a sweet idea for water cooling

so I was sitting in my room thinking how to improve cooling while reducing noise and suddenly it hit me. Why not use the air conditioning went that is right next to my desk. So I lengthened the hoses on my water cooling rig by like a foot and put the radiator face down right on top of the vent. Voila, the temps just plummeted. My old load temps were 47 load for 2.6ghz at 1.85 volts and the new one's are 37 load at 2.7ghz and 1.95volts. this is simply great and didn't even cost me any money.

Oh BTW with these lowered temps I voltmodded my Radeon 9800pro and now the core is up to 492!!! (and its and r360) perfectly stable. This is up from 459 stable before. Man this is like a free upgrade (at least till winter at which point the rad is going out the window literally).

Ummm, you still have to pay the electric bill to run the A/C constantly? Do you even use fans on the radiator now?

shraad said:

Ummm, you still have to pay the electric bill to run the A/C constantly? Do you even use fans on the radiator now?

Click to expand...

Not if your parents are stuck paying the bills . The only problem is I guess when winter hits and you dont have your A/C on anymore .

Would have thought that condensation could be a problem

ok as far as the electric bill, I am in a dorm room so the university pays for it. And as far as condensation, I am not running below ambient so it shouldn't be a problem am I right?

We discussed this a week or so ago... put two 120's pulling on the opposite side of the HC from the vent mount and have them run at all times to pick up the slack when the AC disengages or just to amplify airflow of cooled air. As long as the portion of the room where the rig is is cooled by the AC effectively then you shouldnt have condensation problems, but even with such a setup your water temps probably arent going to go sub ambient in that situation. (Talking about an environment such as exists in my dorm where each individual room is on a different thermostat so for instance if my HC were in the suite common on the 65 degree vent and my room's AC was at a toasty 75 degrees... the tubing in my rig would perhaps be witness to condensation, but thats a crazy scenario which would never happen. )

Good luck, the vents in my dorm are really narrow and up near the top of the wall, when I get an apartment next year thats how im going to good my HC.

The ac is gonna cool your comp either way. Its pumping the same amount of heat at 47c and 37c. The AC doesnt work any harder, except for the fan has to push a lil more.

yes I have the ac vent on the wall just above the floor. So I just put the HC right next to it and have left the 4x 120mm in push pull config so the fans just suck the air right in as it comes out of the vent. The computer itself is sitting parallel to the HC with its side panel open so after the cold air blows around and through the HC it goes straight i the case and cools the components down. Pretty sweet arrangement. I am just happy cause I have never gotten such great gains by a very simple rearrangement. Usually it takes hours of modding and carful thought to get the temps down a couple of degrees after you reach a certain point.

kouch said:

ok as far as the electric bill, I am in a dorm room so the university pays for it. And as far as condensation, I am not running below ambient so it shouldn't be a problem am I right?

Click to expand...

The punk dorm admins at my college turn the A/C off in the winter.
I don't care how cold it is outside, I still want my A/C. I obviously moved off of campus as soon as I could