Water Cooling hardware: Mostly a jolly Off-Topic tought 🤪

[Imago]

Hello everyone!

Yesterday I have seen an old Linus' video about janky water cooling systems and he talked about "not mixing metals" and the needed addictives to avoid corrosion and gunk forming.

And I suddenly got a tought: Why industries keep using metal and water for that stuff? They start to crumble to dust in about half hour after first run and in a month you need to pull everything out to clean it otherwise you get clogged tubes.

So... In 2023 we got ceramics that have about same heat conductivity as copper and zero electrical issues along with almost zero corrosion and zero residues in the system.
Since about 3000 years we know alcohol, which is a natural bacteria killer and got an extremely good heat dissipation capability, it would keep the algae out of your loop. Also, it has a way lesser electrical conductivity than water (as I can see from graph).

So... Why we don't have ceramic CPU blocks, glass tubing and alcohol running in the cooling loop? If you are afraid of the alcohol's fumes, just add a simple expansion chamber to control the pressure.

I think that stuff can runn longer with less issues than the standard stuff!

What do you guys think about this?

[Kilrah]

19 minutes ago, Imago said:

ceramic CPU blocks

Cost/brittleness

 

19 minutes ago, Imago said:

glass tubing

Flexibility/fragility

 

19 minutes ago, Imago said:

alcohol running in the cooling loop

Evaporation/low boiling point, flammability in case of leaks, incompatibility with common seals...

[RONOTHAN##]

29 minutes ago, Imago said:

Since about 3000 years we know alcohol, which is a natural bacteria killer and got an extremely good heat dissipation capability, it would keep the algae out of your loop. Also, it has a way lesser electrical conductivity than water (as I can see from graph).

It's been tried before, it doesn't actually work that well. Alcohol has a really bad thermal capacity when compared to water, so and performance ends up pretty bad compared to the same setup with water (pretty sure when Jayz2Cents did testing with it, it was ~10C warmer on alcohol compared to water, though that's Jay so take his testing with a grain of salt). 

 

29 minutes ago, Imago said:

They start to crumble to dust in about half hour after first run and in a month you need to pull everything out to clean it otherwise you get clogged tubes.

What are you on about here? Even in mixed metal loops, they will last ~6 months before getting to that point, and without mixed metals you only really need to clean a custom loop once a year (this is more to take into account that the parts you used weren't likely perfectly clean when assembled, as this is when the contaminants can start to become a problem). 

 

29 minutes ago, Imago said:

glass tubing

People have done glass tubing. It's a nightmare to get working properly, mostly due to glass taking an insane amount of heat to bend into the right shape. This just isn't practical, especially since PVC/plastic/rubber tubings are perfectly adequate.

 

I won't really comment on the ceramic water block discussion as I'm not a material scientist. I'd assume it's probably some combination of durability and manufacturing issues, but this I can't say for sure. 

[jaslion]

16 minutes ago, Imago said:

They start to crumble to dust in about half hour after first run and in a month you need to pull everything out

If ya dont mix metals easily a decade is doable.

 

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Evaporation/low boiling point, flammability in case of leaks...

Also just fucks up rubber like no tomorrow so bye bye watertight loop

 

17 minutes ago, Imago said:

is a natural bacteria killer

There are bacteria that live in/on alcohol

 

19 minutes ago, Imago said:

In 2023 we got ceramics that have about same heat conductivity as copper and zero electrical issues along with almost zero corrosion and zero residues in the system.

Do you have any idea hoe insanely hard it is to create micro fins on ceramics? :p.

 

Its a MUCH more brittle and unforgiving material

 

20 minutes ago, Imago said:

glass

Have you ever worked with glass? Likr bending glass is extremely hard, requires WAY higher temps and its just also more brittle. Also you basically need to be a proffesionall to even have a semi ok result

[Imago]

Ah, I didn't expect su much flame on this, ahah!

Anyway, I think there are better solutions than put dangerous liquids inside expensive hardware for cooling.

 

And happy new year to everyone!