Watercooling Your PC (Guide)

[AngryAlpaca]

Water Cooling: The Basics

Processors draw more and more power, but the point of stability remains the same. Something has to be done. One solution is air cooling- strapping a big heat sink on your CPU, and putting a very loud fan on. However, due the physical limits involved, such as the heat transfer rate of the material, and the limited size, this isn’t always practical, not to mention loud. So, what can be done? You can use heat pipes to spread the heat out more, to get more efficiency out of your heat sink by utilizing all of the surface area, rather than a little bit at the bottom, or, water cooling. Water cooling is, as you may have guessed, the use of water to cool your processor. This offers several advantages, the first being that you can get the heat moving as fast as you want, much faster than with copper, or even diamond, by increasing the flow rate. It also allows you to use a large radiator, and that has a much higher surface area to dissipate heat from than a heat sink could possibly have. It also lets you use larger fans that move more air, with a lot less noise. Alas, nothing is perfect. Water cooling will usually cost more than air cooling, and take up a great deal more room.

Okay, so now we go into the actual act of water cooling. Basically, you have a water block on the CPU that absorbs heat, and passes it onto the water. Most water blocks are designed in such a way that a lot of heat is transferred to the water, with the use of mazes, that channel the water around, or, more recently, jet impingement, with micro fins. To move water through this water block we use a pump. Well, a pump is the best way, some people use natural water convection, but this isn’t very effective. A pump uses an electric motor to spin an impeller that forces the water through the tubing, and into the water block. Now that we’ve got the heat in the water, we must remove it. We do this with the use of a radiator, and we’ll go into the specifics later. With a radiator, however, the natural convection of the heat isn’t enough for most users, so we connect a fan. 120mm fans can be used, and these cut down on noise, while boosting airflow. A fan has a dead spot so a shroud should be used. Once again, we’ll go into this later. So, after the radiator, the water goes on back to the water block, and begins the cycle again. It doesn’t sound so hard, does it?

Water Blocks:

This is a chunk of metal that goes on top of your CPU. Its only purpose is to transfer heat from the CPU, to the water, and is probably the most important part of the system. If you want to upgrade, this is the thing to change. They are designed to get optimal heat transfer, and move the heat from the CPU to the water in the most effective way possible. Older style blocks used mazing, or routing the water so it spends more time in the block, to accomplish this. However, recently the White Water water block came out, and this used jet impingement and micro fins. Jet impingement is the use of a decreased barb size to accelerate the water to fairly high speeds, so the water hits the base at a fairly high speed, and carries the heat away quite effectively. Micro fins are tiny fins in the base of the block made to increase both turbulence and surface area.

The very best water block that is available is the MCW 6002. It may look bland, but it offers the best performance and one of the best prices ($40). In the UK or Europe the TDX is probably the best that is available now. There are many other blocks that offer comparable performance, but with the low price, high performance, and ease of use of these two, the others are probably not worth taking a look at.

If your water block has 3 barbs, the water goes in the middle, and out the sides, and these come with a Y fitting, that you use to reconnect those barbs.

Look here or here to check for water block ratings. These sites are accurate. Lower C/W is better, along with a lower pressure drop.

Chipset Water blocks: These are, as the name implies, blocks for your chipset. I don't suggest these, due to a restriction in flow, and no increased overclock, but if you are dead set on one, I suggest the DD Maze 4, as it has a very low pressure drop and good enough performance.

GPU block: This is a block for your video card. Unlike the chipset block, this one DOES matter. The GPU block I recommend above all is the Silverprop Fusion block. These are built much the same as Silverprop’s CPU block, but made for the video card. The HL has higher barbs than the SL to avoid hitting RAM sinks. That’s the only difference. These are top quality blocks. The Swiftech MCW50 and the DD Maze 4 are both fairly competent as well.

Pumps:

These move your water through your tubing. I’m not sure about the specifics of the inner workings of these, but it involves a spinning magnet. Pumps have three ratings: Flow; measured at 0’ head resistance, due to this it has very little bearing on the performance of the pump, but the higher the better anyway. Head pressure; measured in feet H2O or metres H2O. This is the most important number, as we have got a lot of resistance in our systems. The higher the pressure, the better it is. We’ve also got heat; this is the amount of energy the pump draws, and it transfers most of the drawn heat to the water. Important! The power rating is only accurate at 100% flow, which is impossible to get in a water cooling system. This is dependant upon flow, so a low flow pump will have a lower heat rating than a high flow pump, but in a system, due to the resistance, and the lowered flow, the heat drawn is much lower than its rated number.

