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Tiny Water Cooled System 120

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lookit-those-cute-little-ports dept.
Xev writes "Most people water cool a full PC, over at Hexus they have water cooled a MINI PC (SFF - small form factor). Creating the smallest water cooled system." Takes all kinds to make the world go round. I'm amused that the radiator is almost as large as the computer itself.
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Tiny Water Cooled System More

Tiny Water Cooled System

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  • Sorta defeats the purpose of the form factor. Why not just put it in a tower?

  • all this cooling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jacquesm ( 154384 ) <jNO@SPAMww.com> on Sunday October 13, 2002 @08:07AM (#4440326) Homepage
    It would be *way* better to have a system that does
    not use such enormous amounts of power in the
    first place, the computations take up almost
    no power at all, the rest is heat !
    • I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're trying to say, but I think I've got it. It doesn't actually take all that much power, esp. compared to some other components, to cool a case. Koolance cases, for example, only use about 10W. See: Koolance FAQ [koolance.com]. Hope that helped.

      • Re:all this cooling (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jacquesm ( 154384 )
        no, I did not mean the power consumption of the
        cooling, I meant the ratio of waste heat vs
        the actual computation. Theoretically computation
        uses almost no power (just the difference in
        having the bits moved from one state to the other
        in the FINAL result), most of the energy that goes
        into a computing device is disposed of as heat...
        • Ahh I see. Sorry about the confusion on my part.

        • Computations consume no energy, because the state after the computation doesn't have a higher energy than the state before. All the energy used by a computer is absorbed as heat (as it is for the most things we do with energy). So, if you built a computer with supraconductors, it wouldn't consume any energy - "consume" to be understood as "convert to heat"
        • I meant the ratio of waste heat vs the actual computation.

          This is the problem with your premise. It is the computation itself that produces the heat. Whether that computation is something usefull or is just housekeeping/clockwatching is totally irrelevant. Heat is the inevitable byproduct of the CPU doing anything. "Theoretical computation" is irrelevant. In the real world of CMOS, we have to deal with resistance, capacitance, saturation, etc. and all these thing inevitably result in electrical energy lost to heat.

    • Only if need to be on the "Edge" (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gerry Gleason ( 609985 ) <gerry&geraldgleason,com> on Sunday October 13, 2002 @09:15AM (#4440478)
      The fastest processors of any generation will generate heat, becuase the faster you want to switch, the more power it will take. Theoretically, there is no minimum amount of energy to transmit or transform a bit or bits of information, so as your technology gets smaller and faster (from smaller geometry supported by each new generation of technology), the power required for a given speed goes down. So you can have the same speed at a lower power, or faster at the same or maybe even more power.

      That said, there is a difference related to efficiency of the architecture. Some people think the RISC/CISC debate was ended when CISC (read x86 family processors) started using all the same internal architectural features as the top RISC processors, but they did it by pushing the technology, not getting rid of the complexity. It has been costing Intel more to produce the same performance as competing RISCs for a long time, but their market is so huge that they make up the difference in up-front engineering cost by having a bigger market. This also shows up in power consumption.

      I find the Transmeta innovation interesting because they solve the instruction set complexity problem a different way. Translate on the fly to an efficient micro-architecture. Can't be quite as good as a simple ISA, but it does much better on the Power/Computation measure.

      Bottom line is the architecture matters.

      • A professor once described computing on chips as a process of filling and emptying buckets of electrons.

        He suggested a water analogy: imagine that a CPU contains a large number of buckets, with some simple plumbing between then. Computing consists of filling the buckets (from the faucets above) and emptying the buckets into each other, and eventually onto the floor below.

        His point: the faster you want to compute, the more water/electrons are going to be pumped through the system. Faster -> more electrons per unit time -> more power consumption -> more heat.

        The only way to make faster chips run at the same heat level is to make the buckets smaller, and I beleive that's hard to do.
        • The only way to make faster chips run at the same heat level is to make the buckets smaller, and I beleive that's hard to do.

