Passive/water cooling

I had an idea a few days ago (dangerous ).

I look at the HushATX, and I like what I see, except it's 1. pricey, and 2. wussy heatsinks.

So.....the solution:

Looking at DIY audio amps at www.passdiy.com (Pass Labs makes REALLY nice ClassA or AB amps, and offer DIY projects too), a way to do this would be to get an amplifier box, buy some monster heatsinks from a place like Wakefield (maybe some monsters from Alpha), and use some waterblocks/heat exchangers to transfer the heat from the NB/CPU/GPU to the heatsinks. These DIY amps dissipate about 200-500W/channel idling in ClassA.

Well in order to do this with a decent delta T (I was thinking like 20C rise for cores above ambient), you'd need a ton of surface area or dissipation capability. Using some sinks that are about .8C/W/3 inches length (and about 6 inches wide at least), that means a 24" length of sinkage at least, which you could split up between multiple sections to get down to a .1C/W overall just for the heatsink. For 200W load, I think a 48" length would be more in order, such as 8 6" segments The sinks I was looking at (high density but passively cooled) weigh about 12 pounds per 3inch length, so the weight adds up FAST. You ain't going to be lanning with this. Plus it'd be a monster box. But, the only moving parts would be the pump and hard drives.

Any opinions/ideas?

Passive watercooling means no pump

I think a heatercore would work better anyway.

Passive radiator with pump to transfer the heat.

*Sigh* The point is not to use any fans in the whole computer. Heater cores don't work without fans!

I read that Antec is making a 350W fanless PSU with more on the way. This makes this idea more of a possibility for, say, an HTPC.

There are a few power supplies out now that are passive, but I've heard it may be hard to implement in high end supplies, jsut for the sheer amount of watts.

I think it sounds like a pretty good idea, I'd like to see it tried at any rate.

I'd think that making a sandwich of heatsinsk with a hole drilled in the middle would work well.

There's all sorts of cool extrusions out there, they just get heavy and cost a lot. The only obstacle in my way really.

Well, weight can be overcome, but money.....eh.

I was thinking these might work well given enough of them:

Wakefield beast

Say, a swifty MCP600 or Eheim coupled with blocks for the NB, CPU and GPU, then one waterblock per slab of heatsink all in series, given that most people think that series is better for higher flow....or running two parallel water circuits with all block in each in series?

NeoMoses was able to run his system pumpless and still get temps in the 40c area. I believe its possible if you setup up your core a certain way. This would be a completely noisless operation.

Just found the link

http://www.ocforums.com/vb/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=236390&highlight=pumpless

I remember reading that sometime. Not something I'd try with my rig or want to happen on accident (rad in bottom of case).