Water cooling?

[Davej]

This is beginning to seem like the way to go for my next big desktop. Any advice? Maybe a flow sensor to plug into the cpu fan socket so that the MB can sense when it isn't working?

 

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

This is beginning to seem like the way to go for my next big desktop. Any advice? Maybe a flow sensor to plug into the cpu fan socket so that the MB can sense when it isn't working?

Depends on the CPU you wanna put it on...

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[Paul]

This is beginning to seem like the way to go for my next
big desktop. Any advice? Maybe a flow sensor to plug into
the cpu fan socket so that the MB can sense when it isn't working?

If you water cool the CPU, you don't need any protection.

The CPU has THERMTRIP, at about 20C above the throttle temperature.
Both Intel and AMD has THERMTRIP. It shuts off the power to the
computer instantly, once the threshold temperature is surpassed.
And it's supposed to cut off, before the CPU is damaged.

It's when you extend the water cooling loop, that you can get
in trouble. If you remove the video card fan cooler, and replace
the cooling with a water block, the card can overheat, and the card
can't defend itself. In which case, you'd want some means to monitor
flow, surface temperature, or whatever. The GPU does have a thermal
diode, and you can get programs such as GPUZ which monitor temperature
in real time. I don't think GPUZ shuts down the computer though.

The nice thing about THERMTRIP, is it is hardware based, and nothing
can stop it from killing the power. (Only an on-purpose short of
PS_ON# to ground, will defeat THERMTRIP and allow the computer
to burn up the CPU. As long as PS_ON# is not modified, the computer
is protected against severe CPU overheating.)

Paul

 

[Flasherly]

This

is beginning to seem like the way to go for my next big desktop. Any
advice? Maybe a flow sensor to plug into the cpu fan socket so that
the MB can sense when it isn't working?

-
I've seen self contained water units for the price of higher priced,
better airflow CPU heatsink setups;- when on sale, it's closer for
water units to bluring the distinction of available options. A few
steps up, I'd imagine, from an integrated unit to compare by larger
resevoir water units costing x4 more, so far as heat efficiency
returns equate. Which begs the question of applicability and real
time benefits to be derived. Personally, I've never cared for the
thought of water running over a MB and components. Something I can
get by with, as my early 2.6Ghz P4 dual core runs 12F degrees less
than one real scorcher of a summer here, that can see 91F ambient when
leaving the house without the AC running (the HDs reach 110-115F).

 

[Davej]

I've seen self contained water units for the price of
higher priced, better airflow CPU heatsink setups;-
when on sale, it's closer for water units to bluring
the distinction of available options. A few steps up,
I'd imagine, from an integrated unit to compare by larger
resevoir water units costing x4 more, so far as heat
efficiency returns equate. Which begs the question of
applicability and real time benefits to be derived.
Personally, I've never cared for the thought of water
running over a MB and components. Something I can
get by with, as my early 2.6Ghz P4 dual core runs 12F
degrees less than one real scorcher of a summer here,
that can see 91F ambient when leaving the house without
the AC running (the HDs reach 110-115F).

Well, my old Dual-Core has always run hot, and even adding a massive Cooler-Master only helped a little. The unit is up in the attic where it does getrather hot. On my next build I think a water block would make more sense for the cpu. The rest of it can use fans. I'm certainly not going to disassemble a new video card and play joe-the-plumber with it. Except for the water block I can probably home-brew the water system. Maybe have it built intoa 5 gallon bucket under the table.

 

[Paul]

Well, my old Dual-Core has always run hot, and even adding a
massive Cooler-Master only helped a little. The unit is up in
the attic where it does get rather hot. On my next build I think
a water block would make more sense for the cpu. The rest of it
can use fans. I'm certainly not going to disassemble a new video
card and play joe-the-plumber with it. Except for the water block
I can probably home-brew the water system. Maybe have it built
into a 5 gallon bucket under the table.

If the system is in an attic space, doesn't that pretty well
guarantee you're going to exceed the acceptable ambient
range ?

I have an older computer here, where I think they specified the
ambient as no more than 35C to 40C or so. The best PCs I've heard
of (commercial ones), were rated for 50C ambient. We used to use
one of those (an HP) in our thermal chamber during testing. I
couldn't believe the punishment it would take.

If you were to use water, you'd want some way to mount the
radiator/fan assembly, in a cooler part of the house, to
provide some place to dump the heat. A water cooling
system can "move" heat, but if the attic space is blazing hot,
the PC can't be cooled below that ambient temperature. Moving
the radiator to a cool part of the house, and running long, larger
diameter hoses, might give a better delta_T to work with.

They used to make PCs with a "refrigerator" in the base of the PC.
One of our thermal engineers had a computer like that at his
desk (possibly, as a joke). I think in testing, the compressor
in those things is so weak, it can push the case air temperature,
only 1 degree C below ambient, while pumping another couple hundred
watts of heat into the adjoining space. That's an example of
an attempt at sub-ambient cooling.

Another way to do this, is to use a low-power Haswell version
of processor in the next build. One of the lower-clocked ones
may provide a boost over your current CPU, but with less heat.

The pricing on these is terrible. A two core, with Hyperthreading 35W.

http://ark.intel.com/products/75045/Intel-Core-i5-4570T-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz

The quad core is 45W. No Hyperthreading. This is probably
at least 50% faster on multithreaded applications (if
movie editing and doing final video render). And it's
only a few dollars more than the 35W one.

http://ark.intel.com/products/75050/Intel-Core-i5-4670T-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz

Those would be examples of "attic space" CPUs.