          No, it's not really hard, that's what happens when you scale. The buckets are the charges on the MOSFET gates in current technology, and the smaller the transister, the smaller the bucket, and the less current it takes. At some point, the wires can't take the current densities unless you scale back voltage, which makes the buckets smaller again. There is no limit to this on the bottom end, so no lower limit.

          OTOH, the limits can be treated as hard within the current technology, and you have to use current technology, or wait to build it later. You can reduce the voltage, or slow the clock to reduce power, but it that means lower power == slower.

      • Actually, information processing DOES cost a minimum amount of energy. You will always be increasing the entropy of the system, so some minimum amount of heat will always be generated.

        Information is energy, so to speak...
        • Right, it can't be zero, but there is no minimum (theoretically, at least). I makes sense because the smaller your device, the less energy it takes. That probably terminates in quantum mechanics, but there is a long way to go before we are at that scale. Then it's a matter of reducing the 'size' of the quantum which would probably mean slowing things down (lower frequency, longer wavelength).

          As a practical matter there probably is a minimum, but it is very small and we are a long way from it.

    • Re:all this cooling (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CTho9305 ( 264265 ) on Sunday October 13, 2002 @11:27AM (#4440874) Homepage
      I do not believe you are correct. In a modern processor, almost NO power is consumed when computations are not happening. CMOS logic is set up so that as long as its state does not change, there is no current flowing (well, transistors "leak", but that is relatively little current). However, when the clock ticks, all the gates start changing states. During the state change, power is consumed. This page [uni-hamburg.de] has some excellent applets which show how and when the current flows.

      During computation is the only time power is being used. Because of how CMOS works, power usage grows approximatekly linearly with clock speed - which makes sense - if power is consumed when stuff changes state, doubling the clock doubles the number of state changes per time, increasing power consumption.

  • filtration (Score:5, Insightful)

    by buzban ( 227721 ) <.ten.nabzub. .ta. .zub.> on Sunday October 13, 2002 @08:10AM (#4440332) Homepage
    i've never done anything this exotic, but whenever i add a larger fan to a PC, it sucks in a ton more dirt. anyone done anything like this with filtration? and if so, how much air flow did that block for you?

    just curious...

    • Re:filtration (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wd123 ( 209211 )
      One of the easiest ways to filter a fan on a computer is to stretch a nylon stocking tightly over it. The air flows in, but dirt does not. Nylons can be picked up for cheap, though you might want to have your wife/girlfriend/mom(heh) do that for you so you don't look like a weirdo. ;)
    • I can see it now. "K&N filters to enter lucrative PC market!"

    • Re:filtration (Score:2, Informative)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      You've got to get that black open cell foam stuff that is used for air filtration. The only place I have found to buy this in bulk is the Grainger catalog, it's about $25 for a lifetime supply. It's a pretty big roll, I think it is 25 feet by 5 feet when you unroll it. Anyway, get quarter inch.

      The airflow loss is minimal, but you have to clean them every couple months, or you will start to lose a lot of airflow. The stuff is washable. If you smoke around your computers, figure on cleaning them a lot more often. Running a normal room air filter in the same room helps with the dust and smoke.

      Carpet is a big dust trap, carpeted rooms seem to be a lot more dusty on average, especially if your computer is on the floor.

      Anyway, here is an example of that black stuff mounted in front of fans.

      http://www.bedford.smythco.com/storage/5.jpg

      Evercase from newegg comes with a processor overhead fan that has the stuff. I've also found some hobby shops selling small pieces of the stuff for high prices, but as I said, grainger is the best place to buy it in bulk.

    • 3M (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I put some velcro tape (the hard plastic hooked side) around the intake, then slap a square I cut off a Filtrete filter. Both Homo Depot sort of stuff.

      All filters block air flow somewhat, and alot when they get dirty. So, oversize your fan a bit and make sure you change them often.
    • In the cleaning supplies section of the grocery store they have various scrubbing pads. Several of these can be made into a good filter that doesn't block a lot of air.
    • For what it's worth - although filtration is pretty important when you have a lot of CFM through your box, I highly recommend getting the computer off the floor as a first step to minimize dirt.

