Watercooled Computer
One project that I did during high school was a watercooling setup for my main PC, and also contructing most of the parts related to that (waterblocks, fittings, Y adapters, reservoir and so on).
This project was one that I let take a long time, as I made a certain part one month, and didn’t do anything the next, followed by another part after that, and so on, so though the project took quite some time from start to finish the total work put down was probably under 50 hours or so.
The main parts made were:
- Waterblocks for the CPU, Northbridge, and graphics card
- Reservoir that bleeds easily and removes bubbles from the loop
- An enclosure under the main computer containing the radiator, a single cooling fan, and the pump
- Various brass/copper fittings
Waterblocks
The three waterblocks I made vary greatly in their construction, though the cpu and vga blocks are the most similar. They are both based on rows of parallel fins approximately 2mm thick (with about 3mm of space for the water to pass through). Additionally in the GPU’s case vertical space is an issue, so I needed to have an elbow type adapter directly on top of the block.
The northbridge waterblock is rather different, whereas the GPU and CPU blocks need to transfer lots of heat, the NB block only needs to cool 15 watts or so, however space is much more of an issue, and as pressure drop is already near its upper limit the head loss through the NB block had to be minimised. The result of this can be seen in the images, where the waterblock is simply a copper baseplate with a copper pipe soldered on.
Reservoir
The reservoir was quite simple to make, simply an acrylic tube with turned O-ring sealed endcaps. I also added a sheet of acrylic in the middle of the tube to stop bubbles from flowing between the two pipes (the water is forced to travel in an inverted U shape).
Lower enclosure
The lower enclosure contains the suspension for the pump, the heatercore, and a cooling fan. The box is made from 5mm plywood of some relatively hard wood. There are caster wheels under the box to make it easier to move around, as the entire system weighs around 25kg when filled with water. The M30 bolt attached to the rear flange is a damping mass, as without it the rear flange and the pump are resonant and generate a significant amount of noise.
The sytem works very well, I haven’t touched it for three years other than topping up water occasionally, and it manages to cool all above mentioned components to very respectable temperatures (CPU at about 40-45°, GPU at about 45-50° when stressed) with the airflow from one 4112N/12GL at 5V.
