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Death of watercooling

May 3rd 2001


Lately, the temperature of my cpus have been rising over 40 degrees Celcius, so I decided that it is time to take out the water cooling system and replace it with two Kanie hedgehogs using fairly quiet 60mm fans.
poor water flow
(80 Kb)
I started by checking the water flow, and it was very poor, which explains why the temperature was getting higher. The amount of water flow shown here is actually enough to cool two cpus. However, I was afraid that the flow would stop completely and burn my cpus.
gunk
(130 Kb)
If you take a look at this picture you might understand why water flow was so low. There is tons of stuff growing in the water, even though I put lots of algaecide in it. The plastic in the water is actually the plastic-wrap that I used to cover the pot with. I didn't exactly want to stick my hand in there and fish it out.
like fairy wings on a cement truck...
(36 Kb)
This is my computer, it is big and heavy. (48.5 lb).
the gory details
(134 Kb)
In this picture you can see one of the reasons it is soo heavy: The inside of the two doors are lined with Accumat. The accumat material might not look like much, but it is not lightweight. You can also see the total mayham of cables inside my computer in this picture. :)
Gunk!
(151 Kb)
Here is what my water cooling system looked like on the inside. The green tubing is regular fishtank air-hose, which might not have been the best choice, because some of the tubing has begun to develop kinks, which hamper the flow of water.
more Gunk!
(75 Kb)
After taking out the waterblocks and opening them up, you can see another reason why there was soo little water flowing: GUNK! There is GUNK growing inside the waterblocks. The gunk can be removed with an old toothbrush or something, but you still have to clean it out about once a month or so. I don't want to do that, so I'm replacing the water cooling with regular fans...
new fans
(130 Kb)
There, all done. Now my computer weighs 49.5lb. The new coolers seem to cool better than the water cooling system did when the fans were turned off. When the fans on the radiator were going, the water cooling system would cool very well, but also make a LOT of noise.

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Last modified: August 7th, 2001 - Design by Monica & Fredrik Hübinette