      I used to be like most guys - tower case under the desk gives me back the most desktop space. However, room dust tends to settle to the ground, and if your computer is on the ground, it gets first dibs on hoovering up all the dirt in your room.

      Even elevating your computer a foot or two is better than having it right against the floor.

      MeepMeep

  • shuttle questions (Score:2, Interesting)

    by eurostar ( 608330 )
    So this cools the CPU, but what about the hard disk ?

    has anyone seen a decent ventilator and cache that can go in the shuttle's 3.5" front bay to add airflow to the HD ?
    I'm thinking on the lines of a temperature gauge and fan.

    Also, has anyone run Linux on the SS51G ?
    my shuttle is arriving next weekend ! thanks for your comments
    • My SS51 is my game system (portability), as so it runs Windows XP. I downloaded the LiveCD from Gentoo with Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo, and it would not properly boot. I use an nVidia 4200.

      I haven't tried just putting Linux on the box, because I'd still need to dual-boot for the majority of my games.
    • go to sudhian forums [sudhian.com] to see some freeBSD and Red Hat users discuss how clean it installed, but that there may be some driver issues.

      ----
      Beware of women who pay their rent with one dollar bills
  • Why watercool?

    I started off with water cooling because I wanted to overclock... to get the CPU to run with a front side bus way out of spec you usually end up pumping more voltage to the processor. More voltage, more heat, less stable. Back when it was a buck or more a megahertz, you strapped a peltier plate on to really drop the CPU temp. The peltier plate alone usually kicked out more heat than the latest CPU's, so creative cooling - high speed fans, ducting, and eventually water cooling were required.

    Fast forward to today. Mhz really does not matter. I can run 3-4 CPU releases behind and still have a screaming system. Stability is more important than an extra 200mhz, but the current generation of CPU's kick off the same kind of heat I had to deal with in an OC'd 566 (952mhz w/112 FSB water cooled + peltier, 833mhz w/98 FSB aircooled). Less heat still equals stability, however.... It only takes a couple 8K RPM fans in your office before pushing more air and buying louder speakers is not a solution.

    A water cooling rig can be silent. I'm not sure what the point of a 8K fan on a tiny radiator, but my heat exchanger I got by with a couple low RPM ducted 120mm fans. Kits are becoming mainstream however - IE, you don't have to buy a couple cases of beer for someone with access to a machine shop to make your CPU heatsink.

    • Why overclock? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by PerryMason ( 535019 )
      Seriously dude, why bother overclocking the first place? I mean overclocking was a useful thing back in the day of the Celeron and P3 where you actually experienced a significant increase in the performance, but these days its such an incremental improvement that its not worth the bother. Just save on the water-cooled rig and get the new whiz-bang vid card when it comes out 6 months after the last one did and 6 months before the next one's due out.

      The only real purpose I could see to your rig would be a living-room DVD/OGG player where you want no extraneous sound.

      That aside, I'd happily take it off your hands if my knocking it has made you want to get rid of it ;)
    • I bought a new AMD 2000+ XP cpu and a TT Volcano 7+ to cool it. It's really loud. Now my computer room sounds like the server farm at work. I'm currently also looking at watercooling to meet my need for silence and am glad that places like fry's are starting to stock kits. Hopefully as these become more popular they'll also become cheaper.
      • My computer case (The same case that alienware is using for their new pcs) has 4 fans in it, with an AMD 1800 w/ big fan..

        I never realized how loud my computer was until one day when I had to shut it down to put some new hardware in, and my room was utterly silent. Ever since that day, my computer seems to be a bit louder because im noticing it now..

        And I really wish we had a fry's here where I live, I miss that place..
        • The same problems exists with most of the dell computers that I have worked with. IANA anti-dell person, but the powersupplies in their computers are loud as hell. Especially the newer models, my parents 8100 is about 5 times as loud as their old 200mhz system.

