Passive watercooling

I thought I'd ask out of curiosity. Some IBM use passive watercooling, where they use the convection of water to actually move it around. Is it possible to emulate that kind of setup on a normal computer? Like placing the radiator on top, etc.

Do you mean pumpless? or fanless?

i recall that thread soja, i thought this had come up before. maybe if you got heat coils involved in it somehow, it could be designed to be efficient. a/w it would save electricity i guess.

You can do a pumpless system, just make sure that block inlets are lower than the outlets, and that the radiator is the highest component in the system.

If you want to go fanless, make sure you have LOTS of surface area, with widely spaced fins. Heater cores don't work too well without fans. Unless you have all the fans in the case pushing air in or out and having all intake/exhaust air go through the rad.

Wouldnt a copper tube rad in the top of your case work well with this principle? you could just hav ea cpu blow, two tubes and a radiator could yo unot? tube rads have lots of surface area with fins far appart compared to heater cores or radiators. you could always braze up a mini pressurized system and make a home brewn heatpipe ^^;;

http://www.highspeedpc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=HSPC&Category_Code=HTCSrad

http://www.highspeedpc.com/Merchant...Y&Store_Code=HSPC&Category_Code=InnovaKonvect

ok here are 2 very beautiful convection radiators and they both are crazy high in mu opinion, but if you want silent and purty this is what ya want...just look @ these cooling *****s simply GORGEOUS!

BTW they are large suckers!:
InnovaKonvekt-o-Matic
Technical data:
Standard: (hxlxw): 35x23x5cm
Maxi: (hxlxw): 45x33x5cm !!
Standard: : Weight: 4.76 pounds
Maxi: Weight 10.5 pounds !!
Material: Anodized Aluminum- four colors available.
-Adds beauty and corrosion resistance.

Innovatek's HTCS radiator =
4 free standing convector columns
Dual flow internal system
Size of (surface area/height): 15x15x46cm
Material outside: Aluminum - colored anodized
Material inside: div. Aluminum and copper alloys
Weight: 4.02 kg

I'm skeptical of their capabilities. Yes they should keep the CPU within the thermal limits, but you are by no means going to get stellar temps.

My bad, by passive I meant pumpless. Where I live, ambient temperatures sometimes get a bit too high for fanless. That thread that Soja posted about the guy whose pump failed, helped in part to inspire me to ask about passive cooling. Maybe running a different liquid might lead to better convection?