TheGuv

There's loads of factors you've got to consider, like condensation for example.

IMO you cant beat a machined solid copper hs with masses of surface area and a wopping great big fan with minimal dead zones and masses of cfm but minimum rpm.

Personally I'm going to be using something like the True Copper heatsink or one of the similar designs on the market and four Nexus 120mm fans that run between 22db maximum and at lower speeds will go nicely below 19db (which you'll never hear in a boot even with the engine off. The fans will be regulated by a thermal controller (runs at lowest RPM until core temps increase past set values). I'm fairly certain the majority of the time only two of the four fans will be running and even then I'm confident that they'll be running at the lower RPMs.






(Examples)

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WuNgUn

Consider also, my case in enclosed in the bottom of my trunk...if I ran a normal HSF on the CPU, I'd likely STILL need to run a couple of case fans to get cooler air for the HSF. Else, it wouldn't be very sufficient...

Also, when I'll tilted the case to induce air into the system, it was at LEAST a 45 degree angle. The resevoir is so narrow (front to back), that extreme tilting is needed for it to suck air...

Also, under normal use, my PC is VERY quiet. The rad fans don't kick in until I tell them (50 degrees CPU temp), and because I'm using water cooling, it usually only hits 50 degrees briefly. When the 2 rad fans are at 100%, they are quite audible from inside the car...certainly not something I want to listen too 100% of the time!

TheGuv

I'm mounting my system in the spaces between the rear wheel arches (PC on one side and amps on the other) as I cant loose the spare, I drive to Poland quite often lol. Also use the boot so much that anything on the floor of it would get scratched up/broken etc.

The two silent running fans will be easily enough really to cool the entire system (2.5 C2D CPU etc) so the noise won't exceed the fans maximum 22db ratings unless the boot exceeds silly temps which is unlikely (being in the UK!). Even in 34c weather I've got to say my boot remained fairly cool.

If you think about it, laptops these days are nearly silent running (at least my asus is) and they've got 3+ ghz processors struggling with vista and an over engineered graphics card too... So efficient cooling solutions are about

Watercooling rigs always look good which I guess was one of the major considerations when you decided to go down that route.

I'm enclosing mine behind perspex like you have (although thinking of using UV reactive perspex) and will have several displays mounted in the PCs enclosure displaying various stats... Most of which will be just for effect lol.

The perspex will be laser etched too with some fancy design on it, looks great with UV perspex and a blacklight or just normal perspex and some EL tape on the edges.

Crinos

Silence is probably THE best reason to go watercooled... Like I have done at home... I have a big Black IceExtreme III radiator... for those not known in the watercooling biz... it's a very efficient radiator with space for 3 x 120 mm fans.

What I have done is that I have 1 low db fan going constantly, 1 fan that kicks inn at about 40C CPU temp, and 1 highly efficient fan that kicks inn at 50C CPU temp. The last fan only kicks inn when I'm running Crycis or something similar high end game at max res, max details.
(As a note, my system allso cools down two gfx cards, vcore and ram).

_Dejan_

This radiatoar Im using few years ago(3-5) with 6 FAN's

@WuNgUn: How are you happy with this sound cards? I think I will use one in my car too. Because I can't find Xonar Essence ST with H6 DAC board
Do you have any problems with sleep/hibernate?

TheGuv

Passive cooling is for silence, watercooling isn't and it was originally used for overclocking achievements. Now you can get a passively cooled system that runs silently and if you want to, you can always add the same low db fan to that system and not have a pump humming in the background...

Also efficient, quiet watercooled rigs are generally quite large where as passively cools rigs are generally quite small. Just another benefit really, watercooling is just to look cool!

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