Swamp cooler in a case – David Scripka
Back when I first started researching water cooling in preparation to take the plunge (sorry), I spent most of my time on radiators. The almighty Thermochill PA 120.3 was oh so alluring, but the $100+ price held me back. I had decided on a Swiftech MCR320, but then, one lonely Saturday afternoon I discovered bongs right here at Overclockers.com.
Inspired by Steve’s 2001 article “Nuclear Tower Water Cooling”, I ran off to Home Depot to purchase supplies and several days later I ended up with this:
Certainly, not much in the aesthetics department, but excellent performance. I was amazed at how well this compilation of plumbing supplies could perform, kicking the pants off the undefeated PA 120.3 for a fraction of the price. However, after a few LAN parties and the requisite transportation of this beast, I decided to try and shrink down my evaporative cooler into something for manageable. After some thinking and a few hours of work, I came up with this:
A cheap mid tower was just collecting dust and it looked like the perfect size. The main goal of this project was to reduce the size, of course (had about one too many ribs from fellow LANers), but I also to minimize performance loss. Success?
No.
Heat Producing Components:
- CPU: Celeron D 326 @ 4.2 GHz (about 150 watts), homemade water block
- GPU: 7600GT, voltmodded (probably around 50 watts), MCW60
After about 1½ hours of FEAR Combat, water temperature was around 27ºC (ambient air = 21ºC). Another hour of SP2004 and ATITool scanning maintained temps at 27ºC. While not necessarily bad (nothing crashed…), I had lost essentially all of my performance. Before, with my bucket bong, water temps hovered either at ambient or below.
So for all you bongers out there, performance is proportional to size – a high price to pay indeed.
Related posts:
- Peace of Mind for Bong Owners
- From Celeron 400 to Bong-Cooled Duron @ 1024 MHz
- Asetek VapoChill Micro ™ Extreme
- Monster Micro – How To Cram Ten Pounds Into a Two Pound Bag
- Micro Stutter: The dark secret of SLI and Crossfire
Tags: Cooling
