• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Water cooling

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

FyreDaug

Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2004
Location
Saskatoon, SK
I am interested in doing a watercooled setup for my car during the spring and I should get all my information right, right now it looks messy and ghetto looking in my trunk (attached pic) and I want to waterblock the hard drive somehow. Possibly the video card aswell, its only a gf4mx440 right now and it may stay like that because its more than sufficient.

I want to waterblock the cpu, northbridge, hard drive, sound card and video card (what about psu?)
I will use the northbridge sink of the southbridge for looks.

Eventually there will be a false floor where that cover is, it will be made of plexiglass and that sub will be sold for 2 12" Alpine Type R which will be mounted using these
cornersub9.jpg


Anwyays, what can be done with a watercooled setup to keep it from freezing/condensing in the trunk of my car? I wont be running any AC lines to the back to suck up any moisture (if thats even a problem with watercooled)
I will be using blue tint to the water, probably food coloring or clear water with blue LED's (depending on how my water with LED trial goes)
All that foam will be gone and in its place I will use soft rubber which you wont be able to see. The motherboard will have a seperate enclosure in the plexiglass window so you can only see the mobo + all wires and tubing running to it. The hard drive will have a seperate bay, (There will actually be 2 drives in there later, 2x200gig maxtors or WD's) and the PSU will have its own bay. Not sure what to do with the audigy bay, but I donno if I want it shown, maybe just the front panel of it if I mount it vertically. Maybe have the front fact outside of the plexiglass.

What about using antifreeze mixture in there? The last thing I want is the -40C weather we have here freezing my lines and exploding all over electrical components. I'm fairly skeptical about this idea, hopefully you guys can remove that from my head. I have 3 blue led 120mm fans that move alot of air. You can sort of see 2 of them on the cover in that pic. The 3rd I recently bought as an exhaust fan because I was having some cooling issues, using winamp vis with the windows up makes the athlon hit hot temps, when it turns off I have to uplug it entirely for 5 seconds then back in and turn on, when I get into the bios I usually see 66-67C on cpu temp so it must have been hotter than that during the 10-15seconds time between when it shuts off and when I see it. Only happened 3-4 times.

What about the radiator on the watercooled setup, does it have to be placed vertically or horizontally? Or does it even matter. If I get a water cooled setup I will use one of my 120mm fans (with ducting or something if I have to) to keep it cool, fans are fairly quite and push lots of air. I would also want the rad shown through the plexiglass.
 

Attachments

  • mess.jpg
    mess.jpg
    71.9 KB · Views: 127
there is a watercooling section, but ill see if i can help

antifreeze in yout water is a good plan and thats what most poeple do anyways to prevent corrosion and bacteria growth. you might have a condensation problem if you plan on using it in subzero temps, but thats just speculation from me.

i have seen watercooled PSUs but that a major undertaking involing creating your own blocks. hard drives and northbridge dont really need water cooling, and it will just make your water cooling loop less effective.

also in sub zero temps, i would worry about your hard drive failing. their motors are one of the few things in a computer that dont like being cold. your fans might not start either.

radiators can go any direction you want. you just need a t line or a res somewhere to bleed the air out.

why are you doing this? seems like most car systems are low performance mp3 machines. do you plan on using yours for gaming, etc? or is a bling thing?
 
why are you doing this? seems like most car systems are low performance mp3 machines. do you plan on using yours for gaming, etc? or is a bling thing?

Maybe a little of all 3, its a high performance flac machine. Lossless music->optical signal to 6.1 amp->quality speakers == ownage

I'm a major audiophile so its awesome for me. I do some gaming in there when Im bored, though its mostly been snes emulation right now. It plays DVDs aswell as ripping music files, so a fairly high processor is kind of needed. Hence the 3000 xp.

No problems with hard drive failures, its just the fluid bearing that will become "harder" for lack of better word, where it wont let the drive spin at optimal speed. It says on the box/website what temps its runnable in. If the drive is frozen (which only happens below 30C, the rest seems fine) I let it sit in the post screen for a minute or so until the fluid bearing gets a little more liquidy, then it spins and runs perfectly fine. No SMART errors or any wierd problems yet, and its been over a month in this weather, cold starting it twice a day
 
Interesting idea, but why not just buy a 12v DSP with direct fibre optic output? I guess I'm having trouble seeing how the computer is really necessary to create 6.1.
 
Its not neccesary, but it does have many bonuses to having a computer. I can play games, surf the net (once I get around to making enough money to buy some wireless stuff) play games, gf4 mx440 is sufficient.

Plus the interface on winamp is amazing the way its setup.
 
Well it's a hardcore solution. :) I love it. GL and keep us posted on your progress.
 
Yeah for sure, I'm actually dealing with a lawsuit regarding my car breaking down all the time. I spun a rod bearing so right now my crankshaft is hammering away at my connecting rod. This is twice now and I've had a million problems with it. So before I go too hardcore into it (modifying stuff) I wanna deal with that first.
 
Well the car is getting fixed, probably throwing in a new crate engine. (Hopefully)

And my next upgrade will probably be water cooling for it.
 
before going into water cooling the system I suggest boxing it much better,

Personally I would mount everything to the trunk top and use a resivoir set up having the rez on the floor of the trunk that way if you heaven forbid get in a small accident and the rez falls over, it doesn't flood your system. for cooling a vent in your trunk onto a rad would keep the liquid cool, while you drive the vent takes in the air and blows it over the rad, in the winter it does not matter its bloody cold in Sask ;) if anything you will want to use your comp as a heater
 
It will be mounted and boxxed better, I've already dealt with that. But I havent put it in the car because its a much more permanent setup than this (in the pic) is. I'm trying to get rid of this car, its a piece of crap. Hopefully midweek, in 2 days I should have my car back. I'm dying to hear good music instead of 4 crappy stock speakers and the radio. Grr.
 
Back