Liquid Cooled Dell Optiplex GX620

[whiterabbit391]

My Dell Optiplex GX 620 was overheating, so I took it apart.

After reviewing the heat sink, I wondered if the copper tubing was hollow.

I hacked the ends off with a hack saw and discovered they were hollow.

I tried drilling them out and putting 1/8th inch brass adapters inside the tubing, but that seemed to restrict the flow of water too much,

So it is better to get the fatter tubing, and used the copper tubing as a male adaption, and make the tubing the female connecter.

Hook one end to a fountain pump inside a mason jar. and return the tube to the jar for a simple liquid cooling hybrid heatsink.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203419803629444&set=pcb.10203419835670245&type=1&theater

I tried looking up this hack, and didn't see any evidence of it being done before, though I am sure it has. Just wanted to post this on your forum, so that it will be searchable on google.

I am just a noob who discovered for himself a small and easy hack for this decent cheap computer.
It was born from neccessity . If I could have bought a new computer I would have. But sometimes you have to work with what you've got.

One day some kid will look up how to cool his Optiplex GX620 , and hopefully he will find this solution.

Since the motherboard does not come with a thermocouple for the CPU , It is impossible to display the CPU temp on the computer screen.
In this method you can just put a food thermometer in the water and get an ideo of where your temp is. Or just stick your finger in the water. I have brought the water temp. to 123. F. without overheating, and since the instillation , it has not shut off due to a thermal event.

 

[whiterabbit391]

thats not water on top of the heatsink, It's epoxy

 

[trents]

Just don't knock over the Mason jar!

Great work! I love innovation. Be prepared for the knock on the door from a Coolermaster rep wanting to buy out your idea. Have you thought of a price yet? Or, maybe they will try to sue you for some kind of bogus patent infringement like they currently doing with another company they claimed used their pump design.

Seriously, looks like somehow you extended four of the water tubes. How did you do that? Is that where the epoxy comes in? Did you epoxy the extensions onto the existing sawed off tubes? Or did you remove some of the plates to expose more of the stock tubing? This is the part that isn't clear to me in your description.

 

[trents]

My Dell Optiplex GX 620 was overheating, so I took it apart.

After reviewing the heat sink, I wondered if the copper tubing was hollow.

I hacked the ends off with a hack saw and discovered they were hollow.

Was the liquid gone from the hollow tubes? Is that why the cooler was not dong it's job? Occasionally they will develop a leak.

 

[NiHaoMike]

The refrigerant inside (often incorrectly called "Freon") will evaporate almost instantly after you cut the tube. If you heard it hiss for a split second, that's what it was.

 

[trents]

Are you sure they put refrigerant in those heat pipe coolers? Never heard that before. My understanding is they just use distilled water.

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-components/processors/how-do-cpu-coolers-work-721366

 

[GTXJackBauer]

I am a little confused by this project. It just looks like you plugged in the tubes with water in them to the top of the heat sink. Sorry if I am not understanding this.

 

[caddi daddi]

whiterabit391, please give us more pics of this hack, it's awesome!!!

I'm looking at the heat pipes on my 7850 now.

 

[trents]

Why are only two sets of pipes connected to tubing?

 

[whiterabbit391]

Wow. I'm glad you guys showed a little interest in this.
I thought for sure this forum might be filled with snobs, with no time for noob hack,
but you proved me Wrong!

I'll have to get the camera and take some better photos for you.

Yes! The tubes were filled with a small amount of liquid, not sure what it was , but it was but there wasn't very much, not more than a couple of drops came out.

The two big tubes are the only ones actually functioning, the two smaller ones that are disconnected, is because they are of a smaller diamater, and they resricted the waterflow too much.I tried drilling the inside of the copper core tubes out and inserting the adapters. But had to abandon that route because of the flow restriction.

What I ended up doing, was going with the larger diameter hoses, and sticking them over the copper tubes. With a little epoxy to make a seal.

TRENTS!!! my friend!

No I have not gotten a knock on the door yet.
------------------------------------------------------

The original Idea, once I decided to do this.
was to mount the motherboard in a nice plexi glass and wood case,
and make a sort of fountain that flowed over the heatsink.
This would create a nice fountain sound instead of the noisy sound of fans
(The fan that comes with this Dell optiplex GX620 is a beast !! there's only the one for the entire system and it is well shrowed ((Which I cut away for this project)) and found out why; when this fan kicks into full RPM the friggin thing is a wind tunnell. It blows hard and it blows loud!)

