Watercooling PSU/hard-drive/mosfets
 

Alright, I'm running dual loop right now. One for the cpu, and one for the gpu.

I'd like to watercool my mosfets, my PSU, and hard-drive.

These seem to be straight forward enough, and I'm fairly sure I can do them with the tools available. I have a dremel with a bunch of attachments, a hacksaw, a table saw.

For the hard-drive, I pretty much just plan on one that wraps around it, and mounts in a 5.25" bay. Like, with some copper pipe soldered to some copper sheet that goes onto the sides and maybe the top of the hard-drive. Seems easy enough, unless there is a flaw in my thinking.

The PSU, I pretty much plan to cut down the heatsinks, and basically attach some copper pipe to them. I was thinking maybe some Arctic silver and some threaded rod and a couple nuts to hold it on. Or should I just use Arctic Alumina Epoxy?

The Mosfets, this could be the tricky part. As you can see here, the mosfets aren't ina lin or anything, and there are some caps and coils in between them. So, Any ideas how to do this?

Hi

I would be real interested in seeing how you do your psu. I am planning to do much the same and am interested to see how it turns out.

Buzz

P.S. The hard drive cooler you suggest is a standard way or WCing hard drives, also dont forget hard drives get rid of there heat from the sides

Basically, I just need to get a hold of some copper tubing and some copper sheet, and the hard-drive cooler will be done. The PSU I consider to be the most risky, as I'm worried about the shavings getting into the circuit board when I'm cutting/drilling the heatsink.

Would just cutting a plastic bag to fit around the heatinks, then taping the sides to seal off the board work ok?

I'm not quite sure how to cut out the little channels in the block for the mosfets, or even how to design it at the moment, but once I do, I'll be sure to let everyone know.

I need some suggestiosn for that more than anything, unless you see a flaw with my other designs, then please tell me.

oh, those mosfets really look hard to cool.

how about puting some passive heatsinks on them, and a waterblock on the other side of the board?

cause you know, the hotter part of the mosfets is the one facing the PCB

Heres a couple of pics of my hdd cooler, done it slightly different to everyone else. I dont really think it would make much difference either way though as hdds dont make much heat. I only did it this way because materials were cheaper like this - total copper pipe used cost less than a quid - copper sheet would have cost me £10.
You can see in the pics the pipe goes inside the width of the hdd's so it doesnt use much more space in width but more in height instead. This should give me more room for foam on the outside to quiten the drives and also some can go between the drives and above and below them too. I know it looks rubbish thats why im going to put it in a aluminuim box (which I still have to make).

For cooling your psu make sure the waterblock and all the mosfets on it are isolated from each other. Quite a few psu's have live heatsinks and use mica shims to isolate them - sometimes there will always be a voltage because of induction, but no current so its safe.

the best thing I can think of for the mobos mosfets is to move the capacitors and maybe the coil out the way but I think they could also be affected by it and make it worse? de-soldering them should not be too difficult but much easyer than moving the mosfets (which would have been best, but they are hard to de-solder). Mosfets have a metal back which makes the back the best place to cool if you can unsolder them... (or cut them off and get replacements).
cooling the back of the mobo is not going to be much better although it has loads of traces its also a good insulator (but it could be done using thermal tape to stop it shorting the back of the board).

I know, but then I think it would be really hard to route the tubing, plus there are tons of solder points right on the back of them.....


That hrd-drive cooler looks similar to what I'm gonna do. I'm going to base my design on low flow resistance, so sweeping bends, and bigger pipe.

Theres not much point in bigger pipe - thats 13.4mm ID all the way round (15.5mm OD).
Bending the sheet (which was originally pipe, then sqaused out and annealed) was the difficult part. Instead it might be better to get square copper pipe (if it exists - any where in the UK sell this?) or to just solder it on without bending it (which should be good enough)

Also does anyoe know what the melting point is of the solder used on mobos? Im going to have another go at unsodlering the mosfets on a dead board.

oh, it just looked like 1/2". In that case, it's plenty big.

I think I might just copy your basic design, if you don't mind.

sandman i won't pretend i'm a master at water cooling i have only done a custom CPU which is very simple and a hard drive sooler, i'm planning on doing the other once i finish uni in a few weeks.

With the psu, from looking at one the other day, the heatsinks are only screwed into place. Before you do any work to them unscrew all the mosfets and the heatsink from the board then cut it. this also mean that you will have more room to work.

