innovative combination/solution with water cooling!?

Ok, so I think I did my homework on this by looking everywhere i knew (not a LOT of palces just yet) for examples of my idea already in action. but nobody has done, that I can see, what I am going to propose here.

bong cooling looks like a pretty neat method
pros: sub ambient water temps, possibly nice design aesthetics
cons: the water cooling your system will evaporate, leaving nasty deposits, and any additives that you put in will potentially make your room smell bad

radiator cooling is also a nice idea:
pros: easy to set up and make fit in the case; makes your computer more portable
cons: the ceiling of cooling capacity is dependent on how good your rad/fan is (and also ambient temps).

so, these two methods have great pros, and bad cons- when looked at apart from one another, but what I am proposing here is a combination of the two methods.

i propopse setting up a fountain that uses its own pump and can exist completely apart from your computer. this fountain can be something like a beefed up version of all those little desk fountains you see on... desks... right. and in the reservoir at the bottom of this standalone fountain, you can put your radiator (like run the tubes to/from your wc system to the rad that rests at the bottom of the fountain res)

so the reason i think this is a good idea is that you are using evaporative cooling to cool your system's water, via the radiator at the bottom of the fountain's res. the cool fountain water will sink to the bottom you your radiator while the hot water running through the rad will push the water around the rad upward, where it can then be sucked up by the fountain pump to be evaporated during its transit back down to the res. this way, you dont have to worry about water loss in your system, you dont have to worry about how additives will make your room smell, and if you put a little effort into it, you can have a cool-looking fountain in your room too!

my idea:
pros: using evaporative cooling to lower your system temps; no system-water loss; additives no longer pose an annoyance to evap-cooling; cool fountain (soothing noises and the like)

cons: um... it's a bit more work than just using a radiator... are there other cons?

i hope somebody has tried this before and can give me feedback because i am seriosuly considering trying this idea out for my next computer.

[edit: it just occurred to me that i could also place the system res next to the radiator in the fountain res, just so it can be kept cool too.]

Const: anti-corrosion addictive to "evaporative" water - it would caouse stains on rad, not using it - corrosion of rad

but idea is still nice

I cant seem to understand your idea... Can you explain it again?

I'm not too clear on your idea but I think it's similar if not the same as this one.

Yeah I get you. You basically want to water cool the primary cooling circuit's radiator with a bong system.

This way your primary cooling circuit's water stays uncontaminated.

Unfortunately, I tried this myself, and it did not turn out so well.

Temperatures were pretty bad, due to the loss of efficiency when you need to cool the primary circuit's radiator with the water with the secondary bong cooled circuit's water.

I think you are better off aircooling that radiator.

yeah, you guys are pretty close. except, in my mind there is some kind of difference between a bong cooler and a simple fountain. but if bong cooling is the next step from fountains, then i suppose the fountain setup i am thinking about would be even less efficient. i might still give it a go when that time comes, and i'll be sure to post results... but this probably wont be my first choice in cooling based on the advice i got here.

can somebody explian bong cooling to me? never heard of it before. Or point me to a webiste that explains it.

www.overclockers.com
look in watercooling section

Borisw37 search the forums for a link but

basicaly you use a big fountain to cool the water. By having in a open system water can evaporate and get cooler than abeint

put some alcohol on the back of your hand

as it evaporates it cools your skin to cooler than abeint

water isn't as eficent
(but doesn't make you room smell like a frat party )

this is overclockers' watercooling section: http://www.overclockers.com/topiclist/index31.asp#WATER COOLING

as for bong cooling, have a look at this article: http://www.overclockers.com/articles389/





man, this bring back memories of when I just started watercooling!

Well I get what you mean but I have a slight modefication to propose that I think would owrk out better.

From what Shiyan said he had tried just letting it set in a res and it didn't work well, this is probably because there wan't enough mmovment of the heat to another place, you would need a pump to move the water through the rad. Instead why no let the water fall thorugh the rad?

It is only a rough sketch of my idea, basicly it would work like this.

It's a bong at first, so you blow the air in but the part under the fist in section would be loinger (see shiyan's post, under that lil sticking out part.- the fist fan part in my diagram). Under it would be one thing sucking out so and then the rad and one thing pushing in, then the res part (my diagramm is a lil short, you woul probbably want more space for water to sit.) The rad would be pretty large, maybe even spaced sideways, but sealed around the edges so air and water have to pass through it.

The water would get cooled, like in the traditional bong, then fall onto the rad and cool off the rad before it falls through to the res and starts over. Then the extra fans further help the cooling bby blowing cool air over them and then getting sucked out before it heats up the water that is being cooled before falling on the rad (thats what the mesh would be for).