  • Going the wrong direction (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shagoth ( 100818 ) on Sunday October 13, 2002 @08:33AM (#4440381) Homepage
    It's about time the movement for hardware hackers shifted toward low-power, quiet computing. Having a giant radiator and a blower does niether.

    There is no reason that home servers can't be PowerPC machines running with laptop harddrives other than the hardware hackers haven't yet found clever ways to come up with iMac motherboards. I recently changed out the drive in my home server for an IBM Travelstar 40 GNX and for all intents and purposes removed the last noise maker from my office.

    A couple of months ago the server was reborn on a retired Apple Powerbook and the difference in the temperature from the traditional machine was profound. Since I live in the desert, I have to dump all the heat I make whether it comes off heat pipes, heat sinks or radiators so reducing waste heat is a good thing. The surplus hardware is out there for the scrounge (just like with Wintel stuff) and the power consumption and heat production is significantly less.

    Similar answers are coming for commercial rack mount machines of which Apple's X-Serve is only the first. Remember that power costs money too, and not just fo r the machine but for the A/C to take the heat away.
    • About using laptop's harddrives in normal PC's unless size is the reason they are not really an option. They are slower, and less reliable with a far higher price. If you don't mind the slowness just use a low rpm regular disk. It will be silent as well but perform a lot better and cost less.

      How do I know? I salvaged the new HD from my old laptop when it gave up the ghost,(note to self do not keep laptop running 24/7 in a closed desk). While the 20gig was nothing to be sneezed at it was dreadfully slow. On a laptop you accept this. On a desktop. No way. I now use it to transport my music between machines.

      As for using powerpc, most people who have a file server or something like that use their old machines for home setups. So until iMac's start showing up on the rubbish heap I don't think we will see them being used as the router for the average home user geek. of course if like you you already use them for the main machine it is the logical solution.

  • Eyecandy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shinsei ( 120121 ) <caledorn@@@fein...no> on Sunday October 13, 2002 @08:35AM (#4440385) Homepage
    It looks very nice, but I don't see the practical uses of it. First of all, if I wanted to watercool my system, I would try a Peltier element to reduce the temperatures to as low as possible. I do of course have a low cpu speed myself, but 34 degrees celcius is my system temperature for an Athlon T-Bird 1.33Ghz system which is only aircooled - and the AMD CPU's are infamous for their heat generation. Also in this machine is a GeForce 4 TI4600 display adapter, which generates a whole lot of heat just by itself as well.

    In my eyes, the system is only for eyecandy - as it is surely a beautiful sight for the eye - but it doesn't have much practical use. It is expensive, and I don't believe the system gains any much stability from it, as the Intel CPU's are already made for stability @ factory. If they were able to add a Peltier, perhaps display adapter cooling, and hd cooling - in that small case - then it would be a convenient solution. But as it is now - just eyecandy, imho of course. :)

  • Large cooler. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Shanep ( 68243 ) on Sunday October 13, 2002 @08:40AM (#4440389) Homepage
    I'm amused that the radiator is almost as large as the computer itself.

    I used to be a network admin for a stock exchange disaster recovery site in the mid 90's.

    We had BIG VAXen, as in *large*-double-door-fridge size.

    A big chunk of the size of these boxes, was actually the cooling system itself. : )

    • I used to be a network admin for a stock exchange disaster recovery site in the mid 90's.

      We had BIG VAXen, as in *large*-double-door-fridge size.

      So big VAXen fix stock market disasters? If only we'd had them around in 1929!

  • Great (Score:2)

    by oPless ( 63249 )
    Now I know where all my bandwidth has gone.
  • Do all these people who make water cooled systems live deserts or something? Although it seems to be some sort of protection in the design but I would be weary of 24x7 operation of this system especially during those muggy summer days. But I think it would be great in the winter to rest your feet the radiator to warm your feet.
    • What about condensation?