Of course for the wall computer water fountain idea. The fountain would be well shielded from all the other electronic components . and all the other components ,..(power supply, hardrives, disk drives,) would all be seperate.

Imagine a motherboard mounted to a wall, encased in a nice wooden box, with a plexi glass cover. and a water fountain.
That's my idea. But I realized that it would be many hours and much money and prototyping for an idea that would be hard to sell. Who would buy them? How would I market it, That is for another day. Eventually I got tired of having a mess of components laying around on my desk. While trying to brainstorm the configuration of all the different compononents, I realized that the Tower Format is the only one that makes sense as far as space utilization goes. so I packed it all back in the tower because I was anxious to start training myself on Linux.
But now that I've blabbed my mouth about it on a worldwide forum, I'm sure they will pop up here and there in the near future.

In fact. A friend of mine in 2004 was telling me how he was going to use butane to extract the hash oils from weed. He built a prototype and it was successfull. He showed it off on the forums, and it went worldwide.
I know the guy who invented the Butane Extraction Method for hash oil. (B.H.O)
Because of the new extraction method, it became extremely popular.
Created an entire industry of wax burners, caused new laws to be formed over BHO,
It's a felony if you get caught doing it in colorodo . it's called 'blasting'
---------------------------------------------------------------
But I don't care. I barely believe in intellectual rights anymore. Who's to say who thought of it first anyway,...Just make the best of it.

If I have the idea but can't make it work right now.
No reason someone else shouldn't be able to bring it into creation.
I mean, a true creator is not one who holds onto valuble ideas out of the greed of
mine mine mine. A true creator shares.

BUILD IT my geek friends. Build it and show me Pictures!!!

--------------------------
I don't know how this just turned into some sort of rant, or If I covered this topic even.
I'll just wait for a reply.

Thanks yous Guys!

 

[whiterabbit391]

Oh yeah, I remember what I was going to say.

Trents.

Yes I have knocked the mason jar over before. I've actually had too many close calls with the water/electronics relationship. When I took it over to my friends house to show him, I got excited and plugged the pump in before putting the return tube back into the jar. Water went everywhere and barely missed the motherboard.
because the tubes are all kind of just rigged in the jar by ephemeral tension. They have come out several times while I was hacking around. The closest call came when I left the workshop to get a bite to eat, and came back to find a big puddle dripping off the workdesk,; The return tube flopped out of the jar while I was gone,.
I don't leave it unattented anymore. I should just tighten up that system, but, Im lazy.

 

[whiterabbit391]

gtxjackbauer----- The coppertubes that run through the heatsink are hollow, and Im pumping water through them with a fountain pump inside of a mason jar, that's pretty much it.

 

[RnRollie]

halfway through reading it dawned on me... and this became the background music:

 

[trents]

Well, I was wondering why you didn't have a fan on the heat sink but you answered that question when referring to the blissful absence of fan noise. Me, I have some hearing loss so it takes a pretty robust fan to annoy me. The least of my cooling concerns. I'm glad you have good ears. Wish I still had them. That way the misses wouldn't have to yell at me so much.

 

[whiterabbit391]

Thanks for your interest !!!! /lost&found sudo apt-get install

Thanks for your interest !!!!!

cd /lost&found

sudo apt-get install lm-sensors || yes_interest in rigged cooling.position.overclockers.com;

./configure

____You guys are all awesome thanks for your interest. Hopefully a little dude in malaysia one day will buy a Dell Optiplex GX620 one day for $6.57 and play the f___ out of that thing till his petium 4HT 3.8 ghz proccessor overheats on him and he takes it apart and googles that **** and finds this Post!!!!

Im experimenting with attatchments of photos

 

[whiterabbit391]

the rest

and a view of my desk, and picture of the cool GUI thing ZorinOS does/........

 

[whiterabbit391]

gotter batted back down to 93 with the fan on

 

[whiterabbit391]

RnRollie

So friggin trippie you said that.

Just the other day My mom made me play that song and I tried to get it on youtube, but could only find the Album itself.
Iron butterfly is way too tripped out like JefferonStarShip and BlowAgainstTheEmpire.

I wasn't lucky enough to be chosen for their starship.

So my soundtrack is ' Star****ersInc.-NineInchNails. less'

 

[trents]

I think you should use grape wine for coolant: