Why not Water cooling?
- 9 fans!
- computer controlled fan system
- huge heat dissipaters
- The case is still HUGE yet still lacks expandability because it needs all this room for air flow.
- ugly perforated panels for ventilation
- still noisy!
So all this begs the question... why not make a commercial, stock water cooled system for a personal computer?
Did I mention there are 9 fans!
- computer controlled fan system
- huge heat dissipaters
- The case is still HUGE yet still lacks expandability because it needs all this room for air flow.
- ugly perforated panels for ventilation
- still noisy!
So all this begs the question... why not make a commercial, stock water cooled system for a personal computer?
Did I mention there are 9 fans!
Comments
Originally posted by iSegway
- 9 fans!
- computer controlled fan system
- huge heat dissipaters
- The case is still HUGE yet still lacks expandability because it needs all this room for air flow.
- ugly perforated panels for ventilation
- still noisy!
So all this begs the question... why not make a commercial, stock water cooled system for a personal computer?
Did I mention there are 9 fans!
one question: have you ever heard a kitchen without a refrigerator? the silence is deafining... water cooled systems generate sounds too...
Originally posted by billybobsky
one question: have you ever heard a kitchen without a refrigerator? the silence is deafining... water cooled systems generate sounds too...
You don't need to keep your computer case at freezing temperatures like a fridge/freezer. You just need to dissipate heat. I would think a quiet pump and a nicely engineered radiator would do the trick.
It would be silent and take up much less space.
It would also be better to just have to worry about replacing one pump, rather than 9 fans of varying sizes as well.
Water cooling is a great way to get heat out of obscure areas (such as inside an engine), but you still have to get the heat out of the water. With an engine, you have a radiator which relies on the car moving through the air to remove the heat. When you're sitting still, a fan turns on to blow air past the radiator. In a PowerMac, you'd end up with a big radiator either on top that could count on convection currents (obviating the ability to put something on top of your computer) or on the back where you'd need the fans to draw the heat out... back where we started!
In a situation where you can efficiently move air past heat sinks, water doesn't offer much. It *is* used to some degree in laptops... there are heat pipes which draw heat away from the processor and pipe it to a heat sink near a fan and vent (at least, that's the way my Pismo cools!) The new PowerMac is engineered to draw air in the front, past components and straight out the back--no turning corners (turbulance=noise), no hot-spots, just a cheese-grator look (which I happen to like, btw
Hope this helps...
[edit: added]P.S. For the record, if anyone could make water cooling practical and very cool, I'd put my money on Ives/Apple. Image a PowerMac with Wurlitzer juke-box bubble tubes!
Lots of water
The ability to evaporate water
Water cooling is bad because water has a high specific heat. It takes alot of heat to make water go up in temperature and so while it can absorb alot of heat, it can't absorb it very quickly.
The solution to this is two fold. First, either have lots of water, so you can always keep running cold water over whatever is hot. This doesn't work out too well for a desktop (look at my ten gallon heat sink!). The other soultion is to not have as much water, but to let the water absorb as much heat as possible and evaporate away (look- my G5 is making clouds in my office).
Examples of both of these solutions can be found in nuclear powerplants which have to get rid of something like 4000 to 6000 Megawatts of heat. Either you have a nuclear powerplant on the ocean where it can just dump all that heat into the ocean (a bottomless heat sink), or you have to evaporate alot of water in a cooling tower. This is why most all nuclear power plants are on rivers or ocean fronts.
Water cooling sounds neat, but it is actually a real mess for desktop machines.
And someone else is comparing it to freezing your icecream in your fridge?
A bit dramatic don't you think?
Water cooling is more efficient than aircooling. Thats why our cars are watercooled. It is that simple. Water cooling is superior.
Now... leaking water in your computer would not be a good thing. This may be enough of a reason to stop this system dead in its tracks. I would think it possible in this day and age to make it work though. It would also make the G5 about half the size and near silent.
Water cooling is a very popular thing with personal computers now. People are making kits that seem to work great, and they are essentially making them in their garages. I would think apples engineers could do some really incredible things with it... hence this thread. I don't understand why they didn't do it. I think it was just fear of liabilty, some moron breaking one of the fluid lines and ruining their computer, or worse.
[edit: added]P.S. For the record, if anyone could make water cooling practical and very cool, I'd put my money on Ives/Apple. Image a PowerMac with Wurlitzer juke-box bubble tubes! (hey, I'm a child of the seventies, so cut me some slack!)
I totally agree! This was my point. You know Apple will most likely be the first manufacturer to do it. Which is why it upsets me that we'll probably have to wait a few years(at least) to get it now.
Originally posted by iSegway
Water cooling is superior.
It depends on the application. In a car, yes.
It depends on the application. In a car, yes.
Are you saying that watercooling isn't superior to air cooling with computers?
Originally posted by iSegway
Are you saying that watercooling isn't superior to air cooling with computers?
I think with the drawbacks to a water cooled system inside a computer, it might not be superior to an air cooled system. At least not at an affordable pricepoint.
We also have to take into consideration the migration to the 90nm process. Implementing a water cooled system right now isn't useful if the next generation G5 doesn't need it. It would be a wasted expense and R&D for just one generation of machines.
The next gen chips should be faster and cooler. I don't know what IBM's roadmap is, but like with MOTO, cool chips are very important to IBM and their markets. That might negate the necessity for a water cooled system for a long time.
We also have to take into consideration the migration to the 90nm process. Implementing a water cooled system right now isn't useful if the next generation G5 doesn't need it.
