Homemade "water" cooling

RevelatorHarmon · Nov 17, 2003

Forgive me if this has been posted before...

I am currently in the construction phase of my homemade case (will post pics when I am done) and I have decided to halt construction and design in a water-cooling system.

However in research and design of the components it seems that there is a huge scare of water leakage. Has anyone tried using high resistance oil (like purified olive oil or something similar) instead of water?

If oil leaks it won't damage components (with the exception of mechanical components, hard drives, cd-rom's, etc...). Could oil be used to replace water in a "water" cooling system?

Cathar · Nov 17, 2003

Water doesn't damage components either. It is conductive/capacitive enough to interfere with the modern computer's sensitive signals, causing equipment to appear as if it's been killed, but 99 times out of 100 it won't be.

If you get a water spill, clean it up, wipe it down. Stick a hair-blower on it, and perhaps the most under-used tool of all, use a vacuum clean on the bits that got wet to suck out any droplets of water that may be hanging about.

Perhaps the only time that water will actually damage equipment is if you leave it in place long enough on components that it causes them to corrode and/or rust. That won't happen though in the space of a day, so as long as you clean up a spill, and are prepared to wait for up to a week for the components to dry out properly, you'll be pretty much safe.

I shudder to think how often people have tossed out equipment after a spill way too early, when all it would have needed was a good clean, vacuum and blow dry, perhaps a number of times over the period of a week, to bring it back to life.

Water is going to be a lot easier to clean up than oil. At least water will evaporate in a sane amount of time.

omaticrail · Nov 17, 2003

An air compressor works well.

For the record, some folks did try a system that fully submerged the motherboard and video card in mineral oil that was cooled by a liquid nitrogen evap setup.

ILikeMy240sx · Nov 17, 2003

Dust can

Yuriman · Nov 17, 2003

Oil is a lot thicker, and doesnt cool as well. You might as well go for a good air-cooler.

RevelatorHarmon · Nov 17, 2003

omaticrail said:
An air compressor works well.

For the record, some folks did try a system that fully submerged the motherboard and video card in mineral oil that was cooled by a liquid nitrogen evap setup.

]Originally posted by Yuriman

Oil is a lot thicker, and doesnt cool as well. You might as well go for a good air-cooler.

Ok that's all i needed to know thank you.

true water won't damage componets, but water (at least purchased water) is very conductive (H2O is actually not very conductive at all, but there are minerals dissolved in water that make it very conductive), it will damage any PCB with power going through it, if water forms a conductive path with any set of componets it could overload or short them out

ILikeMy240sx · Nov 17, 2003

RevelatorHarmon said:
Ok that's all i needed to know thank you.

true water won't damage componets, but water (at least purchased water) is very conductive (H2O is actually not very conductive at all, but there are minerals dissolved in water that make it very conductive), it will damage any PCB with power going through it, if water forms a conductive path with any set of componets it could overload or short them out

thats why we use distilled water...

Godfather84 · Nov 17, 2003

ILikeMy240sx said:
thats why we use distilled water...

very true.

Cathar · Nov 17, 2003

Distilled Water is actually slightly acidic. It will generally eat away at most metals until it becomes mineralised and "neutral". Using distilled water is likely to result in a final liquid that is more conductive than regular tap water. Tap water is generally already neutral and not likely to ionise any further in one's cooling system as it's already been ionised through a whole city-wide water system on its way to you.

Water, even mineralised, is not conductive enough to cause damaging short circuits on computers simply because the voltages are too low, and the resistance of the water is very, very high (in comparison to a copper trace). What will happen is that it will cause slight imbalances in the electrical operation, just enough to disrupt normal operation, but very, very rarely will it be enough to actually damage anything.

The use of de-ionised, or distilled water (distilled actually being worse than de-ionised) is largely over-rated except for people who live in heavy/scaly water areas, in which case water from a basic purifier will still be better for one's system than distilled/de-ionised water.

