Can this external water rig be improved ?

...I'm sure it can, but I wonder how much and with what effort ?

I have a large heater core mounted in a sealed enclosure, which also houses about a 3/4 gallon reservoir, with a pair of 120mm panaflos (7V) pulling air through the whole thing. It is connected to my HTPC by about 10' (20' total -10' supply, 10' return) of hard copper piping (5/8") which is mounted on a baseboard. It is all in an equipment room which is climate controlled.

Anyway, the "looks" of the system is unimportant, as its in an largish A/V equipment room, and can't be seen or heard.

Here is the deal:

Under 12 hour plus heavy load (water heated to the max - no more temp rise) I have about a 25c ambient, 36c water temp, and a 47c load.

This is on a intel 920 dual core 2.8 @ 4.2, 1.425v, Apogee water block, danner mag 5 pump - all 1/2 ".

I would like to replace the 10' sections of pipe connecting the PC with the WC rig with some sort of copper-finned tubing, or a passive radiator like the Innovatek Ultra unit, but I don't know how much more improvement I could expect.

Forget about the waterblock / CPU improvement for now - how much closer to ambient is reasonable to expect with a large passive radiator added to the loop (or another active / fan radiator which is not restrictive) ?

About 11-12c is the difference between ambient and water temp at full load, time-stabilized. How much room for improvement (reasonably) is there ?

Thanks for any help.

- Chris

Can we get a few pics? Those always help

yea, you could get it better. ive had a external system that was around ambient 3-5c depending, so there is room for improvement. i dont think finning your pipe will justify the cost and that a larger rad would be much more efective. my system worked well but was massive and kinda noisy. i had a laminar flow hood i built frame/body and never finished. i had an old radiator out of a suzuki samurai. i had a 4" inline fan. i took all that made a super duper external air box. man did it crank. but it was like3x3x3ft, like a big cube or block.

Maybe this could help: http://www.frozencpu.com/ex-rad-60.html

Ok, that thing is ALUMINUM. If you use it, be certain that you check your antifreeze regularly. Mixed-metal systems are not advised. He has an Apogee waterblock, which is copper based. Adding an Aluminum res to his loop would make it a mixed metal system.

Besides that, his 20' of copper pipe probably has more surface area than that thing anyway.

Just pointing out it exists...

Thanks guys.

Flip-mode: Yeah, I saw that thing, and thats where I did a little thinking and searching, and found out that you can get finned pipe (basically longer sections of the thing you found).

I reasoned that 20 feet of better heat-shedding pipe than the standard 5/8" copper that I have now may work better than that Innovatek Ultra passive setup (pricey, too). It looks like to me that the Innovatek is basically 4 or 5 2' runs of finned pipe folded into a neat 2'x 18" x 2" (roughly) rectangle.

I would like to just take the same layout / concept I have, and utilize that existing 20' in a better way.

If I could use another rad, or a car rad, that would be OK also, perhaps just not as elegant or simple.

I also would want at least a 5-6c drop between ambient / water temps at absolute full load - I still assume by your comments that this should be feasible ?

- Thanks - Chris

Flip-Mode said:

Just pointing out it exists...

Click to expand...

Sorry, I might have come off a bit to strongly.

MoreGooder said:

Sorry, I might have come off a bit to strongly.

Click to expand...

Don't worry about it.