Water cooling and other liquid's

sutty

Hey all,

Some time ago I installed a water cooler in my Shuttle system. While it runs 100% stable and idles at 40c and under load at 43-45c. I was wondering if there is any better luquid that takes away more heat and cools faster than water? The reason the idle temp is so high is that its only a small water tank fited to the back of the shuttle. So the water temp stays fairly high.


(its an Athlon 2500+ Barton core, I can O/C it to 3200+ spec but I'd rather have a better liquid in the cooler to do it)

Adeptus Titanicus

Funny, after topping up the radiator in our car I was wondering the same thing. Could you use auto coolant in a puters water cooling system? Supposed to have better thermal transfer properties, according to the label anyway. (and anti-freeze might be useful if you live in a cold kip like me! )

sutty

Originally posted by Adeptus
Funny, after topping up the radiator in our car I was wondering the same thing. Could you use auto coolant in a puters water cooling system? Supposed to have better thermal transfer properties, according to the label anyway. (and anti-freeze might be useful if you live in a cold kip like me! )

I was just talking to a lad here in work, who is a big car head. He was saying it might be acidic to plastic, but he's not to sure on that. Also you'd have to use deionised (spell) water to prevent rusting in the unit (never thought of that my-self) I'm keeping the Car coolint as an option. As I already use a cooling sulition from Thermaltake (its a Thermaltake external aquarius II) (its also got a small pump, so I douth any heavy laquids would be an option

Adeptus Titanicus

Take a look here. Apparently antifreeze is bad as it actually inhibits the thermal transfer properties of water, but this guy mentions some additives you can use to help the water do a better job. I wouldn't have thought coolant atself would be corrosive, in act I would have thought the opposite as gaskets and bits like that survive it in an engine. I do take your point about the heaviness of the fluid. I don;t have any water coling, so I'm not really entitled to an opinion there .

Anyway, that's a nice article on water cooling with some other tips and tricks.

AT

BabyEater

You only want to use antifreeze if you are going sub zero, otherwise some type of automotive coolant like redline water wetter or puple ice should do the trick. You wont notice too much difference but it will also help to kill all the bugs that will start to grow in your water.

zepp

ya basically water is probably the best liquid to use it has (now for the science bit ) a very high speciffic heat capacity of 4190 J/kg C ie you have to put in 4190 Joules of energy into a kg of water (1 litre) to make it rise in temperature by 1 degree. Watts equal joules per second. so the moral of the story is water is proobably the best supptace for taking heat away. air has a heat capaicty of around a 1000 i think hencew why water is better. Anmonia has a higher one then water but you probably don't want that.

Seemingly using distilled water is the way to go
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/24_151.html

Giblet

Urine.

Woden

Originally posted by zepp
ya basically water is probably the best liquid to use it has (now for the science bit ) a very high speciffic heat capacity of 4190 J/kg C ie you have to put in 4190 Joules of energy into a kg of water (1 litre) to make it rise in temperature by 1 degree. Watts equal joules per second. so the moral of the story is water is proobably the best supptace for taking heat away. air has a heat capaicty of around a 1000 i think hencew why water is better. Anmonia has a higher one then water but you probably don't want that.

Seemingly using distilled water is the way to go
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/24_151.html

i would think that would work the opposite way, it thats about 4200 J/kg to raise the temperature of water by 1 degree. however this high specific heat capacity is the reason why water holds its temperaure for so long, it similarly has to lose 4200 J/Kg to drop its temperature by 1 degree so i would think that the easier it is for a liquid to loose its heat the better it would be.

edit - bah thinking about this somemore i suppose its a trade off though between the liquid not heating up in the first place and it having the ability to cool quickly

data

Col_Loki

Hey sutty, if you want to lower your temps then the fluid going through your system isint going to make that much of a difference over water (IMO).

You would be far better off getting a higher CFM fan for your Rad or get one for the other side (if it fits) , or getting a different CPU cooler. For an AMD chip your talkin 2400-2500 max overclock anyway , which might not be worth spending the extra ammount.