I relize there are some problems about this (could be fixed by taking out the extra fans, which might be even better, but I will explain why I put the fans in there at first in a sec). For one, the water that comes down from the rad might heat up the air that is gonna go up through the rad, that is bad because then it heats up the rad (but if and only if it is warmer than the rad, otherwise it either helps still or just makesit harder for the water to go down), also the air that comes out of the rad may heat up the water going in, this is bad also- same situation as the other one just backwards.
So you ask, why not just get rid of the fans? Well one of the +'s of his original idea was to help get rid of the thread of running out of water. Well, if there was no water in this system the pump in the bong part would probabbly die but the system would probably only suffer slightly (a temp increase) because the air from teh fans would cool it plenty, just the the conventionla rad system. Also the original plan I was just a mist to fall through the rad... taht probably isn't enough to cool it.

Another idea I just though of is, to ditch the extra fans and let gravity pull the water though, you would need a really sturdy setup and strong rad to get the pressure needed to give good preformance (probably nee ways, just my guess's :/). But if you run out of water its gonna ahve problems, but at least there is still some natural convection to give you time (maybe a lot if its set up right... you CAN run a rad w/o a fan if you set it up right).

Yet another, which would probably take a few (or one) powerful pump(s), is to have a normal bong setup with the rad acting as a filter of sorts (not to facilitate the purpose of a filter but just the water sucking through the rad). If you ahve good enough pump(s) this is probably the best way.

that's a great idea!

this would work!

this will definitely beat just aircooling the radiator.

a bit like spraying racing car radiators with water. we've got less temperature difference here, but due to the evaporation of water, the radiator might be cooled to below ambient.

Thanks for all your explanations, i get it now. I was actually thinking of doing something like this, before reading the forums. My idea was to use a ultrasonic fogger:

if you cant see the picture go HERE
I have one of those things, they are awesome. I has a metal plate on top that is about 3/4" in diameter. That plate vibrates at extremely high frequency (ultra sound 50KHz-100KHz). As you can see in the picture you place this device in the water (cant be too deap) and it vibrates the water column above it, sending numerous water particles flying into the air. The effect is a very-very fine dense mist. I thinks this would be perfect for the application since the surface area of all those mist particles must be enormouse. More area, more evaparation.

except you dont want that mist to be running into the radiator necessarily because the vibrating plate is heating the water to get it to mist. if you could get that fine-type mist to blow onto the radiator in the bong setup he drew up there, it might be more efficient than just having a showerhead deliver the water, but as is, i think that mist is too hot to really be more eficient than air cooling the rad.

you miss understood how this thign works. It DOES NOT heat up the water. It vibrates the water, thus causing small droplets along the surface to come dis-attached from the main body of the water, and due to being extremely light they float in the air, like mist. It NOT steam, its mist. The power supply for this thing uses 120vac and turns it to 36vac, rated 0.550amps, so if we calculated maximum power delivered by this thing its will be Power=Voltage * current, so at max this thing will deliver extra 20 watts of heat, but im sure the power supply is not used to the max, so maybe only 10 extra watts of heat would be added.

well, i dont want to burst your mist bubble, but something that is vibrating the water enough to make it mist sure as heck is heating up the water. because that is what heat is, it is movement of molecules (vibration is one type of movement). i didnt say it was steam, and i believe you that it is not, but how cool is that mist when compared with ambient?

as i said in my previous post. the most heat it can add to water, is what it consumes from the power supply. There is no other source of energy. So at most it will add extra 20watt, but in real life its probably going to be only 10watt or so. When i get a chance i'll measure the current going to it, and tell you for sure how much power it consumes.

i have to agree with smirabi- the molecules of water speeding up would cause heat. air cooling it would probably be fine

I Like borisw37 idea

use some duct work to blow the mist over a rad and it could get quite cool

i don't think one of those little things would put out enogh mist but two or more would make a sweet fog

Although your room might end up like a scene frome Cheech and Chong but you might like that kind of thing

damn, i guess it doesnt help my case that the one person agreeing with me is called biggestn00bever... but we're right. find a physicist and he'll back up us. if you want to watercool your radiator, it looks like a bong is the best method, after all, how are you going to deliver this supposedly cooler than ambient mist to the radiator? and once it's there, how will it do a better job than water from a showerhead (traditional bong method)?

it's an awesome little toy that makes some cool looking mist, but i'm not convinced it can be efficiently applied to the water-cooling arena. but honestly, i'd like more for you to prove me wrong than anything esle, so go for it and let us know how it works out.