I think I’ll make this fairly accurate generalization right now. ALL standard pumps perform the same. By standard, I mean pretty much all pumps with flow between 180GPH and 5 feet pressure to ~400GPH and 12 feet pressure. In a typical system, consisting of a Procore and an MCW 6002, there will be NO measurable difference between these pumps. Changes start getting noticeable on the low end faster. The differences get larger with more blocks, and more resistance, but they’re still very small.

With that said, I consider the Mag 3 the best pump out there. It has the best flow, but that is balanced by its high heat, it has a three year warranty, it’s relatively quiet, and it’s only 40 dollars. Use an unrestricted inlet, preferably 5/8” ID or higher. It doesn’t come with barbs, but you can get them free from the sticky in this section. The Mag 3

[AngryAlpaca]

has minor problems with leaks, but these are correctable with Teflon tape, an O-ring, or a lot of sealant.

The Iwakis are the cream of the pump crop. The MD20RLZT provides the most pressure of any pump, with a fair amount of flow at all of the levels. It has slightly higher heat than any pump listed here, but its high flow can probably compensate for that. It is quiet, and, like all Iwakis, is high quality, and incredibly expensive. It is highly suggested if you don’t mind paying a lot, but be warned, it is large and probably won’t fit in your case.

The MCP 600 is the second best performing pump out there, barring the Iwakis, despite its small maximum flow, due to its high head pressure, and incredibly low heat. It is 12VDC, so it plugs into your power supply, and sucks up to 0.75amps. Form your own opinions about that. It is a quiet pump. It costs upwards of 70 dollars.

The Eheim 1250 is a very high quality pump, albeit with worse performance (once again, it doesn’t matter) than the other options. It runs at about 60 dollars, and is quiet. I suggest this pump for longevity, or in a situation that any minor failure is catastrophic. I have never heard of ANY problem with this pump.

The Danger Den DD-D4 pump is a high performance pump, with flow rivaling that of the Mag 3, but with about ½ the heat. This is probably the highest performing non-Iwaki pump out there, but is 12VDC, and sucks up to 1.5 amps. Once again, form your own opinion. This pump is noisy, and costs 75 dollars at the moment. I wouldn’t advise it for this really loud whine. (~50DBa, higher pitched than most fans)

The Hydor L30 is small, outperforms the Eheim 1250 (once again, does not matter) and is fairly quiet. A few problems have been reported with this pump, but they've been minor. It sells for around 50 dollars.

The Via Aqua 1300 is the cheapest pump out there. It is high heat, noisy, and low quality. The only reason I would advise this pump is if price is a serious issue.

Radiators:

Radiators are used to dissipate heat. A radiator usually consists of a large amount of very small, flat tubes, with fins attached to increase heat dissipation. There are used in cars, for the main radiator, and the heater core. This is the best kind of radiator, (I, and many others, refer to this kind of radiator as a heater core style radiator) but there are two others. The main alternative radiator type is the winding tube radiator. It involves a (You guessed it!) winding tube, with fins attached to increase heat dissipation. These are generally used in phase change coolers, where the objective is to get the liquid as cool as possible, rather than getting as much liquid as possible fairly cool, and aren’t very good for our purposes. They restrict flow a lot, and are usually more expensive than heater cores, and don’t dissipate the heat as effectively. The stacked plate radiator is built very similar to the heater core style radiator, but uses wide, flat tubes as the primary heat dissipation thing, sometimes with fins between them, rather than using the fins as the main way to dissipate the heat. It seems that these would as good as heater cores at cooling, but due to availability and price concerns, these aren’t used.

The heater core from an ’86 Chevette is what you should probably buy. It has very good performance, low pressure drop, and a damned good price (Around 20 dollars in an auto parts store.) It does, though, have one 5/8” barb, and one ¾” barb, so you have to change them out, or stretch your tubing over it. The ¾” one will be tough to stretch your tubing over. You can buy a shroud already made from Dtek for this radiator. If you don’t want to mod the radiator yourself, you can just buy a Dtek Procore for 12 dollars more. This is about 7X6”, so it won’t perfectly fit where a 120mm fan would fit. A better choice than either of those, though, would be a single pass heater core from a ’76 Chevy truck without air conditioning, but it is much larger (12”X6”) and slightly more expensive. Also, you cannot buy a shroud for it, already made. This has a list of all the heater cores, one arranged by length, and one by width. For the car references, one is arranged by core number, and the other by model name.