Be carful when taking a PSU apart if it is still in the computer turn the comp on and then turn is off from the fall to help drain the PSU and thn leave the PSU for a good 24 hours unpluged from the wall. I would still leave it pluged into a motherboard so it can drain quicker

Buzz

That's a gopod point, but I thought you had to unsolder the mosfets or something like that?

Anyway, now I'm thinking of just kinda strapping copper pipe to the top of the heatsinks, and using some thermal paste for that connection, a guy over at OC-forums has had good success by doing this.

I dont think that would be too effective for psu cooling.
Usually the mosfets are screwed into the heatsinks, before they get soldered to the pcb, so youll need to unsolder them to do anything. I think best way is to extend the wires on them so they are easyer to mount on your wb and it wont have to be soldered down.

You might have to cool the back of the motherboard like I did.
I found cooling the backside was much more effective in absorbing the MOSFET heat.


http://www.overclockers.com/tips1115/21.jpg


Complete details here: http://www.overclockers.com/tips1115/

I read that, nice job.

But, Ihave tons of little solder points all over the back of the mosfets, so I can't really do that.

Cptn. Foo Foo
how about the back of the NB, SB?

The back of my motherboard corrosponding to where those chips are (on the front of the motherboard) is completely covered with surface mount components and other solder points sticking out.

Placing a block on the back of the motherboard at those locations would touch these components - shorting them out.

Probably not possible to put a copper-built block on the back of the motherboard at these locations (on my NF7-S motherboard at least). One would need a silicone based block such as nicozeg made for his MOSFETs.

------

This question makes me think back to when video cards were much less powerful (say TNT 1 days). Back then and the back of the video card (above the GPU) was still completely flat and smooth on the surface of the PCB. Now-a-days that spot on video cards is littered with surface mount components...as this picture shows

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/mmz_tl_01...s/Dscn0237.jpg

if i remember correctly the back of the NB's core isn't filled w/ pins. It has a space of maybe about square half of a foot.
Yes the SB since it's too little it's close to imposible to not short those pins.
Question is, is there a great amount of benefit if you cool such parts?

A very interesting read & bit of work man. While cooling the back side of the mosfets gave no gain in O/C, or reduction of your CPU temps, have you considered trying the same sort of thing on the back side of the CPU and/or NB area of the motherboard?

With a WB on the front side of the CPU, would not any added cooling on the back side of the CPU socket be additive, if not 100%, at least in large part?

And cooling the rear of the NB might allow a few extra mhz?

Just thoughts that came to mind when I read near the end of your build article how it didn't give you all you'd hoped for.
:)

Heh, should always refresh a thread after having been away form the puter for a while, prior to asking questions that then turn out to have been asked and answered!

cooling the mosfets should improve the VRM stability at high vcore and high loads thus increasing the posibility of a higher OC.

i wouldnt dare OC a prescott without improving the cooling system of the VRM.

Just checked my Epox NF2 rev2.1 it appears very different to Capt. Foo Foo's NF2.
Back of Mosfets from what I see is filled up of either grounding or circuits.

Cptn. Foo Foo
How do you cool down the water what type of Radiator or HeaterCore do you have?

Here is a pic of the overall system (not to scale of course)

http://www3.telus.net/foofoo/new_box...tem_layout.gif


The heater cores are cooled by three 120mm fans. I have them hooked up to my home-built fan controller. Basically they are running at the minimum voltage necessary to make them spin :D (maybe a little more than that)

That's nuts. I love it.

Thats the usual response I get :D :D :D

But that pic just shows the parts and thier connections involved in the system. Here is what the actual system looks like...


Some earlier pics during the construction:

http://www3.telus.net/foofoo/new_box/unfinished_1.jpg

http://www3.telus.net/foofoo/new_box/unfinished_2.jpg

http://www3.telus.net/foofoo/new_box/unfinished_3.jpg

http://www3.telus.net/foofoo/new_box/unfinished_4.jpg

http://www3.telus.net/foofoo/new_box/unfinished_5.jpg


And one pic of the box painted. It still not 100% finished however.

http://www3.telus.net/foofoo/new_box/unfinished_6.jpg


Cheers :D

Nice box, looks like it should be real quiet as well. Have you thought aabout maybe putting some sound absorbent material on the intake & exhaust baffles to further reduce the fan noise? I've heard good things about rebond carpet foam...

Gooserider