Your temps arent bad, is your system quiet? You can afford to up the Vcore more and get it to 2300-2400mhz without much problems.

PS Always run prime95 to ensure its 100% stable, even if its only for an hour or two it will give you a better indication than anything.

sutty

Yeah I'm getting a new block off a guy in the for sale board. At the moment the system isn't that quiet, as there is a 9800Pro in it as well. Noise little fecker that it is.





I haven't seen anything in the bios as of yet to up the core voltage (only the FSB), will have to have a look about for a hacked one.

I'm gonna try distilled water as well, just have to get off my fat arse and go somewhere to get it lol

The temps are stable at the default clock, witch is something like like about the cooler. I might get a new rad for it. As the one I have only has a low RPM 80mm fan. I wouldn't mind one with a 120mm. anyone know a good place to get them from?

Gerry

I think the 2 fans idea is a good one. On the coolant front, I think auto coolant could show a small improvement, but one advantage of it is that it has a higher boiling point, which really doesn't apply to a computer watercooling setup. You'd want to take a look at the tubing as well, are there any 90 degree connectors? Basically try to up the flow rate a bit also.

Señor Juárez

sutty: take a look at www.watercool.de

Col_Loki

I'm gonna try distilled water as well

Shouldnt you be using that already? Its recomended not to use regular water in the setups.

9800Pro in it as well. Noise little fecker that it is.

Yea i hear that!! Its very hard with the shuttle's as you cant fit some of the bigger quieter coolers like the artic cooler or Zalman heatpipe.

Why not watercool it?

I wouldn't mind one with a 120mm. anyone know a good place to get them from?

A 120mm rad is going to be big and fitting it inside a shuttle........ erm, dont think that'l work all that well. If its hanging outside then your grand.

try www.hitide.ie

You would see a big difference by adding a second fan even at low RPM thats going to make the biggest difference if your water temp is high. And also like gerry said make sure there is as little restriction on water flow as possible (ie kinks) and just be logical about it.

[edit] Also your systems performance will have alot to do with your pump also..... before you spend anymore money you should weigh up how much your going to get from it....... high end air like the thermalrights will give you simular performance unless its a top water cooling setup. Braggin rights are one thing that comes with water cooling....... low noise also mixed with good performance but a pretty heavey price for the top end stuff.

zepp

i would think that would work the opposite way, it thats about 4200 J/kg to raise the temperature of water by 1 degree. however this high specific heat capacity is the reason why water holds its temperaure for so long, it similarly has to lose 4200 J/Kg to drop its temperature by 1 degree so i would think that the easier it is for a liquid to loose its heat the better it would be.

well the thing is it is going to keep absourbing heat untill thermal equilibrium ie when the temperature of the water equals that of the chip.So the more energy ie heat need to be given to the water to bring it to the same temperature as the chip the better. So the gain in heat in the water equals loss in chip. Hence why the higher the heat capicity the better . Air will reach thermal equilbrium with the chip at a higher temperature thus not cooling the chip as much

Señor Juárez

on that note, does anyone know the specific heat capacity of alcohol? i know someone who uses a 50/50 mix of water and alcohol, just wondering how efficient that would be...

silverside

you probably dont want alcohol as - it is a solvent which if it escapes will leach bits off your motherboard , it is flammable, and it evaporates at a low temperature, freezing should not be a problem in a home setup so why not stick with water with anti-algae additives?

BTW i have an sff and there are various fans which fit in without taking up any more slots and are a lot quieter than stock

Vantec Iceberq

Titan VGA cooler

i have ordered the Titan.

netman

You should stick with distilled or deionised water + some basic additives:

Alcohol has a much lower thermal conductivity than water, but it will inhibit the build up of algae and microorganisms, so it's a good idea to add a tiny bit to your mixture.

Water wetter and similar products are used in racing car industry, they improve the thermal condutivity of water.

