Thread: Watercooling PC and Vid Cards

You are going way overboard for what you need. My laptop is a 2ghz core duo with raedon x1600 and I can run HL2 just fine. In fact it's quite hard not to sit in class playing CS-Source instead of paying attention. This is all done with 19v at 4.74amps. In fact I was playing oblivion at lowish settings with a decent FPS.

Anything you want to know about watercooling you can ask though. My home PC is fully watercooled, along with the past 3 PC's I have built and overclocked. This includes CPU, motherboard, & GPU being watercooled w/ a 2x120mm fan core. My last setup combined 2 seperate computers, both watercooled & connected to the same resevoir (~4gal container on top of the 2 computers) connected to a bunch of towers to evaporate the water for much lower temps, even without a fan.\

Also, you don't need to cool the SB, especially at stock speeds. Most motherboards don't even put a heatsink on that. Ram.... well I have yet to see a waterblock that I would trust to put on my ram without putting too much stress on the PCB of the ram or the motherboard connection. Just put a small quite fan to get airflow on the ram and keep it at stock speeds and you will be fine.

The only reason I used watercooling is to overclock anyway. For the most part, at stock speeds a decent fan/copper heatsink w/ good thermal paste is just fine. But when going from 1.8ghz to 3ghz daily and increasing voltages etc, you put out too much heat.

Originally Posted by Biznatch

You are going way overboard for what you need.

I know...


Essentially, this is also my first water-cooled computer, so I'm thinking why not... get 2 projects done with 1 budget...


Yeah, I've no intention of over-clocking, and the ram and SB blocks are indeed overkill... :-P but it's cool! and there's going to be a plexiglass window and LEDs.


I may decide to scrap it anyway, but I'll PM you specific questions if any come up. Are you on any other Comp Modding forums Biznatch? Creativemods.com, bit-tech.net?

Yea, to be honest I don't know if I would ever do WC in a carpc environment. In a house it's safe because you typically test it for 24-48 hours and if there are no leaks, they most likely aren't going to form. In the car, you have constant movement and vibrations/jolts etc., so even after testing you still have a decent chance of eventually forming a leak.

It is a fun project though if you even built a home computer It's amazing how cool it keeps everything even after cranking the voltages/clock speeds.

Originally Posted by Biznatch

Yea, to be honest I don't know if I would ever do WC in a carpc environment. In a house it's safe because you typically test it for 24-48 hours and if there are no leaks, they most likely aren't going to form. In the car, you have constant movement and vibrations/jolts etc., so even after testing you still have a decent chance of eventually forming a leak.

It is a fun project though if you even built a home computer It's amazing how cool it keeps everything even after cranking the voltages/clock speeds.

I would also be worried about the leaks in a car environment. I have been running a water cooled 8800 in my regular pc for a while now and have not had any problems. I do have to add more coolant at distant intervals though as the stuff just seems to disipate or something. It runs really well though and it keeps my card about 10 degrees cooler than stock. Another thing other than leaks that you'd have to worry about with putting water blocks on your components is that they'll add significant weight to your parts, which is also bad when you've got mechanical movement going on. It could cause things to break.

I have been debating this too, living in AZ the PHX heat is crazy here in summer, having a carPC in trunk is good idea for space saving but not so great for ability to cool down or even circulate air.

I thought of a water cooling solution with a 2ndary peltier to cool a block that the water passes, this will only be needed to be run during extreme temps… but im not sure how the deta T will work if the temps are 150F already, how cold will the other side be? I would assume only dropping it to at least 130F will be enough for the thing to run ok… im aware of leaks, condensation and what not… with proper planning and setup it would not be a problem, you would have to have far better fasteners then you would in a PC and other precautions too, I hear that tubing isn’t that good at 140F+

underclocking and undervolting is a must i think, the only other way to go is have decent air flow and going with massive heatsink and make sure its a heatpipe as that works pretty well

from reading around it seems that the mobos and cpus that do well in heat are those that dont give up off of there own heat that much... but in a nice performance CPU or gpu that will be very hard to do, i plan on underclocking a lot a good dual core or quad core and having it draw near mobile specs...?