Now, there are also the made-for-PC options. The Black Ice Extreme is the most commonly used of these. It fits where a 120mm fan fits, and fits a 120mm fan without an aftermarket shroud (shrouds are still good.) Its performance is worse, by a fairly large margin, than the Procore, but it costs a lot more, and restricts flow more. The BIX2 is just slightly worse than the Procore, and is much bigger. Black Ices also come in an 80mm size, and a 160X80mm size, but these are probably below your desired level of performance There are also the Thermochills. They come in a bunch of sizes: 80mm (80.1), 92mm (92.1), 120mm (120.1), 240X120mm (120.3), and 360X120mm (120.3). The 120.3 outperforms the standard heater core, but I doubt it outperforms the 10X6 single pass. (There has been no good testing done, but assumptions can be made from other testing.)

Do NOT buy radiators smaller than 120X120. That is just high temperatures, wasted money, and a lot of frustration waiting to happen. Do NOT buy a Black Ice Pro. It is a poor performer. Do NOT buy a Swiftech 676 radiator. It may be massive, but it’s a bad cooler. Do NOT buy a winding tube radiator. Once again, a bad cooler, and really restrictive...

Modding a Heater Core to Fit your Tubing:

1. Take note of the pipes (input/output) coming out of your heater core. Generally, they will be roughly 1/2 inch copper. Sometimes they have bulbed fittings on one end, but at some point the pipes will be the same diameter. This is where I would cut them off at.

2. Get a hacksaw, and put your heater core in a vice. Just set the "tank" of it in there, and be careful not to crush any fins. You don't need to crank it in there, just snug. Slowly, and gently, saw off the pipes until they are both at the same diameter. Try to not bend the pipes, or crush their diameter. If you do, no problem. The pipes are pretty soft, and if you put something like a pair of dikes or pliers inside them, open them up, and move them in a circle, you can restore them to their original shape very easily. Don't worry about this too much, anything can be fixed with some solder and some sweating .

[AngryAlpaca]

3. Grab your heatercore and go to a hardware store (Ace, Lowes, Home Depot). You're going to want to go to the plumbing department, and look for some barb fittings. One side will have a barb, and the other will be threaded. If you heater core had 1/2 inch piping, then you'll want to grab a male brass fitting with a threaded size of 1/2 inch. The barb size will be dependant of the inner diameter of the hosing that you will be using. The male piece should slip right over the fitting, but a female piece will work too, it will just require more solder. Bring your heatercore with you, just to make sure, and if you get confused, ask someone there to help you.

3. Now that you have you fittings and a sawed off heater core, it's time to do some soldering (sweating copper). If you don't have any flux, solder or a torch, you should pick one of these up at your hardware too. A small torch runs about $8, and the butane for it $2. You can also pick up a sweating kit for about $6, which will include some emory cloth, flux, solder and probably a brush. Get it, if you don't have anything else.

4. Sweating copper is pretty simple. First, make sure that the pipe on your heater core is free of any corosion. Use the emory cloth to clean it up a bit where you will be sweating. Next, take some water, or alcohol and clean off the shaving or dust from the sanding. Make sure it is DRY afterwards. Take you brush and brush some flux on the inside of the fitting and the outside of the pipe. Slide your fitting over the pipe, and spark up your torch . You're going to want to heat the piping and the fitting up for a couple minutes. Yes, you'll probably see some smoke this is okay. Run the torch around the pipe and fittings until they are nice and hot, and then take your solder and run it along the seam of the fitting and the pipe. The flux will draw the solder in and you will create a seal. You don't need a lot of solder to do this, unless you are using a female barb fitting. BE CAREFUL!, the pipe will GET HOT. I would advise using a vice for this also. Once your solder and make a seal let it cool for a few minutes, and then dunk it in some water.