Other options include products such as Power Fluid, which seems to be an oily mixture that adds into the water, the idea being that it prolongs the life of the water pump and also makes it less noisy. It also prevents corrosion, which can occur especially if you combine copper with aluminum in your watercooling setup. Probably doesn't do anything for the thermal properties of water, or makes them slightly worse.

Personally, I coudn't get water wetter, and didn't feel like paying a fortune for shipping a $5 product, so I went with deionised water + alcohol + power fluid.

Links:

Power Fluid

Innovaprotect

Water wetter

Water coolant chemistry

jow

Hi,

pure water has very good thermal conductivity in comparision to its viscosity (and remember the waterpumps are designed to run with water ...

The donwside is that almost all available water cooling kits are a mix of metals (copper, zinc, aluminium etc.).
That means that small electrical currents liket to dissolve the lowest grade metals and you will get corrosion in your system.
This process can be dramatically fast and destroy your system or initiate leaks.

The second thing is that it is very likely that a small "zoo" will grow in your tubes etc. giving a nice green slime and at the end lead to the destruction of the waterpump.

The "good" kit manufacturers strongly insits that you use a sort of protection fluid (like innovaprotect) in combination with de-ionised water.
The protection fluid is relatively similiar to anti-freeze with some more chemicals in it.
These chemicals prevent the corrosion and kill all the bacteria in the system.

Innovatek for example insists on using innovaprotect, otherwise the warranty is void.

And as a second thought: please stay away from colored fluids, they will decrease the cooling capacity, because you get a nice colored layer inside your system.

When you want to decrease your systems temeperature, you can use more fans (more loudness), a bigger rad or an fanless external radiator. This helps to drop the temperature quite a lot.

Regards
jow

sutty

Hmmmm.... Well I put a new fan on the rad, I dont think the shuttle PSU will take more on the system. So I've placed an order with work to get a 250w for it. The new fan also lets me access the fan controll in the BIOS (the fan that came with the system was too slow and would crash the bios when you tryed) So it and the water pump are now running at full power (the pump and fan can both be set to the CPU fan)

From what I read in the link posted by Netman, DI water isn't the best to be using in a water cooler at it will curode the minrals in the system. They say the best to use is the Destilled (or steam treated water) in conjuncion with an anti curosion liquid. I'm gonna try get some distilled water from somewhere. At the moment, The temps are a few degrees lower. But I need to get the new water block ASAP as the one I have is just barly held on and not with the proper amount of pressure. I'll report in temps once I get the whole thing sorted out.

jow

Hi,

Originally posted by sutty
From what I read in the link posted by Netman, DI water isn't the best to be using in a water cooler at it will curode the minrals in the system. They say the best to use is the Destilled (or steam treated water) in conjuncion with an anti curosion liquid. I'm [/B]

De-Ionised water is fine!
Don't worry about it. When you can use it in Batteries it will do the job in a watercooling system without problems.

Just like you said: use a protection fluid and you are on the safe side.

jow

sutty

ok, I got the "cpu-cooler innova XX-Flow rev.1 Socket A Color: transparent" Water block from HiTide.ie today. So far it seams to be running the temps 10c less then the Thermaltake Aquairus II Waterblock. In the coming month, I'm gonna get the duel 120mm Rad and then a new pump and water tank. I'll then move the Northbridge and the 9800pro over to the water cooler. But before I do all that I need to get the 250w PSU for the shuttle. (should have it next week)

sutty

Well I ran it over night at 100% load, the temps never went above 43c that was for 7 hours. It idles at 36- 38 depending on the room temp. At the moment, the arctic silver 5 has to settle from what the instructions say. Once thats done they say it should knock a few degrees off the temp. Next week when I get the new PSU, I'll put in a new pump, tank and duel 120mm Rad once I've done that.


The plan is to move the Chipset and GPU over to water cooling then once I'm happy with the temps from the CPU. Then to overclock the fup out of it