Computers will continue to get hotter and hotter and smaller and smaller. Heat is just going to continue to grow as a problem. Why not start now rather than using 9 fans and and a giant case? If heat wasn't projected to be a problem they would have created "the wind tunnel". It sounds like a lot of energy went into that and in the wrong direction, imo.
[I have learned one thing in this thread at least... it is much easier to say the reasons something won't work than to figure out how it can be made to work. lol That is true through out history though isn't it. Change doesn't come easily.]
if your car isn't moving, water cooling sucks.
it's quieter than low quality air cooling, and does a better job than air at transferring heat, but has some real drawbacks. (weight, leakage, replacement of water, mineral deposits)
we'll see though.
The ideal liquid should not only have a high specific heat but also should quickly absorb and dissipate thermal energy. It would be similar to an automobile's coolant but wouldn't need to have such a low freezing point.
Liquid cooling is very possible and not even that expensive to engineer or manufacture. Yet it isn't the norm simply because forced air-cooling satisfies nearly everyone. The only drawback is sound pollution. Most people, when given the choice, choose a fast computer over a quiet computer.
Thus, a computer manufacturer has little to gain by going to liquid cooling. Can you imagine the bad press from an imperfect first generation design and a few leaky machines?
Fans are simply too cheap and effective. Apple designs already win awards and attract design oriented consumers... liquid cooling just wouldn?t be more profitable. (for now)
Originally posted by iSegway
Are you saying that watercooling isn't superior to air cooling with computers?
Remember that nothing (water or otherwise) can remove heat, only *move* it. The ultimate goal of any cooling system is to move heat from one place (the components inside the case) to a place where you don't mind it being (the outside air). The purpose of liquid cooling is to gather up heat from various obscure places and bring it to one spot: a radiator. At that point, the heat is transferred to the outside air. The air must be moving to pull away any significant amount of heat from the radiator, so you have to use a fan, or, in the case of a car, move the radiator through the air. The liquid-filled heat pipe in my Pismo doesn't remove heat; it just moves it to a place where the fan can get at it.
The point is that no matter where you move the heat inside the computer's case, you still have to get it into the outside air. So, you're left with the same problem--a liquid-cooled system becomes an air-cooled system in the end.
The reason liquid cooling makes sense in a car is that it is not easy to channel moving air to all of the various internal parts of an engine that need cooling. liquid can be piped here and there, and ultimately to the radiator--which still requires moving air to dissipate the heat that convection or radiation can't deal with. In the case of a computer in a big rectangular case, it is a simple matter to channel air across all of the components--particularly when done the way Ives did it with the G5: in the front, across the components and straight out the back. Get's the job done quickly, easily, quietly (now, anyway) and *cheaply*.
Get's the job done quickly, easily, quietly (now, anyway) and *cheaply*
Quite the opposite really. Least of all compactly, though. This case is larger than the G4 and has less room for expandability.
Originally posted by iSegway
And someone else is comparing it to freezing your icecream in your fridge?
Well, when Tom's Hardware overclocked a PIV to 4.x GHz, the cooling they used was so efficient (a water cooling system with a compressor as heat dissipator if I remember well) that, if they got it running at full speed while the computer was off it would get the case well below 0°C. That's about the same result as putting the computer in a freezer.
EDIT: found the article in question. Citation: "In the sixth THG Video, we demonstrate the speed of our 4.1 GHz PC system, as well as the effects of extreme cooling as low as minus 52 degrees Celsius." Article here.
-52 °C is -61.6 °F. There's not a single freezer that can achieve this. The next step in cooling, after such a compressor, is liquid N2.
Perhaps we should be discussing 'liquid cooling' instead of 'water cooling'. Water is rarely used in modern, closed circuit cooling systems.
While water might not be used, the term "water cooling" is frequently used. I think you need to do some research on the state-of-the-art of water cooled personal computers.
But all these kits are self install and come with a huge disclaimer saying that the only person responsible for damage caused by watercooling is the owner.
That asside, you can buy kits, and they are very good - Many of my PC gamer friends have watercooling because its quiet and effective. They have AMD's running at 28 degrees.
I even read an article about a dissabled web designer - he liked his computer a lot! - got a scuba tank and burried it in the garden, you get to about 6 - 10 foot down and the ground is always cool, about 10 degrees I think.
He then piped the water up to his office, through the wall and into the PC.
Originally posted by iSegway
I think you need to do some research on the state-of-the-art of water cooled personal computers.
How many dbs does a typical water cooled computer create?
But all these kits are self install and come with a huge disclaimer saying that the only person responsible for damage caused by watercooling is the owner.
This I don't understand though. Our autos have tons of electronics in them and gasoline and water and coolant and oil.
That asside, you can buy kits, and they are very good - Many of my PC gamer friends have watercooling because its quiet and effective. They have AMD's running at 28 degrees.
Have you heard of a kit for any mac before?
I even read an article about a dissabled web designer - he liked his computer a lot! - got a scuba tank and burried it in the garden, you get to about 6 - 10 foot down and the ground is always cool, about 10 degrees I think.
This I don't understand. The temp underground is stable but not very cold. I think it is a pretty steady 60 degrees F maybe. Not sure. I know it's not 10 though. Unless he is in the artic.
Running some hose all the way outside would probably be enough to cool your water sufficiently though.
Originally posted by bunge
How many dbs does a typical water cooled computer create?
Measuring DB's is a difficult thing for someone to do out of your garage. The positioning of the noise level equipment, it isn't an easy thing to guage. But these computers run near silent and are usually overclocking, at least to some degree.
Overclocking isn't something I am particularly looking for. I am more interested in a small computer, zero dust entering the case(the G5 is ridiculous in this way), and a quiet noise level.