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Author Topic: Watercooling; H2o replacement?  (Read 942 times)

  • Offline Madrocker

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Watercooling; H2o replacement?
on: August 27, 2007, 12:04:25 PM
Ive been tinkering with my old water cooling kit recently and was wondering what other fluids u could use?

I was wondering about thinners or panel wipe, but the problem is it would destroy the pump.
I did think about a electric fuel pump but it makes a right racket.

The reason I say thinners or panel wipe is because when you spill a bit on your hands its very cold as it evaporates and doesnt take long to evaporate.

Any thoughts?
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M3ta7h3ad "You've been blessed with a keyboard with every vowel and consonant in the english language... yet you type like a fool".

  • Offline Beaker

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Re:Watercooling; H2o replacement?
Reply #1 on: August 27, 2007, 12:27:13 PM
you can get non-conductive liquids from most of the larger online retailers.
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  • Offline Madrocker

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Re:Watercooling; H2o replacement?
Reply #2 on: August 27, 2007, 13:26:34 PM
Quote from: Beaker
you can get non-conductive liquids from most of the larger online retailers.


Not realy what I was getting at mate.
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M3ta7h3ad "You've been blessed with a keyboard with every vowel and consonant in the english language... yet you type like a fool".
Watercooling; H2o replacement?
Reply #3 on: August 27, 2007, 14:30:17 PM
you mean to try and improve it?

Thing is if it evaporates, thats it... no more cooling. You might be able to get away with meths, but then thats a flammable fluid inside your computer case, next to sources of heat.

Most folk go the route of cooling the fluid down more and then swap fluids out for that, stuff like flourinert and things :)
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Re:Watercooling; H2o replacement?
Reply #4 on: August 27, 2007, 15:29:34 PM
the important feature isnt speed of evaporation, but heat capacity.

IIRC, and Im quite happy to be proved wrong here since I havent checked this, Water has just about the highest heat capacity of any liquid. There are a couple which beat it, but theyre pretty exotic and unhelpful (I think molten sodium is one, but that would entail running your PC at ~900C :o).

Its possible you could find a liquid which will come close to water while having some other benefit such as being non-conductive and/or non-corrosive, but youre not going to beat the cooling performance of a plain water system.

Theres a good reason why all the most successful nuclear reactor designs are water cooled.

edit: if you look on the wikipedia specific heat capacity page you will notice that water beats more or less everything except Helium and Hydrogen, both of which are gasses. The table is far from exhaustive, but I think it illustrates my point quite well.
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  • Offline SteveF

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Re:Watercooling; H2o replacement?
Reply #5 on: August 27, 2007, 15:41:21 PM
Mongoose is bang on.

Alcohol based things like you describe evaporate very quickly so they get cold very quickly (latent heat of evaporation?).  But they have no real ability to carry the heat anywhere.  Plus they would tend to just stay evaporated and not switch back to a liquid again.  If you wanted to use these other things then youre going to need some kind of extra compression and cooling to force them back to a liquid again.  Then youre looking at phase change cooling/compressors which do work amazingly well (think air conditioning/freezers) but are a very different setup.

Water just happens to be particularly good at cooling around the temperatures we use in computers.  Theres a few better liquids around that have slightly better thermal capacity (you can buy them from water cooling specialists).  I seem to remember theres a fire supressant liquid that is very good while being non conductive but tbh waters about as good as youre likely to get without a major upgrade.

If you do want to upgrade then phase changing liquids would be the next step I guess...  Prometia, etc.


Without testing I have a feeling you could probably pour the liquids youre talking about onto the chip (conductivity aside) and the fast evaporation would work pretty well.  But you couldnt close the system - youd have to just keep pouring them onto the chip and letting it evaporate quickly forever.
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  • Offline Mark

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Re:Watercooling; H2o replacement?
Reply #6 on: August 27, 2007, 22:13:20 PM
water wetter any use?
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  • Offline Beaker

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Re:Watercooling; H2o replacement?
Reply #7 on: August 27, 2007, 22:16:46 PM
Quote from: Madrocker
Quote from: Beaker
you can get non-conductive liquids from most of the larger online retailers.


Not realy what I was getting at mate.

heh, well they are sometimes glycol based, like car Anti-Freeze.  Anti-Freeze actually does have better thermal properties than water as well.  
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Watercooling; H2o replacement?
Reply #8 on: August 28, 2007, 00:09:06 AM
^^^.....

it improves the specific heat capacity of water as long as you mix in the right amout...  (too much and it gets worse again)

plus it reduces the thermal tension of water, so you get better water block to water heat transfer :-)
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