Thanks for stopping by, G33K! That was an excellent article, and I'm looking forward to try to watercool my PSU array!

Now, to rebuild the drive cage for an HDD watercooler...

Looking back on it now, I can see that the hard disk cooler I built before was overkill. There's no need for the plates in the middle. Seeing some of these posts has had me thinking and I reckon it'd be easy to make some neater units which would be lighter (no plate between the drives) and possibly quieter too.

Glad I could help bigben - looking forward to seeing the results :)

Volenti has a nice and simple solution:
http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/sho...5944#post55944

Hehe, quite impressive that he managed to solder copper to steel (or is that Alu)! It'd certainly do keep drives nice and cool in most cases. I'm not sure if that'd be enough to keep them cold with them encased in some foam (sound insulation) though?

I was wondering where this is for sale at? I am looking to buy one, as I have no space to work on such a detailed project. (Live in apartment)

Brian W

Utter silence is obtainable.
As mentioned previously, audiophiles demand it.
Recording studio's need it.

So, change your case.

You need it thick, and lined internally with noise absorbing foam.

You need it completely sealed, excpect for "S" bend ducts both into and out of the case, which are also foam lined.

Then have low speed fans on the interior of the S bends.

Water cooling for hot things an advantage here, to ensure no sound escapes the S's. The noiser it is inside, the easier for that noise to get outside.

So, big, heavy MDF box with lots of thick, ugly foam will do the trick.

No windows.

No accessible media devices.

But quiet.

Same reason I have to buy one instead of build one. Because watercooled psus with a construction like this are not allowed to sold in Europe, you have to mail him and order one. Nothing hush-hush, just legislation. He sells completely watercooled psu or he can modify your Enermax for you. His email address is: ct100@gmx.de

I wonder what would it cost to ship across the pond. Do they have the same PSU's in europe. I thougth they had different plugs/standards in europe.

Brian W

OK, *utter* silence is a bit hard to reach at temperatures above -273.15 degrees Celsius.
Normal people can´t hear anything below 20 dB (some people though hear Elvis on a daily basis). The 80 mm Papst 8412NGL fan is rated 19.4 CFM and 12 dB, meaning that 5 such fans gives a noise level of 19 dB (pretty close to dead silent) and almost 98 CFM of airflow.
Good enough for a chimney?
Mikael S.

Normal people can't hear anything at -273.15 Celsius:p

I have this fan, yes it's a very good one (...the best in 80mm i think), but i can hear the 'whoosh' 5m away (or all across the room).

I know, have such a fan on my psu at the moment, but then temp controlled. They can be silent at low rpm, but 12db standard? No way! Problem with them also is: after half a year in a hot psu, they get whining (so would I btw). Maybe I'll try a Verax. The only more silent than that might be a hiring a small man to wave with a banana leaf. Or maybe turning the outlet air into plasma and then magnetically accelerate it. Or would that be overkill?

Seal the computer inside an insulated, airtight enclosure, and connect it to a distant radiator.

To do this you would need active cooling, like a refrigerator in order to prevent eventual heat based failure. You can do this if you block ALL intake/exhaust ports and use the pelt trick I described earlier, basically turning your case into a pelt fridge. Put a ton of those silica packets in to absorb the moisture, fire up the pelt, and make sure your WC components are sealed at the hose entry/exit points. Doing this would allow you to build a fanless system, if your rad is big enough to go passive.

Hello all, first post! woot

Im on the quest for silence too, you dont pay this much money to watercool your computer to make it quiet, you pay that much to make your computer SILENT! At the moment im running 2 fans + the fan in my psu. Im planning on getting a new psu to convert for watercooling. How do you guys cool your water? I dont see how i could do it without at least one fan on your rad. I think i could live with that though.

For your hard drives, check this out and tell me what you think: http://www.wizarddesigns.co.uk/hddcoolers.htm

Also how about the noise of your pump? I do notice that my eheim although pretty quiet does make a faint buzz.

Being in uni now and having to live with my computer in the same room, the noise of it does get to me when im working sometimes, i would idealy like to have it quiet enough so i can leave it on when i sleep too.

At the moment its running a pretty standard wc setup but with the case side off, the temperatures benefit from this but the sound does not :(

Seal

Yes the aquadrive is well known here in EU (yet another cool aquacomputer product) but my grief against it is it's made out of aluminium. All my waterblocks are 100% copper... I don't want any battery effect.

About the pump: i managed to kill its (faint) noise with elastic suspension + insulation with foam.

Has anyone tried the chimney idea posted earlier but put their powersupply (probably de-cased, w/o fan) in the chimney to try and draw air flow?

Any pics? I isolated my vibration by hanging pump from my 3.5" drive cage with bicycle tubes. Works great. In my new system it will be on a plexi shelf, and I need some clean ideas for vibration isolation.

