[Long Haired Git]

Open your mind people!

Yes, I can make a hermtically sealed system with no fans and have it cooled appropriately. It'll be expensive and silly, but certainly possible.

Imagine:
A case made of foam and steel etc as per above and sealed. Inside it are all the components. Any component of any real heat production gets a waterblock. So, I'd say PSU, CPU, GPU, NB, HDDs, Mosfets. The loop should use a submerged pump so its heat goes into the coolant. The internal loop should have a radiator at the top of the case, inside the case, so that the hotest air is recycled to the bottom of the case as cold air. Yes, you heard right.
Outside the case, where I'd have a suitably large radiator. Again, I'd mount this horizontally to maximise air flow. If vertical it must be, try and mount it where it will get some sort of air flow. Near an air-con outlet would be good! Cathar found a radiator from a small car (Diahatsu? Mini?) that was the size of 4 x 120mm fans. Sounds a little small for us, but should be suitable.

So, inside the case most components drop their heat into the coolant. Those that don't heat the air which rises, and is cooled by the radiator at the top of the case.

Water cooling a PSU is something I still want to do. There are more than a few people who have done it. You can buy commercial units from Europe, and you can wire these together as I believe they are not exactly mega-Watt units. There are even some PSUs designed for HTPC these days where are like the laptop PSUs, and there are some PSUs which do not have active heat-sinks, and hence can be converted without the need for electrical engineer approval (required in Oz).

In other words:

1) Eheim 1250
2) Tuppaware container reservoir
3) 3m of Clearflex and some stainless steel hoseclamps
4) 2 x 120.3 radiators, or a custom small-car-radiator
5) 1 x 120.2 radiator for inside the case
6) 2 x WC PSUs from Europe, or 1 x 500W unit, some copper pipe, an oxy and some balls
7) G4 CPU block
8) Silverprop GPU block
9) Silverprop NB block
10) Custom made Mosfet blocks
11) Custom made HDD block

For the HDDs, I'd just make my own HDD cage out of copper sheet, and solder a copper pipe to the side. Chances are it will be heating the HDDs up anyway.

Mosty PCs can cope with 250W power supplies, some need 350W, and this server with all its HDDs will **at most***, IMHO, need 400W. The 400W can't be noise, it can't be movement, it won't be light, as none of that escapes the sealed case. So we know the heat load of the box - all 400W coming in leaves via the WC loop. Find out the C/W of the radiators for 400W at near-zero air flow and recalculate it again and again (the C/W changes with the differential of the air and coolant temp, so its a loop) until you get the figures.