Water Cooling

[RenegadeKing]

I've been reading about water cooling and of course have read many times that Water and Electricity don't mix. I was searching around these forums to see if anyone had posted anything about water cooling and found this thread: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...istilled+water
In it Paul Victorey says that distilled water is non-conductive. If that really is true, then wouldn't using distilled water with water cooling eliminate the problem of water and electricity not mixing? A lot of the things I have read say to just use tap water. Is using distilled water not as effective? Just wondering, I'm not actually getting water cooling, at least not anytime soon.

RenegadeKing

[whr2206]

personally I dont think you need it. If you are going to o/c get a global win cak38 2 case fans (if you dont alreayd have them and some good thermal compound. thats shoudl be it, but if you want to go extreme, i dont know..

[Toaster]

Water is conductive, I think you may have misread Pauls post.
Even if true, water would gradually pick up inpurities that are conductive.
Needless to say, water IS conductive, maybe just less so when distilled.
However, your computer system board and its parts run using millivolts and microamps in many places. The reduced resistance by water being on/in the circuit WILL cause problems.
Water cooling is not something to take lightly, difficult to do "right" and disaterous when done wrong. Next of the "dangerous" cooler appreati is "peltier" or "thermo electronic" junction. These can cool devices below ambients thus resulting in condensation.
Water cooling is a kind of "madness" for those that want a hi-tech solution to an age old problem, heat buildup.
Remember, if you use an AMD chip, thermal problems result in the CPU failing and with it possibly the system board. Now you want to throw water into the mix?
Thats like trying for a full house with 4 cards. A tad tricky.

[Terrorbyte]

yeah, it all seems like madness, and some bright spark that wants to make money from poor puter users, with some sort of new fangled device created every other day.
From my investigation into water cooling it seems there are more risks than compare to the one benefit of a cool cpu.
On another forum I gave the best advice I could think of, consider the price of a small 5,000 btu air conditioner, maybe $400 AUD or <$200USD, yep not a great deal compared to all the bits and pieces needed for water cooling etc, worth the price in any country and it not only cools the puter, but the monitor and everything else too.
having just installed a 16,000btu a/c next to my desk the temps in the box have dropped heaps, actually the mp-1800 cpu is now at a constant 35 deg.
It's cool and so am I, too easy eh.

[BFD Eyegore]

I have been runnin my dual p3 1 Ghz water cooled for about 6 months now and am really happy with it. It idles at 30 degrees celsius er 86 degrees fahrenheit. At full loard runnin Quake 3 at 1280 x 1024 resolution in never peaks over 36 degrees celsius or 96 degrees fahrenheit. All this with an ambient temperature of 30 degrees celsius. Yes it did cost quiet a bit. $250 US but what do you expect tryin to cool dual procs.

[Terrorbyte]

BFD, at over $500AUD one might have to step back and ask if it is really worth it, remembering that if the pump stops or the hoses leak onto the electrics there is a big problem, at least if the fan in a conventional H/S stops working the cpu has a chance to be saved ?

Those temps are not that much less than my MP-1800 with conventional cooling.

NOTE: the a/c is not directed at the box whatsoever, all it is getting is the ambient air temp of 24-25 deg C.

My faithfull backup machine, a P3-1g on an Asus CUSL2-C with 256mb ram, runs at 34 deg CPU temp with a STANDARD 5,400 rpm fan on a Dragon Orb 3 HSF, and the Aopen HX45 case has (NOT ONE) other case fan, not even one in the front of the box, so I would have to say that the water cooling is somewhat over rated pointless and not worth the money or the risk, IMHO.

Are you overclocking your cpu ?

[RenegadeKing]

Hey. All I was asking is, because distilled water is supposedly non conductive according to Paul Victorey in this thread: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...istilled+water would using distilled water with water cooling make the chance of leaks less severe. As I said at the end of my first post, "Just wondering, I'm not actually getting water cooling, at least not anytime soon". So I'm not actually getting water cooling, I was just curious

Originally posted by Paul Victorey Yup -- as long as you keep distilled water free of ionic impurities, it is nonconductive. It is actually the dissolved material within tap water which makes it conduct.

RenegadeKing

[Hollow4]

distilled water is NOT CONDUCTIVE. ionic particals in water makes it conduct electricity. But if you were to have distilled water in a clean glass beaker and stick 2 wires into the water and have those wires connected to a battery and light bulb the bulb would not light up. In a molecule of H2O the outter electron shells are filled completely where as in ions they are essentialy missing half the molecule and the ion would like to fill its outer shell by taking on electrons. this is what makes water conduct eletricity the ions dissolved in it.

-Ryan-

[fudge]

hay there..

i doubt whether using distilled water would really make a difference to the cooling ability of the water.. maybe if you distilled it twice and then degassed it you'd get rid of the chance of bubbles appearing in the tubes.. and no gunge growing in the pump.. but like everyone else has said.. if the water got onto the MB and whatnot.. it'd still be trouble.. (after all you have to protect your circuitry from condnsation when your'e using peltier cooling don't you? and that water would only have the electrolytes it picks up off the pcb, which isn't necassarily going to be much..)