watercooling and condensation

[TweaK-FreaK]

I am looking into watercooling......but I'm scared of condensation getting everything wet in my comp and shorting stuff out. Anyone with water cooling got any advice or knowledge from experience??

[BF_TEXMASTER]

Remember, water cooling is good but it accomplishes the same thing air does. Each can't get a chip running under room temp without the help of a peltier.

Air is noisy unless you plan to be creative in your ducting of the noise.

Don't give up on air man:

no leaks, no condensation.

From what I understand about water cooling, insulating your tubes will drastically reduce the risk of condensation and to be really safe, you might want to consider having the resovoir outside the case.

Good luck.

[bdf24]

Theres really no reason at all to insulate the hoses unless your chilling the water. And it's impossible to get any condensation by using watercooling alone. It will only get you as low as your ambient tempature thats it.

Watercooling is very safe by itself. And if done right with the right equipment will give you very satisfying reslts. Can get pretty pricey though. But then again, How much have I spent on really good HSF's in the last few years. Once you get your watercooling supplies all you may ever need to do after that is maybe upgrade the waterblock for upgrades if the mounting or cpus change.

Also if you don't want to have to worry about having a reservior in you case. Just get in inline water pump. Then you can run a closed loop system without a reservoir. As far as leaks. put it all together and let it run for a day so before you install it in your pc to make sure it doesnt leak. If there are no leaks to begin with your chanced of ever getting one are next to nothing. Theres really no pressure in the system so theres nothing to really force any leaks.

[BF_TEXMASTER]

Ah but if he ever decides to put a peltier on that system, the water tubes will have to be insulated.

But you are right, most peakage problems will occur only in poor installation.

The problem I see is running a pump all day. I don't think that most pumps are up to the challenge of running 24/7 if you run your computer that long.

Something to consider when getting a water system.

Just be careful.

[rugby]

Most if not all of the pumps we use for watercooling are designed to be run 24/7 because they're aquarium pumps.

[bdf24]

Originally posted by rugby
Most if not all of the pumps we use for watercooling are designed to be run 24/7 because they're aquarium pumps.

This is true! My pump has been run for very long periods of time. I rarely ever turn my pc off.

[Daniel ~]

I have a year on my oldest pump, nary a hick-up":O} Remember folks spend a fortune on some of their fish, pumps are built to be reliable over a long stretch of time.

[Bender]

Someone here told me about a Maxi-Jet someone had been using for 8 years without a hitch. With a Mag drive pump there really isn't anything to go wrong. All that moves is the magnet impeller assembly. Who here has had a mag drive pump fail?

[Max Payneguin]

Heh, that was in the Procooling forum. I asked about maxi-jets and this guy said he's had one running for 8 years: good enough :D

As long as you don't use a Rio pump, you should be fine. Just test, test, test!

[fiveohhh]

When using a pelt, would ya need insulation on the hoses since the water in the hose is always going to be warmer than ambient temps. I thought condensation only formed on something colder than ambient. . .

[fiveohhh]

When using a pelt, would ya need insulation on the hoses since the water in the hose is always going to be warmer than ambient temps. I thought condensation only formed on something colder than ambient. . .

[Memphis]

You don't need to bother about insulating anything other than the CPU and back side of motherboard when actively cooling with a peltier.

Use the usual neoprene, silicon/conformal coating, di-electric grease combo.

I use a peltier controller that keeps the temperature at 19C regardless of load and ambient temperature. If you use one, you don't need to bother with condensation prevention.

Cheers

[cjtune]

Apart from condensation, the only other real danger from usign peltiers is the risk of being broke from the electricity bill :D -especially 'stackies'. This is assuming you installed it correctly in the first place to avoid snafus like the hot side to CPU, forgetting to use cold plates, wrong voltages, or underated PSUs (may burn!!). WCs are reasonably good (and quiet!) even w/o pelts and the worst of WCs perform alongside the best of HSFs. Will need some free time and $$ to install (or build) though.

[bdf24]

Thats right. But then again it all depends on how much humidity is in the air. If there's a lot it only takes a few degrees below ambient to produce conedensation. But in most cases You'd be fine with 19c.