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cotdt · 07-25-2005, 09:52 PM

You don't need to cool your hard drives if you get 5400RPM 2.5" notebook drives such as WD Scorpio, which is far quieter than any 3.5" drive and produces virtually no heat. It has lower access times than most 3.5" 7200RPM drives and you can but them into RAID configurations to make up for the speed and smaller storage.

An Antec Phantom 350W fanless PSU, which is what I use in my carputer, has the exact same internals as their 500W version, so if you watercool it (the whole PSU is just one big heatsink, so waterblock attaches anywhere on the outside) you can get 500W out of it easily. This thing can actually spit out 400W for weeks straight with no cooling at all in a case with no ventillation (mine). It does get hot to the touch, but still much lower than the maximum specified by Antec. Passive PSU's work by their high efficiency of AC/DC conversion, therefore saves on electric bills and outputs less heat. Typically PSU's have 65-75% efficiency depending on the load, but this one has up to 90% efficiency. So at 300W it'll dump 30W of heat roughly. It costs quite a bit, though. Make sure you get the 2005 model as the 2004 model often had defects being reported. Antec customer service is excellent.

I recommend CSP-MAG over Liang DDC because the CSP-MAG is quieter, and my DDC often didn't start up! So my experience is bad, although they tell me it is rare to have a failed DDC. On this forum there's some engineer guy who says the next version of MAG will be even quieter, if that is even possible. Just so you know, my CSP-MAG is enclosed in one inch of thick uranium-238 and dead silent, dead cool. Eheim 1048 is nice, too, but it's AC.

I definately agree that you should get Pentium M, but Venice is also a great option because of the price. I can passively cool my overclocked Venice @ 1.7V, which resides very happily in my carputer. Pentium M should produce less than half the heat if you can obtain one. They have very expensive motherboards, though.

Don't worry about performance because since you're cooling everything passively the temperature delta is significantly higher than a fan-cooled solution, so flow rates and waterblocks make a much smaller difference. Radiator is by far the most important. Pentium M can handle 100C, so don't worry about temps. My carputer has the CSP-MAG running at 7V and spinning very slowly, but runs just fine! So the CSP-MAG is more than what you need. Focus on radiator instead. You can even bury the radiator deep into the Earth and its cooling capacity would be unreal for a passive! Maybe even run a peltier with that, I don't know. You should also build a condenser system so you don't need to worry about refilling your reservoir every several years.

07-25-2005, 09:52 PM	#28
cotdt Cooling Neophyte Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: CALIFORNIA Posts: 50	Passive Massive You don't need to cool your hard drives if you get 5400RPM 2.5" notebook drives such as WD Scorpio, which is far quieter than any 3.5" drive and produces virtually no heat. It has lower access times than most 3.5" 7200RPM drives and you can but them into RAID configurations to make up for the speed and smaller storage. An Antec Phantom 350W fanless PSU, which is what I use in my carputer, has the exact same internals as their 500W version, so if you watercool it (the whole PSU is just one big heatsink, so waterblock attaches anywhere on the outside) you can get 500W out of it easily. This thing can actually spit out 400W for weeks straight with no cooling at all in a case with no ventillation (mine). It does get hot to the touch, but still much lower than the maximum specified by Antec. Passive PSU's work by their high efficiency of AC/DC conversion, therefore saves on electric bills and outputs less heat. Typically PSU's have 65-75% efficiency depending on the load, but this one has up to 90% efficiency. So at 300W it'll dump 30W of heat roughly. It costs quite a bit, though. Make sure you get the 2005 model as the 2004 model often had defects being reported. Antec customer service is excellent. I recommend CSP-MAG over Liang DDC because the CSP-MAG is quieter, and my DDC often didn't start up! So my experience is bad, although they tell me it is rare to have a failed DDC. On this forum there's some engineer guy who says the next version of MAG will be even quieter, if that is even possible. Just so you know, my CSP-MAG is enclosed in one inch of thick uranium-238 and dead silent, dead cool. Eheim 1048 is nice, too, but it's AC. I definately agree that you should get Pentium M, but Venice is also a great option because of the price. I can passively cool my overclocked Venice @ 1.7V, which resides very happily in my carputer. Pentium M should produce less than half the heat if you can obtain one. They have very expensive motherboards, though. Don't worry about performance because since you're cooling everything passively the temperature delta is significantly higher than a fan-cooled solution, so flow rates and waterblocks make a much smaller difference. Radiator is by far the most important. Pentium M can handle 100C, so don't worry about temps. My carputer has the CSP-MAG running at 7V and spinning very slowly, but runs just fine! So the CSP-MAG is more than what you need. Focus on radiator instead. You can even bury the radiator deep into the Earth and its cooling capacity would be unreal for a passive! Maybe even run a peltier with that, I don't know. You should also build a condenser system so you don't need to worry about refilling your reservoir every several years.