5. Thats about it, you now have your fittings. Your next step is to leak check it. If you have all your other WC supplies, this is easy hook it up and let it go, monitor it for a couple hours. If you only have the heater core, you can attach some tubing to both ends, crimp one end closed place the heater core underwater, and blow into the other end. You're not putting a lot of pressure on it, but I doubt your WC really will eaither. If you have a compressor that would work great too, but I think you get the idea I'm going for. Look for bubbles. If you see one, get your solder and torch back out and go to work!

Thats modding a heater core in a nutshell. You can do all sorts of things to them, but I think this should give you an idea. I wish I could help you out more with the sizes, but a little research on NAPA.com or any other such site will get you there. All the dimensions are listed, so just compare them to what you are looking for in a fan.
[/quote] Big thanks to bswitt for this basic modding guide.

Shrouds: Shrouds are used to attach the fan to the radiator, and to distance the fan from the radiator as well. You want one that spaces the fan at least 1” (1.12" being preferable) away, and, naturally, it should fit the core tightly. If you have a Procore, or a heater core of the same size, this could be useful: www.overclockers.com/tips1138/

Fans: Fans use a DC motor in the middle of the fan, with blades on the outside to move air. You want 120mm fans, or larger, because they don’t have to rotate very quickly to move as much air. Basically, get the fan that moves the most air for your noise tolerance. 70CFM should be considered a minimum air movement speed, and below that performance suffers.

Filling and Bleeding the System: There are two main ways to fill/bleed your system, the reservoir, and the teeline. A reservoir is a large holding tank for water, and it usually has a place in which to put the water. The easiest way to fill and bleed the system, but it consumes space, and costs money. A teeline is simply a tee somewhere in your system, with a long piece of straight tubing sticking out the top. This is cheap, and saves space. I advise a reservoir if you have the space.

If you don't want to submerge your pump, you can either use a PVC reservoir, a bay reservoir, or a Criticool Waterplant. It is high quality with multiple barb configurations. Submerging your pump drastically improves your flow, but there are no commercial options, so the best method is to put it in a small Tupperware container, and then fix it up so it can close.

Tubing: This is what the water flows through. Larger ID is better, but ½” is standard, so it is easiest. You want thick walled tubing (1/8”, ¾” OD for ½” tubing) to avoid kinking.

Tygon is the preferred type of tubing, but it offers very little advantage for its cut throat price, of around $2.60 per foot. Clearflex 60 is next, very similar to Tygon, a little less flexible and stretchy, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Next in line is tubing from the good ol’ Home Depot. Look at the tubing there, and make sure it isn’t squished, or pre-kinked. It is cheap, and easy to get.

Clamps: These are NOT optional. Put these on every barb, and prevent leaks long before they start. There are two kinds, these being, steel worm drive, and nylon hose clamps. Steel worm drive clamps are tightened with a screwdriver, are durable, and hold very well. The nylon hose clamps are put on with pliers, are plastic, and hold well enough. I advise buying steel worm drive clamps, available at Home Depot.

Cooling Fluid: For best heat transfer/heat capacity, nothing beats pure water. However, there is probably a good chance that you have aluminum (even anodized needs it) or a possibility for biological growth, so you must add an additive. Swiftech HydrX is probably the best choice out there, although it is expensive, so antifreeze is a very good alternative. If you have no aluminum in your system, 10% is fine, but if you have some anodized aluminum ~25% is recommended.

Kits are bad news. If you can customize the kit, with good components, and it will be cheaper, go for it. The Flowmaster XT is the best example of this.

[AngryAlpaca]

Real reasons not to buy a kit:
1. The best kit is worse than the best aircooling.
2. They are expensive for what you get. In fact, they're just plain expensive.
3. Very little upgradeability. If you decide you want to switch to a White Water, or a better radiator, you will have to use really small fittings, or change everything else.
4. This is an extension of 3. They come with crappy parts. No part of the system is better than the parts you could get custom.
5. Some of them are rather loud.
6. Some of them require installation anyway! (Come on, people,where's the advantage?)

What to buy:
For those of you too lazy to make your own decision, here's my advice that I would give you in a thread.
Cheap: Via Aqua 1300 ($20) (You might as well go for the Mag 3, for 15 bucks more), TC-4 ($25), Heater core (~$20), Tupperware for shroud and reservoir, Home Depot tubing, 120mm fan (~$10), and hose clamps. This may be above your budget, which most people put at around 100 dollars for a cheap watercooling, but, spending the extra 20 or 30 bucks now will be worth it.