Those CPUs have a GPU inside, so you need no video card (unless
you're a gamer). If you're building a file server for the
attic, the 35W processor would be ideal. Then all you have
to worry about, is the temperature of the hard drives. You
want hard drives with known-good operating temperature
characteristics.

The processor only draws 35W, when flat out. When idle, the
power will be a lot lower. As far as I know, the Haswell LGA1150
has its own Vcore regulator controls right inside the CPU, which
is a departure from previous generations. The processor is then
in control of the voltage used to run it, for best power
usage. That may provide an advantage from a total system
perspective.

I haven't run into any articles yet, for those
binned processors, as I expect they haven't been for sale for
that long. A quick check on Newegg, shows they aren't in
circulation. Maybe they're all being put in Macintoshes
or something. (Apple does that sometimes, buys up production
of a couple bins for a few months.) So maybe by the time
you're ready to build, those vapor-ware processors will be
for sale.

I guess you can get them, with some difficulty...
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2323565

Paul

 

[Flasherly]

Well, my old Dual-Core has always

run hot, and even adding a massive Cooler-Master only helped a little.
The unit is up in the attic where it does get rather hot. On my next
build I think a water block would make more sense for the cpu. The
rest of it can use fans. I'm certainly not going to disassemble a new
video card and play joe-the-plumber with it. Except for the water
block I can probably home-brew the water system. Maybe have it built
into a 5 gallon bucket under the table.

--
Have a AMD 3800 dualcore, or thereabouts, that's also on the hot side,
even with a fair-sized or step-up OEM cooler. Perhaps not as big as a
Cooler Master on the Intel, which for some reason runs super cool,
beyond expectations. Of course, the AMD runs circles around the Intel
(sits around 125F when decoding video and processing audio streams
simultaneously for normalization).

Maybe -- buy a water CPU heatblock, pump and radiator and rig
something up. You're going to be looking at a fundamentally decent to
good air-cooled CPU with extra attention to case design and fans,
otherwise. Rosewill, for change, $30 or so on periodic sales, have
some massive placements for fans on their base models (ANTEC clones).
What will also make differences is the CPU diecast technology, 60, 40,
and present 30 and 20nm technology -- they're not really
drawing/displacing near the heat of what I'm running (didn't pay over
$20 for either my CPUs, though.) Safe to assume you wouldn't want a
quad-core AMD at 125watts in an attic over the hottest Aug temps on
record. That also needs be planned for a fire. Fires of course never
happen, it's just being better safe than sorry that makes the builder
a good builder.

 

[peter]

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in
sideways, chocolate in one hand, and wine in the other, body thoroughly used
up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"
"Davej" wrote in message

On 15 Aug 2013, Davej wrote:

Well, my old Dual-Core has always run hot, and even adding a massive
Cooler-Master only helped a little. The unit is up in the attic where it
does get rather hot. On my next build I think a water block would make more
sense for the cpu. The rest of it can use fans. I'm certainly not going to
disassemble a new video card and play joe-the-plumber with it. Except for
the water block I can probably home-brew the water system. Maybe have it
built into a 5 gallon bucket under the table.


It seems to me that the only way to really cool your Computer down to a
reasonable temp is to cool down the room
it is located in. It will always run at X over ambient room temp no matter
what you use to cool the chip...So by lowering
the ambient room temp you are lowering the internal case temp which in turn
will allow the Cooler to dissipate more heat.
How big is that room? maybe what you really need is an AirConditioner

peter121

 

[Flasherly]

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in
sideways, chocolate in one hand, and wine in the other, body thoroughly used
up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"
"Davej" wrote in message



Well, my old Dual-Core has always run hot, and even adding a massive
Cooler-Master only helped a little. The unit is up in the attic where it
does get rather hot. On my next build I think a water block would make more
sense for the cpu. The rest of it can use fans. I'm certainly not going to
disassemble a new video card and play joe-the-plumber with it. Except for
the water block I can probably home-brew the water system. Maybe have it
built into a 5 gallon bucket under the table.


It seems to me that the only way to really cool your Computer down to a
reasonable temp is to cool down the room
it is located in. It will always run at X over ambient room temp no matter
what you use to cool the chip...So by lowering
the ambient room temp you are lowering the internal case temp which in turn
will allow the Cooler to dissipate more heat.
How big is that room? maybe what you really need is an AirConditioner

Sounds to be true, although I'll have to beg to differ. I've a Cooler
Master, (heatwick setup, largely massive radiator fin body with 3
copper pipes into six CPU leads), on a 775 socket P4 dually that'll
run lower than the room. I **could** have a misrepresented sensor
reading, but the CPU at 5-10F lower than the room is somewhat typical
without any processor overhead. Very hot here and the A/C has to
really work awhile to get 90F ambient down to to 85F (unless after
sunset). The CPU reads close but still below often enough, just not
as pronounced, as it is, from a few months ago, when I built it, well
before the hottest part of the summer now. Not much of a CPU, anyway,
heat wise, it hardly hits 100F, maybe 108F tops, with both cores maxed
for intensive processing at 2.60Ghz. ...A little "smoother" than the
3Ghz single core it replaced, perhaps.

 

[Davej]

[...]

Well, the attic is going to begin to cool down once I arrive, but at first it might be 40C. It might make sense to run the liquid elsewhere and have the reservoir elsewhere.