increasingly becoming unwanted attendant companions to high performance computing for the following reasons:
1. Multicore CPU’s are increasingly prevalent and TDP’s (Thermal Design Power) are up to 130W for the quad core chips from Intel.
2. High end Graphic Processor Units are drawing ever-greater amounts of power. The GeForce 8800 GTX has a claimed peak power consumption of 185W, while the Radeon HD 2900 XT peaks at almost 215W, all generating increasing excess heat.
3. Overclocking of components markedly increases both the power drawn and the heat produced by components all of which has to be vented by increasing numbers of fans.
4. Even with the die shrink progression to 45nm processes (Wolfdale core 2 duo processors and next-gen Phenom) and projected energy efficiencies of up to 15%, heat and the noise of multi-fan installations is still going to be a significant issue, particularly in the performance computer arena on which Custom PC is focused.
5. There are currently no authoritative and extensive tests of water-cooling components that can inform performance vs. price comparisons. Tom’s Hardware have started some tests but how comprehensive or UK market focused they will be is unclear. The water-cooling high end PC build feature in issue 40 used water-cooling components (Innovatec) from the ultra expensive boutique builder Vadim which even they don’t incorporate in their £750 – £1200 extreme water-cooling systems! Vadim cooling loops are based on Swiftech CPU and GPU blocks, whilst the Innovatec blocks (also stocked by Vadim) retail for 1.5 times the Swiftech equivalent.
Is such additional expenditure really justified by increased cooling and water flow performance? How do different manufacturers compare for ease of fitting, quality of finishing and durability of components (all metal vs. metal Plexiglas vs. metal resin)? We should be told!