Good: Mag 3 ($40), MCW 6002 ($43) heater core (~$20 [local auto parts shop, see the excel file far above]) or DD heater core ($30) shroud ($1 or $12), Clearflex 60, 120mm fan (~$10 [your choice]), and hose clamps.
These are just general guidelines, some of you may like to cheap out on tubing, but go crazy on the pump, or do some such thing.

That's pretty much all there is to it. If I made any errors, or omissions, do not be afraid to let me know.

If you want to get a more advanced understanding of water cooling, check this site: thermal-management-testing.com/ and read BillA’s comments about testing, and water cooling in general. Very informative.

[dano104]

You went to all this work typing this up (or copy/pasting it, who knows) and you didn't add a single picture? Do you know what the inside of a xps actually looks like?

[AngryAlpaca]

I didn't think that they were necessary (or helpful) No I don't really know what the inside (or the outside) of an XPS looks like, but it doesn't matter too much. Everyone sets up their watercooling system differently, so it's irrelevant.

[dano104]

Trust me it is very "relevant" when in reference to the internals of this machine.

[dano104]

External water-cooling would be the most feasible setup for an xps imho.

[AngryAlpaca]

Nah I looked at it and it's nothing special. People have stuffed watercooling into Shuttle XPC's before. Internal can work, it just takes a bit of cutting.

[dano104]

The biggest problem would be the hinge action on the door panel, it gets in the way of 80% of my mod ideas.

[dano104]

I still think the koolance exos, or aquarius 3 would work on these machines, given the fact we are unable to overclock anyway.

[AngryAlpaca]

Well, those are expensive options to say the least. Since you can't overclock there's really little point to watercooling at all, except for quiet. Neither an Aquarius III or a Koolance is really all that quiet... Also, I doubt they'll offer anything over that heatpipe cooler Dell uses.

[dano104]

I do ( regularly ) kick my self in the ass for buying this system. < my last 7 were homemade > I just wanted the financing option. It really sucks to be so limited like i am now in reference to modding, and overclocking.

[dano104]

Since we are talking about radical homemade watercoolers, lets talk PHASE CHANGE now that is fun!!!!!

www.asetek.com/default.asp?showPage=startside.asp¶m=sideid&myvalue=14&contentSection=2&menuID=-1

[AngryAlpaca]

It's easier to copy it over. That way we don't have the first few pages of me being an immature jackass on the other forum. $150 for upwards of 10C on load, actually, and much quieter. Incidentally, be warned that 43C is really inaccurate, and could be anywhere between -33C and 113C (based on testing by Cathar, a very trustworth member of the watercooling community) Just remember, you can always do better (it's a really self defeating philosophy, as you never really accomplish anything)

[TRow]

Uh this is a forum for XPS user's....as in Dell. Just in case you didn't realize that.

T.RoW

[bubbadubba]

AngryAlpaca said:

Incidentally, be warned that 43C is really inaccurate, and could be anywhere between -33C and 113C (based on testing by Cathar, a very trustworth member of the watercooling community) Just remember, you can always do better (it's a really self defeating philosophy, as you never really accomplish anything)

Excuse me Angry Alpaca, but you do not know what you're taking about. If you actually believe, "43C is really inaccurate, and could be anywhere between -33C and 113C" then I wish you the best but you need to seek help. To better understand the temperatures that you're talking about I used the conversion table found here:

www.onlineconversion.com/temperature.htm

I like to relate temps in Celsius to Fahrenheit; I'm used to thinking of temperatures in F rather than in C. Those temps in degrees Fahrenheit are -27.4 and 235.4. So you would have me to believe that my CPU temp is all wrong. It's not really 43C, no it can't be, even though I've measured it with an additional temp sensor and have found the on board Dell sensor to be within 1-2C. Instead you would have me believe that either my CPU temp is freezing or is so hot that it is melting everything inside the case that is made of plastic.

Ah no.....I don't think so.

Temp sensors come in two flavors, 1% and 5%. The worst case scenario is that Dell used 5% on their board, with a temp sensor that has a range of 0-70c that gives you a margin of error (or range) of only 3.5c, NOT 146C!

And lastly can we all use a little common sense? How many of us would believe that our CPU temps could actually be -33C with an only a heat sink and fan? Anyone?