ambient temps

[Hans5849]

im about to go water cooling for my rig and im woundering if any of you guys felt a rise in ambient temps when you went water cooling.

[Bugsmasher]

Just guessing here being a newbie to watercooling but...

The amount of heat generated by your system will remain the same (unless of course you overclock further). Assuming you had decent ventilation before watercooling most of that heat was already exiting the case and increasing your ambient temps already. While your transfer of heat away from the w/c'd components will be more effective it wont be terribly noticable. About the only extra heat you are adding to your system will be the heat from the pump itself which shouldnt really have all that much effect depending on what pump you are using. Assuming you were using a high end/high rpm CPU fan before then there will be very little difference.

I noticed no change in ambient after w/c'ing my rig that was noticable over time of day fluctuations.

[bobkoure]

Originally Posted by Bugsmasher

The amount of heat generated by your system will remain the same (unless of course you overclock further)

Yup.
- Your pump draws some power, all of which will become heat
- You may need a more powerful fan (adding one that can pull air through a radiator or heater core - removing one that moves air through your CPU heat sink)
- Your power supply is not 100% efficient. If you're using a 12VDC pump, there'll be some additional loss (heat) from your PS - and of course, from whatever additional fractional watt you needed for a more powerful fan.
- CPUs are not "ohmic" devices, so running faster, even at the same voltage, will consume more power - which becomes heat
- And, of course, if your PC now becomes quiet enough that you can leave it on at times when you used to shut it off, that constitutes additional heat.

Does any of this add up to an observable rise in ambient? Hasn't ever for me. (Leaving my big-ass monitor on can do it, though... )

[bellevegasj]

My room always warms up when my PC is on and I have regular Air cooling right now. I've got an AMD XP and it always runs hot....

I always have a 22 in CRT, that doesn't help I suppose...

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by Hans5849

im about to go water cooling for my rig and im woundering if any of you guys felt a rise in ambient temps when you went water cooling.

Pretty much beeen covered. The pump is the only maim thing to add significant heat. I have one pump that runs about 200watts and it adds heat to the room most noticably. But if you use a "normal" pump then it is usually less than 40watts and not to noticable.

The computer itself will indeed warm a room up. Most computers run around 200ish watts. All that is converted to heat eventually and gets dumped into the room. So basically it is a 200ish watt heater. I had 5PC's in my bedroom/computer room back in my Distributed computing days and there was no need to turn the heat on in the winter. In fact if I left the bedroom door open I usually didn't need to turn the heat on untill it got below zero outside. Thats around 1000watts + the water cooling pumps as a big heater. My main wall heater is only rated at 1200watts. My power bill sure showed it though. One reason I only have a laptop and one desktop now.

[Hans5849]

i asked because i figured that the water would be pulling extra heat away, heat that would normally dissapate after the system powers down, from everything that im going to hook up to it

[redleader]

Originally Posted by Hans5849

i asked because i figured that the water would be pulling extra heat away, heat that would normally dissapate after the system powers down, from everything that im going to hook up to it

Water can't pull heat that doesn't exist, only heat made by the rest of the system (plus a few watts from the pump). Your system will consume exactly the same power air and watercooled (negateing overclocking, pump, etc).