Brian W

The pump is no problem. Confusion about it is people think an Eheim can make noise. They don't, but they do vibrate. If this vibration gets transmitted to your case, it starts resonating, and your case gets noisy. So indeed, rubber bands are ideal to decouple it from the case. I put it on a couple of layers of soft plastic foam to insulate it from the case. Pump is inaudible with the case close.
About those aqua-computer hdd cases: I've read from several people that they're really good. Problem is indeed, they're aluminium, and although eloxated, one scratch in the elox is enough to start the slow decay of your coolers. You'd need to use aquacomputers additive to counter that. But such hdd cases exist in copper too: http://www.heatkiller.de/ and look in the shop for silent star hdbox.

Looks nice, looks even like the kind of HDD case + block i've been looking for... But since i don't speak a word of German (apart from "wasserkhuler"), and since Babelfish tells me that "the waterblock part is made out of *brass*", i'd like to know: brass or copper ?

I'm already saving money for it... I'll have to find 12mm barbs though, to fit in my current system.
Woohoo !

It says "Messing" ,which is brass. But the only difference between brass and copper is some zinc, and that's not a problem like aluminium: It will oxidize, but I think zinc-oxide forms a protective layer so that oxidisation stops, but you'd have to check it with a chemist. One thing: the site also states (in small letters, like everything in that shop looks ridiciulously small) that it's "currently unavailable" ("z. Zt. nicht lieferbar "). But may be it is by the time you've saved your money:)

Hey Gerwin, not to thread jack, but hope you don't mind- I borrowed your idea?

http://users.rcn.com/deuson.1/BlueFLuid/IMG_0709.jpg

My very own rad. Or winter rad, rather. For my summer one I plan on copying you even more....would you mind?

more here

Again sorry for the OTness!!!

I don't mind at all that you copied my idea, but there's something fundamentally wrong with your design: There's nothing to prevent the water from taking the shortest route from the intake to the outlet. All the vertical pipes will be unused. See my drawing (sorry I'm not an artist). That's because going from inlet to outlet through the horizontal pipes is shorter and easier.
If you would move the inlet to the lower corner and the outlet to the upper corner of it, then whatever route the water takes, it's equally long. See second drawing. Thus you ensure that all pipes are used.
Another reason I put the inlet on the lower corner of one side and the outlet on the upper corner on the other end is this: When the water comes in, it's divided between all different possible routes, depending on how many vertical pipes you have. This means that in each vertical pipe, the flow rate is extremely low ( [flow rate]/[nr of vertical pipes] ). This is good for cooling. The air that gets into your system when filling it, is going up, so will collect in the upper parts of the rad. No problem there. But at some moment, it has to come down again into your computer, and the pump has to compensate for the tendency of airbubbles to rise. When the flow rate is low, the pump won't manage. But in my rad, when water is coming down, it's already collected again into 1 vertical pipe, and so the flow rate is high again, and the airbubbles will be easily pushed down by the waterflow.
In your rad, all air will gather in the upper part of the rad, above the level of the inlet and outlet, and probably stay there, because the water will flow on the lower part.
Try your rad, and then try my ideas (would mean resoldering, ouch), and you will see that with my design, the flow resistance is extremely low because of the low flowrate in the majority of pipes, that the cooling capacity is good because of the same reason, and that it get's rid of air very quickly, especially if you don't put it exactly straight, but the outlet slightly higher than the inlet.
What I do really like in yours is the way you 'folded' it, so that it's more compact, I will copy that from you I think, and that you soldered it instead of using those ugly compression fittings like I did. Keep up the good work.

Indeed, sir, all valid points. I realized some of the flaws as I was building and testing it, but you sure do bring some smart cards to the table. This was really my first rad, (not to mention the first time I've ever soldered anything in my life), The tubing and T's cost ~$5- worth the investment for the experence. If I have time this weekend I may try something I've been playing around with in my head...

As for this rad, I realized even on paper it was a poor design. But it was/is intended to be put behind the rafters, exposing it to our chilly PA winter air... it's -8C out right now, and to give you an idea of how poorly it performs: my 1.2 T-bird is at 28C at the moment. But to get it behind the rafters it had to be >11in wide, >7in deep, and 16in tall to fit my hole in the wall....(the hole was very inexpensive).

The rest of the pics are here....it's the first, but not the last.

Thanks for taking the time to explain a few things to me, Gerwin, I'll stop rambleing on in your thread now. I've bookmarked this for futher research....

thanks again!!

cool, good stuff guys, axel, you couldnt by any chance give us any water temperatures then we would be able to tell if ur rads performing any good by compairng air temps to water temps.

I found this link few mins ago, its got some very good stuff on silent cooling on it:

http://www.webx.dk/oz2cpu/homemade-pc-main.htm