A Newb With Questions

Hi everyone, I am interested in equipping my case with a water cooling system, but I have a few questions. First, the liquid itself-
what do you guys use? I've heard that most use distilled water, but I believe I heard that someone used rubbing alcohol (not sure if this is true). Second, what are some good brands that I can rely on (I trust the Maze 4 is a good option?). I am considering using the Black Ice Xtreme 2 for my radiator, but do you guys recommend any other dual 120mm rads? Finally, what results do you guys get with your watercooled systems? If you don't mind, could you specify as to what parts you use and the size of your radiator? Thanks!

WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!

Most everyone here uses distilled water in combination with a anti-bacterial agent.

Rubbing alcohol is typically used to clean the surfaces of heatsinks of thermal grease. It evaporates and doesn't leave residue.

I wouldn't get any BIX, and definetly not the BIX2 for it's price. A lot of people like the 87 chevette core for a single fan heatercore, but there is another car heatercore that is good for dual 120mm fans side by side... Don't know what it's called. BUT, you can search for it at Airspirit's site, just use the heatercore database:

http://www.airspirit.net/

Agreed: I would steer away from the Black Ice radiators.. Simply don't live up to their name. DIY is probably the best option when it comes to the radiators, so adapting a heatercore or finding a nice copper rad would be optimal.

Be sure to use good quality tubing as well, and have all your fittings 1/2" diameter, as flow rate controls all. Cheap thin-walled tubing is likely to kink round corners and restrict flow, maybe to the point of damaging the pump or CPU if it gets too hot. Thicker tubing is more expensive but well worth the insurance. Tygon tubing is good.

The 1/2" diameter pipes and barbs will help reduce restrictions in flow as well, and having a heatercore from an old car has a lot less flow resistance.

To prevent leaks the hose barbs aren't enough - use little metal clips that screw tight on the ends of the hoses

Oh and by the way:
WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!

Thank you for all your help and suggestions! What kind of temperatures do you get with heatercores (radiators?) from old cars? Plus, wouldn't those be a tad "big"? Finally, how do you guys place your fans on the radiator? Do you put the fans on the top and have them pull the air away, or do you put them on the bottom to push the air through and away the rad? Does anyone have an idea for a nice dual 120mm fan rad? I found a "Deep Freeze" Copper radiator at a website, any ideas?

B.T.W. The http://www.airspirit.net/ link you gave me does not exist. Typo, perhaps?

A link to the Heatercore Database that works....for now
Go HERE!

But note that the link will NOT work forever- the guy has been having DNS problems and if/when his ip address changes that link will die.

The '87 Chevette heatercore is not exactly small, but it WILL fit in most cases with a bit of modding- and it's worth the work.
About $20 USD for the heater core and just one good 120mm fan should outperform the BIX quite easily. It is quite a bit smaller than the Chrysler core I use in another rig- 2 120mm fans per side

For the BEST perfromance use a fan on both sides of the rad in Push/Pull configuration. One single fan will not be quite as good but it will be a bit smaller. High pressure fans are better as they can force air through the rad more effectively. As a rule of thumb, a thicker fan puts out more pressure just like a larger fan puts out more cfm.

As far as blocks- Cascade is best, White Water a close second. Maze4 ranks somewhat behind in third along with a few others...

Just thought I'd point you to this guide Rockworth. It really helped me out when I was first learning about water cooling.

I may be completly wrong, but would radiator fluid work? It's used in cars as an improvement over water but might just be to keep it from freezing.
Comments?Info on how completely wrong I am?etc.?

Yes you could use Anti-Freeze, however you lose a lot of the thermal properties water has. Water dissipates heat better than pure antifreeze. Usually people will use distilled water and add anti freeze to the mix for its anti corrosive properties.

What if you get 2 radiotors in a sequence. This way the water gets cooled twice. Water goes through first radiator and gets cooled that into next radiotor to get even colder. Would that work?

I think that application is much better if you have two items being watercooled. Like a CPU and GPU or two CPU's

Pumpout --> 1st radiator --> 1stCPU --> 2nd Radiator --> 2ndCPU or GPU --> PumpIn

Something like that..

Constantinos said:

What if you get 2 radiotors in a sequence. This way the water gets cooled twice. Water goes through first radiator and gets cooled that into next radiotor to get even colder. Would that work?

Click to expand...

Keep reading the forums, young padowan - you will find that using 2 heat exchangers is not uncommon. Effectively, using two heat exchangers increases the surface area for heat to transfer to the air. Increasing this surface area will increase heat transfer. A larger surface area requires less airflow than a smaller surface area to accomplish the same cooling = less noise. People often ask if they should put their dual rads in parrallel or series and this can be read about through the forum search tool if you are interested.

Here's a little secret though, and perhaps you are already in on this one but many people misunderstand this:

The water entering the heat exchanger and the water exiting the heat exchanger is very close to the same temperature. This is typical and holds true with all basic radiators. The temperature difference right before and right after the rad does not need to be large; the cooling effect manifests by continually passing the water through the radiator and gradually expelling heat.

PachManP said:

I may be completly wrong, but would radiator fluid work? It's used in cars as an improvement over water but might just be to keep it from freezing.
Comments?Info on how completely wrong I am?etc.?

Click to expand...

Antifreeze is more suitable to the cooling application in cars; water is more suitable to the cooling application in computers.

There are many desirable characteristics of a cooling fluid besides thermal properties. Water's thermal properties are excellent for cooling, but it also has other features that make it a good coolant for us. However, a certain physical property of antifreeze makes it a very undesirable coolant in our applications - viscosity. Putting 100% Antifreeze into your cooling loop is akin to pouring in maple syrup; it's not gonna flow as easy as water and it will be harder on your pump.

I don't know if this would work or if it's something already tested, but coming from a car background, I use this product called Water Wetter in my radiator when I had overheating problems (turned out to be a thermometer stuck closed). I don't know exactly how it does it, but it claims to increase the ability of water to transfer heat. Thus more heat is taken in from the waterblock and more is released in the heater core. Maybe someone with a water cooling rig could try this for before/after results?

Fallen Phoenix said:

I don't know if this would work or if it's something already tested...

Click to expand...

He he, you nailed it right there.

A lot of people use Water Wetter in their water cooling setup. It's good because of its corrosion inhibiting properties, and also because it prevents bacterial growth. Many use 5% Water Wetter and 95% distilled water as the coolant in their water cooling setup.

Heh heh, it was one of those things I thought would either be an epiphany or already done it. Does anyone have any numbers from with WW and with plain distilled water? I'm a sucker for numbers.

Try this thread, which is an analysis of different coolants.

Great thread thanks

As you can likely gather from that writeup and hard work by rockstarbob, is that additives are just that - additives. As far as thermal exchanges are concerned their effects are negligible but often times they have other properties that are valuable - like antibacterial or anti corrosive properties. These are much more important factors with additives.

Water wetter supposedly improves viscosity which thereby improves thermal transfer. The factor by which it improves viscosity is minimal and thus its effect on thermal transfer would also be very minimal. But sorry, I don't have any real numbers. I am familiar with thermal dynamics and energy transfer though, and it's not hard to estimate the effects of some things.

It appears Water Wetter does increase thermal efficiency but it's not apparant with the relatively low temperatures of CPUs but I could definitly tell a difference in the firebird when it was overheating. Dropped temps about 10 degrees, unfortunatly it couldn't fix a stuck thermo.