Anyone water cooling their power supply?

[Szech]

I'm planning on ripping out my power supply's heatsinks (not easy BTW, since I'm going to have to de-solder some caps), and machining some waterblocks to put in their place. Koolance used to offer this, and I believe I read of one other company that was dabbling with this idea. Is there anything I should be aware of? Besides not leaking? I tried hooking alligator clips to the heatsinks, and clipped them to the case to see what would happen if they were electrically connected, and nothing bad came of it (since they may end up having an electrical connection if the water cooling were in effect).

Yeah, I'm going for dead silent. Just in case you're wondering.

[The Overclocker]

it has been done, i dont remember where, why dont youjust get a quite psu or try a really big hsf?

[BladeRunner]

I'm water-cooling my enermax 550 watt, but the heatsinks in mine are live, No obvious reason why they need to be anyway I've desoldered it all (not easy) and will be making blocks soon.

Like you I'm after complete silence and the PSU is the only fan left.

CPU Copper block (OCH)

Asus GF3 Copper GPU & Ram blocks, (custom made)

Mobo Chipset (modified Danger Den VGA)

HDD (near silent Seagate fluid drive motors, with custom made copper block).

Cooling system silent, Coolant cooled by underground temps and Eheim 1060 pump remoted.

[ButcherUK]

Friend of mine's dad came up with a much better solution, took out the fan and heatsinks and just used a 12" Al sheet as a heatsink, keeps it cool without noise or the hassle of water.

[BladeRunner]

I wouldn't say it was a better solution, but yes it is another possible solution maybe.

I have lived with a fan free PC, (other than the PSU fan @ 5v) for a while now and the main thing I've learned is things that don't get hot or even warm in a PC with a slight airflow can overheat dramatically when there is zero forced airflow.

The HDD's for instance remain just above ambient with an 80mm fan at 5v but no airflow = 45C and would have gone higher if I'd not intervened. Solution a waterblock and a running temp just under ambient, (with coolant at 14C)

The trouble with using a large spreader plate as a sink, (and copper would be far better), is that there will still be quite a bit of heat at source. With water-cooling you are not only removing the heat, (but in my case actively cooling it as well).

It depends on a lot of factors not least PSU type and the power requirements of the particular PC, but with no forced airflow I would not be happy the local heat could effect other components in the PSU. Also the impracticalities of finding somewhere for a 12" piece of Au and bringing it out of the PSU doesn't appeal much.

Water-cooling a PSU is not particularly difficult it is more a case of making sure it is safe and ALL parts of it are adequately cooled, not just the known hot parts, so that it will last when in use.

[ButcherUK]

Al is better for that example as you are far less likely to buckle the PSU from the weight ;) My point was though that people underestimate passive cooling, the key to it is you have to have FREE air - the 12" thing only works as the psu isn't enclosed. For a system in a case it's not going to work so water is better.

[BladeRunner]

To be honest we are approaching it from the wrong end as it would be far better to design a PSU from scratch that doesn't get hot enough to require any active cooling. :) Unfortunately however we have to work within the constraints of what we have. I'll bring this topic back with my results .... success :) or failure :(

Like said they are both solutions depending on application and other factors, my point about copper was mainly due to it's far better heat transfer properties.

[ButcherUK]

Originally posted by BladeRunner
To be honest we are approaching it from the wrong end as it would be far better to design a PSU from scratch that doesn't get hot enough to require any active cooling. :)

That'd be quite a PSU, given a typical switch-mode supply for a computer is something like 85% efficient already making one that provided the same power without active cooling would either have to use really good quality components (with perfect components a switch mode psu is 100% efficient), or a large footprint to allow for passive heatsinks.