      You had to be careful with peltiers, but room temperature water cooling rigs are at no more risk then their air-cooled cousins. You have a leak however... not pretty.

    • Re:What about condensation? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Sunday October 13, 2002 @11:39AM (#4440928) Journal
      Condensation happens when the temperatures differ. So when warm air moist air touches a cold surface. The water in this setup is WARMER then the air around it. Why? Cause airflow itself, or at least the relativly low airflow created by small fans like this can not cool below ambient temperature. And since the water itself will be warmed up by the cpu it will typically be a few degrees higher then the air, so no condensation.

      There are setups where they cool the water and then of course condensation is a real problem. Same if you use peltiers.

      The only way you could with watercooling create temps lower then ambient is if you use evaperation. This is not the case here and I am not sure that anyone has ever tried it. Try it by wetting you hand and holding it in front of a fan, this will be a lot cooler then youre dry hand.

      If you don't believe me on the condensation put something like a mirror in front of a fan and put it at max. No way condensation should form. (presuming reasonable normal conditions there are always exceptions).

      Please note that you can achieve lower then ambient with just airflow without evaporation, I believe it is called vortex cooling or something. But this requires the kinda flow you get out of an airpump.

      • The only way you could with watercooling create temps lower then ambient is if you use evaperation. This is not the case here and I am not sure that anyone has ever tried it. Try it by wetting you hand and holding it in front of a fan, this will be a lot cooler then youre dry hand.

        A year or two back, some guys went the refrigeration route, only they went really overboard - they suspended a PC motherboard in Flourinert and ran the stuff through a fridge pump. As it turns out, Flourinert gets really thick when you cool it too much.

  • hdd cooling? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fw3 ( 523647 ) on Sunday October 13, 2002 @09:09AM (#4440468) Homepage Journal
    Watercooling the cpu and eliminating the fan results in very little cooling for all the other parts of this cute little box. The HDD espeically will suffer reduced life expectancy.

    Seems to me a false economy.

    • Watercooling the cpu and eliminating the fan results in very little cooling for all the other parts of this cute little box. The HDD espeically will suffer reduced life expectancy.

      All the other parts could be water cooled too...

      If you water system can handle the extra heat load, there is no reason why you cannot make a water block for your hard drive too. If you don't want to build, koolance [slashdot.org] and a few other companies will sell you one that you can drop in.

      Rounded cables are a tremendous boost to airflow, but I doubt the radiator on the box could handle the heat exchange required however... You can even water cool the power supply. Not sure if anyone sells a commercial version, however. Not hard, but make sure you don't have condensation issue or leaks first!

  • thank god the server didn't get /.'ed (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    else all that water cooling it would have started to boil!

  • Does this actually increase reliability? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Sunday October 13, 2002 @09:53AM (#4440573)
    I'm actually curious to know whether having those humungous cooling plates on the top of CPUs and bridge devices might not actually increase unreliability due to increased pressures on the IC carrier, socket and mobo.

    With all of these water coolers, the surface temp. can never go below ambient air, so getting a fast but quiet flow of air to well designed fins on the hotspots would seem a better option. Water cooling for vehicles works mainly because of the problems (with air cooling) of cooling places difficult of access, like around the valve guides on an IC engine, plus the desirability of maintaining a controlled temperature WELL ABOVE any sensible ambient. The objective here is to get the temp. down close to around 10-30C.

    Using a Peltier device can get the die temp to below ambient but requires heat to operate which also has to be removed from the case- I have come across a case where people didn't understand this, cooled one device, an IR sensor,with the Peltier and then had the system fail because of overall thermal overload caused by the additional 120W needed to drive the Peltier stack. The answer would seem to me to be the one favored by Apple - well designed air cooling. As Intel and AMD cpus are the SUVs of the processor world, add heat pipes or fluorinert bags to transfer heat efficiently within the case to where the airstream can run most effectively.

