Your experience with bong/evaporative watercooling

OK, I just started a bit of research on watercooling and I'm kinda liking the idea of the bong coolers better than some heatercore sitting on top of my case... Sounds of a waterfall in my bedroom? Possibly below ambient temps? Low price (from what I can tell)? Hell yeah!

I just wanna get people's experience with this thing. I understand that there may be alot of maintenance, but how much? Dumping a cup of water in there every day is no big deal, but what about the biocides and all that?

Basically I just wanna know if this is a practical way to go about watercooling.

--Illah

heatercore on the top of the case?? no way! hehe malaki did it once... but most of the time it goes inside... they use average 1gallon per day... and have more mantienence than you would expect...

Yeah, I know it's supposed to go inside, but I can't think of where I have room for it! My only option really would be to either set it outside or do a blowhole-type setup for it, like a chimney or something. Plus I don't have many tools and ghetto chopping my expensive *** Lian Li case isn't to fun (I've done it already, the whole time I'm like, "Better not be destroying it, better not be destroying it")

--Illah

I had a ball with my bong cooler. Ran my dual 120 watt pelt rig with it for a little over six months. Using a non-pelt waterblock, idle temps were indeed below ambient. A piece of foam rubber floating on the water surface will cut the noise substantially.

Hope you got a bathroom nearby
that sound of water running constantly gets to you... (well it does me at least )

Just built my first one, and it can cool the water to about a degree or two below ambient, bearing in mind this is a crappily cheap *** one. I just used a bucket with a perspex sheet with a hole in, attached some 4 inch diameter tubing, about 3 feet, and put a fan on the perspex sheet too to blow air thru the pipe. Its fairly noisy tho, im trying to work on reducing that, but mine probably cost about £15 ($22.5??) to make.

Might splash out the cash to build a better one, but im not sure whether to go with a rad for less noise...

On the subject of maintenance, particularly on the nasties topic.

I use dish soap! It kills most stuff, it's a potent surfactant, it's safe for all your metals, tubes, etc., I'm sure you've already got it, it won't make you go blind or anything. Some dish soap (a couple drops into a filled bucket - don't pour water onto the soap or it will bubble up!) and regular system flushes (I try to do it once a month) is a pretty easy chore for superior cooling and very little overhead in cost.

I think on maintance he was talking about replacing the water that evaporates. I keep hoping someone builds a bong with an autofiller, like a float valve of some sort, but haven't seen it yet.

i think pepsi is working on the delux twisterbong with that!

Did pepsi invent the twisterbong?

Thanks for all the help, this bong is really sounding like how I'm gonna go now. I don't mind constantly refilling it. I was talking it over with my girl and I was like, "What if I forget?" and she told me that I mess with my machine so much she can't imagine how I'd ever forget... Hahaha, I'm a dork!

Anyways, one last thing. Would I need to insulate the mobo or anything since it dips under ambients on idle? I mean, I'm going peltier style here, but would there be condensation? Just wondering.

--Illah

No, condensation doesn't happen with a bong.
The charts all show it's possible when it's 98% and 1 degree below room temp, but in reality, your processor will keep the waterblock above room temp. The waterlines will stay between room and water temp.
If you use a TEC, you absolutely must use the usual methods of insulation.

I filled mine with 3/4 of a gallon once each day.

My bong had LED's mounted on a clear bottom, so I could just glance into the bong to see the water level.

Use a filter on the air intake, and you can dramatically put off maintanence.

I just used a 1/4 tsp. of bleach in my 2.5 gallon reserve water jug. Not enough to really smell strong and bleachy, but plenty to kill the bugs and give the room a clean smell.

I used a large shower head with many holes. This allowed me to block all the center holes and let the outer ring of water spray against the side of the bong. Darn near silent, and still respectable temps of 6C below ambient. Making the bong tall will allow enough surface area with this method to work just fine, and 2' bong wouldn't be enough. Mine was around 5'

Leave plenty of pvc pipe below the wye pipe to allow for reservior space. 4" pvc may not hold as much water as you might think. A gallon and a half will allow you to neglect the water filling chores if needed.

