[Gooserider]

bigben2k Well, you're right to be cautious. For leaks, since they can come from any point, Conformal coating is still, IMO, your first defense.

I agree, but I'm concerned about what it might do to warranty coverage? Even if it does trash the warrantee, I might still go for the conformal coating since they probably wouldn't cover water damage anyways, and there isn't that much else to go wrong on a modern mobo.

Otherwise, a flow sensor, and a temp gauge (in the water) is my second step, while letting the mobo (with OCP) protect the CPU.

Makes sense, but so far I haven't been able to find an affordable flow sensor - any suggestions? I'm even watching e-bay and not having much luck there.

Hose clamps are a life saver

I agree, I wouldn't build a system or any other plumbing without them! The most I might be persuaded to do is to use zip-ties instead of worm drive clamps, and that takes special circumstances.

BTW, My current plan is to use braid reinforced polyethelyne (sp?) tubing - the kind often used in soda fountains, etc. My local hardware store has a good selection, I know the stuff is pretty strong, and it seems very resistant to kinking. Any reason you know of NOT to use it?

Otherwise, to detect water, you can use the old salt pill in a clothes pin: make contacts there, and put some salt: when the water dissolves, the contacts trigger.

Neat idea, but I think I'll stick with the electronic detector idea - MUCH faster response times, when seconds might count!

pHaestus leaks don't usually just come out of nowhere. Use hose clamps and then put UV dye in the water when you fill. After you clamp everything in place then turn on a uv lamp and verify you don't have any leaks around barbs or clamps.

Great idea... I hadn't been planning on putting anything in the water beyond Water Wetter or equivalent. I'd always thought the dyes and stuff were just for the folks doing showoff rigs, didn't realize there was a practical reason for some of it. (I'm not planning to mod my case except as it adds definite functionality)

jaydee116: First off of this is such an important and your only comp that you don't want damaged then drop the idea of messing with it at all. Get a good adjustable speed air cooloer and be done with it.

Some ways I agree with you jaydee116, and I'm not planning to mess with this box on a continuing basis once I get it built... One of the reasons I'm doing so much work on investigating everything and planning what I'll be doing is so that I can put it together once and be mostly done with it.

I would go with the air cooled approach, except that I can't stand the racket I already get from my old PC with TWO fans - one little job on the CPU cooler and one on the PSU, plus a couple of old SCSI drives. I already know that I can't do a "bladerunner grade" silent system, but I want to get as close to it as I can, and water cooling seems like the way to do it.

Cova Depending on the size of your CPU block, most of those failures can be captured just with regular temp monitoring and a "shutdown -h now" when temps get too high. Here's my experiences with various components not working

Thanks for the input Cova, I really appreciate the 'real world' numbers, it gives me a bit better feel for how to do the disaster planning.

I know some of this may seem like excess paranoia, but you get into certain mindsets when you spend years working on the kind of high reliability / redundant systems that I have.

Gooserider