  • I'm starting to think - why are we doing this? (Score:5, Funny)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Sunday October 13, 2002 @10:08AM (#4440627) Homepage Journal
    Pretty soon we're going to need reheat units attached to the coolers to break up the ice that collects on them then we'll need moisture collectors to manage the condensors and another power supply to run the whole thing which will generate more heat. and so on.

    There has got to be a better way - make CPU's that run colder.
  • Instead of Intel and AMD just making processors with higher clock rates that generate more heat, lets see some significant architactural changes that fix the heat problem.
  • Creating the smallest water cooled system.

    is the shuttle+radiator really smaller than Hitachi's water cooled laptop? [slashdot.org]

    • What you expect accuracy on slashdot? A headline like, "Worlds smallest water cooled system except for that laptop that is commercially available and prob some other systems we can't quite remember or wich the maker never posted since he didn't think it was anything special" doesn't quite have the same feel to it.

  • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Numpty? (Score:3, Funny)

    by HawkinsD ( 267367 ) on Sunday October 13, 2002 @11:44AM (#4440958)
    Me, being a bit of a numpty

    Damn this language barrier!

    And Babelfish doesn't help.

    • a numpty is an idiot, afaik it is scottish slang, but may be in general use in other parts of the world. i have heard it in Iowa, but that was myself :)
  • I tell you, all this whining about "it's almost as big as the computer"...Bah. So what. I've been looking for this kind of idea for years now.

    I've put computers in cars but I've been limited to 500mhz max due to cooling problems. Tight confined places with no airflow, like say behind a seat or in the dash, were out of the question. Not anymore.

    the micro form factor is perfect and the radiator is a standard in cars. this is a perfect idea that I am embarrased not to have tried it first.

    I lost the intrest to mod any further when I found EVERY computer in my home is faster than what I'd have in my car...it was depressing. Now I'm going to look into this more.

    Kudos for trying this and thanks for the idea.

  • Foo! (Score:1)

    by Pinback ( 80041 )
    Talk about putting a ribbon around a turd's neck. The guy probably has flames painted on his metro as well.
  • Why don't we turn all of our computers into giant moonshine stills! And since alcohol is a better coolant than water it would work better too! Just think about it, free hooch and a cooler CPU to boot...

    If the cops ever come around you'll have an iron clad alibi... Uh guys, I'm innocent of all charges, I'm just cooling my CPU really really...

  • toaster (Score:3, Funny)

    by squarefish ( 561836 ) on Sunday October 13, 2002 @05:36PM (#4442324)
    What effect will water cooling have on the Pop Tarts? [tech-report.com]

  • extreme cooling recap (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As the happy owner of a dual athlon, a thing I considered to make noise level tolerable is a watercooling solution.

    Appently, the overclocker's must have is:
    • peltier [heatsink-guide.com] coolers to achieve low CPU temp.
    • watercooling to cool the hot side of the peltier, watercooling blocks are generally in copper, or in silver (beware werewolves [white-wolf.com]), the lot is affixed to the CPU with dielectric grease [arcticsilver.com]. The cooling liquid is distilled water, which does not conduct electricity, not alcohol, nor liquid sodium [anl.gov].
    • neopren pockets to protect the mobo from condensation


    Near 0C temperatures can be reached like this. The peltier consume a few Watts, and therefore introduce a need for extra cooling, and dealing with condensation due to subambient temperatures. IMHO, this is what makes the solution look like a problem. Anyway, water cooling does not bring the lowes temp. If you want a real low temp, just open your case remove all fans, and put a copper cup of liquid nitrogen on everything that produces heat before switching on.

    Watercooling alone (without the peltiers) is a nice solution to get a high performance but silent PC (how reliable it is mainly depends on your pump). Perhaps watercooling sounds over the top to many of you, but having plenty of fans blowing in and out of a case to reach 40C does not sound right either.

    After all, water coolers are just switching for a more efficient heat exchanging fluid than air. The pump is an electric engine, and has no theorical reason to be less efficient that fan engines.
  • Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name correctly
    (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into (Nick-les Worth). Which
    is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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