Sounds good... I'm tempted to do this now!

I'm gonna hold off a bit though, probably till October when I build a second machine for the girlfriend (that'll give all my top notch aircooling a new home).

So my last question for now is how much did your bong/watercooling setup cost you start to finish?

--Illah

Homebuilt waterblock $15 in materials
Pump $35
Tubing $10 (I used the cheap vinyl from the hardware store)
Showerhead $3
Brass fittings $12
PVC $22 (had to buy a 12' piece of the 4" stuff)
Panaflo 120mm $16

The look on your friend's faces..Priceless. (couldn't resist)

I had all the parts like resistors to slow the fan down, and the LED's to light up the bottom, the wire to extend the fan's wire from the computer, the spray paint, the PVC primer and cement etc...

Man, that's still only like a bill... Man, I'd need the cement and epoxy or whatever, maybe a few LEDs, but I have an excess of fans. It'd probably cost me a bit more cuz I got all these ideas on making it pretty But man just for the hell of it I priced a watercooling kit on DangerDen and it ran me like $300! Screw that, hahaahaha.

--Illah

www.overclockers.com/tips667

this is what I came up with to fill my bong when I was away.

The only problems I had with mine was all the buildup on the tower from the water I was using (lots of metal, minerals, etc)

I eventually took the showerhead out of mine and just let the tube spray on the side of the tower. That let the water run down the sides, and removed some of the flowrestrictions.

alltogether, mine cost about $100 to put together...


btw, this summer I've had to use a radiator since for work I can leave for 2 weeks at a time... my reservior won't last quite that long....

good luck! let us know how it goes.

eheh not quite just a cup :] i dump around 2 gallons a day and mines just a rip off of a bong/evaporation.

Tried the water bong thing and it cost me alot. I was cooling dual 172w pelts and a 156 pelt for video with my 6ft tall 4inch wide pvc bong. worked great except for the 1 gallon of water I needed to add every few hours its seemed. Any way.....left computer on overnight to download a big file and woke up to a destroyed computer. Thought I had plenty of water but it ran dry during the night. pelts fried the chip, motherboard, video, destroyed waterblock, melted the tubing, and dripped out plastic on my ram. About $900 in damage. So I am back to the old radiator trick for now.

Thought you guys might find this amusing!

Here’s my Bong experience:

I used the following set-up:




I was running a 1.33tb @ 1.6 with 1.9vcore. using a maze2 and a 1300lph idra pomp.


CPU temp idle 16 degrees, yes its true and by my knowledge this is the lowest TB temp with plane old water-cooling. (no pelts)

The maximum temp was 24

Water temp was always around 5-10 degrees under room temperature.

So I’d say it was a big success to bad it was large and didn’t look to good.

ZeroKelvin said:

Tried the water bong thing and it cost me alot. I was cooling dual 172w pelts and a 156 pelt for video with my 6ft tall 4inch wide pvc bong. worked great except for the 1 gallon of water I needed to add every few hours its seemed. Any way.....left computer on overnight to download a big file and woke up to a destroyed computer. Thought I had plenty of water but it ran dry during the night. pelts fried the chip, motherboard, video, destroyed waterblock, melted the tubing, and dripped out plastic on my ram. About $900 in damage. So I am back to the old radiator trick for now.

Thought you guys might find this amusing!

Click to expand...

ouch..... That really sucks... That's my one fear with my system, even though I don't have any pelts yet...

if you guys had a reservoir underneath you bongs you could put a valve that is normally used for toilets(new ofcourse ) and use that to fill the resorvoir, that way your not stuck filling it up all the time and don't have to worry about fried chips.

Well I hope someone tries this, i know i would but don't have wc yet and not planning on having a bong.