ILikeMy240sx · Nov 17, 2003

Cathar said:
Distilled Water is actually slightly acidic. It will generally eat away at most metals until it becomes mineralised and "neutral". Using distilled water is likely to result in a final liquid that is more conductive than regular tap water. Tap water is generally already neutral and not likely to ionise any further in one's cooling system as it's already been ionised through a whole city-wide water system on its way to you.

Water, even mineralised, is not conductive enough to cause damaging short circuits on computers simply because the voltages are too low, and the resistance of the water is very, very high (in comparison to a copper trace). What will happen is that it will cause slight imbalances in the electrical operation, just enough to disrupt normal operation, but very, very rarely will it be enough to actually damage anything.

The use of de-ionised, or distilled water (distilled actually being worse than de-ionised) is largely over-rated except for people who live in heavy/scaly water areas, in which case water from a basic purifier will still be better for one's system than distilled/de-ionised water.

So distilling H2O is not aactually getting rid of free ions? so then what really is distillation process?

squeakygeek · Nov 17, 2003

ILikeMy240sx said:
So distilling H2O is not aactually getting rid of free ions? so then what really is distillation process?

Liquid water is turned into steam, and then condensed.

9mmCensor · Nov 17, 2003

removes all the crap from the water... like living microbes....

Cathar · Nov 18, 2003

Distilled water removes absolutely everything, leaving the water in a slightly acidic non-neutral state.

Even drinking distilled water for extended periods of time is dangerous as it leaches the body of necessary minerals, and in a water-cooling loop does the same sort of thing, basically acts as an acid and attacks the metals in order to re-neutralise itself.

Mikeonatrike · Nov 18, 2003

Thats some food for thought. But what now is better, neutal but gunky tapwater most likely containing the beginings of algea and other living things. Or slightly acidic distilled water? And can the acidic-ness of distilled water possibly matter?

What im thinking is buy a jug of distilled and drop a couple chunks of copper in, let it sit for a month(is that enuff, too much?) and u have the best of both worlds.

HMMMM

ILikeMy240sx · Nov 18, 2003

does distillation remove all the ions in H20 as well? If so, it should be less conductive than tap water with all the free ions in it... I doubt the pH level matters much interms of corrosion and eating away metal as its close to neutral. Also, ph level shouldnt be high enough to disassociate it self into ions....

Cathar · Nov 18, 2003

If you live in a heavy-water area, just grab some regular bottled drinking water. Most of the time it's just filtered tap water that's been heat/UV treated to kill off the bacteria and algae, but still has the basic amounts of ions and minerals that makes it neutral.

If you live in a soft-water area, just grab water from your tap. Boil it for 5 minutes to kill off any algae/bacteria, and you're set.

Use a 10% mix of corrosion inhibitor which is in itself an algaecide and bacteriacide, and you're set for a very long time.

If you're mixing metals, such as anodised aluminium tops, then up the corrosion inhibitor concentration to at least 25%, and possibly 50% if you really want to play it safe.

Cathar · Nov 18, 2003

ILikeMy240sx said:
does distillation remove all the ions in H20 as well? If so, it should be less conductive than tap water with all the free ions in it... I doubt the pH level matters much interms of corrosion and eating away metal as its close to neutral. Also, ph level shouldnt be high enough to disassociate it self into ions....

Yes, distillation removes all the ions as well. Distilled water is non-conductive but won't remain that way for long if it's put into contact with metal.

squeakygeek · Nov 18, 2003

Now if you really wanted to get into this, completely seal off your system from oxygen, including using oxygen-barrier tubing, and then you can use whatever metals you want, and you won't get corrosion... but you have to be completely oxygen sealed.

9mmCensor · Nov 18, 2003

so the only reson why WCers use deionized and distilied water is the micro organisms in the tap water?

9mmCensor · Nov 18, 2003

Heres how to find out if you have hard water...
http://www.hardwater.org/hard_water_testing.html

Homemade "water" cooling

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