Watercooling PC and Vid Cards

**jongscx** · 09-16-2008, 09:37 AM

I'm planning a full ATX carputer with a decent video card setup in my car... Not planning on crysis... but HL2 at least... or maybe something capable of running Vista on full res (how sad is it that I'm using an OS as a benchmark...)

Anyway, since it's not going to be optimized for mobile user/low power/ heat efficiency, cooling is going to be an issue. I'm going for the CPU and Vid Card waterblocks, as well as possibly Ram and northbridge/southbridge watercooling as well...

Anyway, since the water is more of a heat-transfer rather than a cooling method... where do I mount the radiator? Should it be outside, using the car's airflow, or inside?

My other reason to use water is to minimize dust/debris in the computer's innards...

**h3rk** · 09-16-2008, 09:49 AM

I don't know if you saw it or not, but there's an old....

here it is.

It had a lot of back and forth on the subject; different ideas, precautions, and pro's/con's stuff.

**kibble** · 09-16-2008, 09:50 AM

You should check out some of the newer high end boards with built in video. I'm using the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H with the AMD 780 chipset in my carputer. I have 2 gigs or RAM on the board and 512 of it is allocated to video RAM. It runs many things fairly decently. I'm wanting to install Bioshock on it to see just how it runs if that goes well, maybe I'll put TF2 on it so I can play it when I'm bored and near a wifi spot or something.

It has a big heatsink on the board for the chipset, but I'm sure it could easily be replaced with a waterblock. If you are going with the radiator, I would put it somewhere where it wouldn't recirculate the air around it. I'm not sure where outside of the car you could put it where it would receive proper airflow.

**HiJackZX1** · 09-16-2008, 02:12 PM

You dont need water cooling in a car enviroment. I at one point wanted to use water cooling also, but the issues were to great. First off, it will make your install even bigger and you will have to find a place to mount the radiator. Second, if you hit a massive bump and one of those tubs comes loose, thats the end of you CarPC. My system board is a KINO-690 S1 with a 1.8 ghz Turion 64 bit x2 56-ml processor. It also has a powerful 1250 series ATI Radeon graphics card built in. The CPU and GPU are literally right next to each other so the PC ran very hot. The CPU is fan cooled and GPU only has a heat sink. I added the same fan as the CPU onto the GPU and this drastically dropped the tempature. I then designed a special case that sucks in air from the top front, carries it into the area with the mobo, the CPU and GPU then blow that air up and its pulled out by 2 more fan in the bottom back of the case. On a hot summer day in Florida my CPU is at about 38 C. On a cold day or with A/C its at about 34 C. GPU is always higher on hot day 47 C, and cold day 45 C. So trust me, air will work fine, its all about design and airflow.

**jongscx** · 09-16-2008, 03:48 PM

Yes, but your Kino is a Mini ITX and you were only running at 1.8 on a Turion, which is a mobile/compact proc, with a built-in graphics card. I'm planning a 3.0 Ghz Pentium, 2Gb of ram, and GeForce 8800 on a Full-sized ATX board.

I have the same setup at home, and it runs well even when I'm crazy and don't turn on the AC in summer... but it also has 2-120mm fans blowing on everything... we'll see.

**HiJackZX1** · 09-16-2008, 04:33 PM

why not put a mini itx in the car? Is this going in the trunk.

**jongscx** · 09-16-2008, 04:50 PM

Glove box

Feature for feature, computer stuff gets more expensive the smaller it gets. Also, also, with miniturization, things tend to be inbuilt and compounded, meaning that if one part dies, it usually means I have to replace the entire motherboard.

So it's mostly for cost and flexibility.

The volvo has an enormous glove box that I don't mind sacrificing anyway, so since I'm building a case for a computer in there anyway, why not start big. I can always down-size.

**HiJackZX1** · 09-16-2008, 05:12 PM

Originally Posted by jongscx

Glove box

Feature for feature, computer stuff gets more expensive the smaller it gets. Also, also, with miniturization, things tend to be inbuilt and compounded, meaning that if one part dies, it usually means I have to replace the entire motherboard.

So it's mostly for cost and flexibility.

The volvo has an enormous glove box that I don't mind sacrificing anyway, so since I'm building a case for a computer in there anyway, why not start big. I can always down-size.

Wow, mine is tiny. I agree with that, that is always a fear I have in the back of my mind, that one thing breaks and the whole thing goes with it. I knew that smaller size equals more money, but I had to go small because of size constraints, even though I drive a SUV. Take lots of pictures, i really want to see how this turns out.

**jongscx** · 09-16-2008, 05:16 PM

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

i really want to see how this turns out.

Jah... me too :-D

I will. I'm planning a full project log with the screen install and H/U, so I'll bundle that in there as well.

**kibble** · 09-16-2008, 05:45 PM

Originally Posted by jongscx

and GeForce 8800

I thought about that too before I started building mine, but the power requirements are insane. How are you planning on powering it?

I have one in my regular desktop and I used to have a regular UPS hooked up to it but I had to remove it as it caused my UPS to overload whenever I loaded a game.