some watercooling questions.

[sloppycoder]

im hoping to change from a noisy and none to impressive air cooling setup.

i was looking for a pump that could run from a 12v molex connector, but all the ones i can find are 110 or 120 volt. is it possible to get a pump that will run from 12v? i know i will have to cut the head off and strip the wires but thats no problem. it would be using a 2nd psu as well though, so power drain shouldent be an issue.

i also have a rather outlandish idea for the resivour/ radiator. instead of using a pathetic little rad, or a big ole resivour, im gonna combine both in the form of a small central heating radiator. im thinking something about 2ft tall by 4ft long. do you thing this would dissapate enough heat? it would be totally without fans. i know it would stay a fair few degrees above room temperature but im not interested in massive overclocking.

what kind of gph am i going to need to this kind of set up? and more importantly will it work at all?

thanks in advance.

slop

[Butcher]

I'd say that rad is total overkill, a heater core would probably perform about the same without fans and is smaller and costs less. This is assuming you're not doing massive overclocking.

[simon]

I agree that a heater core is just plain easier due to size but without fins it will probably have the same surface area so heat dissipation would be similar, this way you do get a huge resivour but I think you would need a huge pump as although the surface area is the same you will have to shift lots more water, I mean loads and loads more water. Maybe a normal pump at both ends of the rad would be sufficient. But the entrance to the rad would need to be at the top and the exit would need to be at the bottom.

[Butcher]

Entrance at bottom is better. You have to raise the water regardless of flow direction, and bottom entrace tends to trap less air.

[simon]

Having the entrance at the bottom would limit the use of the pump as this rad will hold alot of water which will mean your pumping into high water pressure which is very hard.
Having the entrance at the top will be much easier for the pump and a bottom exit will assist the pump.

[Butcher]

You have to pump the water up to the top somehow though. Why does pumping it up via the rad pose more of a problem than pumping it up via a tube then letting it flow down through the rad?

[resago]

he means the the volume of water the radiators hold would create a lot of pressure on the bottom.

[sloppycoder]

hmm good advice!. the area is definatly not better than a big heatercore. the original plan was to be able to use this rad without any fans at all. seeing as the wattage coming off would be fairly immense anyway.

thanks for outlining the problems, i have come up with some problems of my own too.

time to kill the idea!

1) pressure difference due to height/volume of rad. a pump big enough to sort this would probaly be loud enough to outweigh the benefits of no fans.

2) radiator designed to perform with 60-80'C water in it! might just heat up slowly and hardly convect any heat away at all when only carrying 20-30'C water.

3)space. id rather have that nice looking serck one with all the right connectors and a couple of quiet 120's on 7v. and this will probaly perform better anyway.

thanks all

slop