External Water Cooling

[BoisterousCoder]

I was wondering how feasible it would be to take an air cooled pc, put beast hardware in it, seal it up, and drop it in a bucket it of water. Eventually, my idea is to use the pc case as a giant water cooled heatsink. Would you need to pump the water still? Using this method could you also get a fanless setup? Is this just generally a bad idea anyway? Either way, I think it would make a good LTT video.

[iBabySlapper]

6 minutes ago, BoisterousCoder said:

I was wondering how feasible it would be to take an air cooled pc, put beast hardware in it, seal it up, and drop it in a bucket it of water. Eventually, my idea is to use the pc case as a giant water cooled heatsink. Would you need to pump the water still? Using this method could you also get a fanless setup? Is this just generally a bad idea anyway? Either way, I think it would make a good LTT video.

Sounds like a terrible idea. I'm no physicist, but won't doing that make your PC case into a hot/cold drink flask?

If I'm not mistaken sealed steel container +air= insulator.

And I'm pretty sure steel doesn't conduct heat that well.

[BoisterousCoder]

Just now, ibabyslapper said:

Sounds like a terrible idea. I'm no physicist, but won't doing that make your PC case into a hot/cold drink flask?

If I'm not mistaken sealed steel container +air= insulator.

And I'm pretty sure steel doesn't conduct heat that well.

well, the reason I specifically mentioned modding an air-cooled case was because some of them have metal bars going from the heatsink to the case, so the heat can dissipate throught the metal bar to case rather than the air. I apologize for not making that clear.

[AnonymousGuy]

Not sure if trolling.

 

You're basically talking about a mineral oil PC.  Yes you still need a radiator and fans to cool the oil.

 

If you're talking about something else like using the case as a heatsink and dunking the case in water...that's just idiotic, there's way better ways to deal with cooling than that.

 

If you'reo talking about one of those passively cooled vaporchamber type systems and dunking that in oil...yeah it would probably work but again there's better ways to deal with cooling.

[iBabySlapper]

1 minute ago, BoisterousCoder said:

well, the reason I specifically mentioned modding an air-cooled case was because some of them have metal bars going from the heatsink to the case, so the heat can dissipate throught the metal bar to case rather than the air. I apologize for not making that clear.

Actually I'm pretty sure there's already a case that uses its side-panels as heat-sinks, I remember watching a HW Canucks video on it. I guess if you really needed to you could seal that case up with sealant and throw it into a body of water...

It's still a terrible idea though.

[BoisterousCoder]

6 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Not sure if trolling.

 

You're basically talking about a mineral oil PC.  Yes you still need a radiator and fans to cool the oil.

 

If you're talking about something else like using the case as a heatsink and dunking the case in water...that's just idiotic, there's way better ways to deal with cooling than that.

Would I ever build this pc? No. However, I think might have some small benefits over traditional water cooling and a mineral oil pc. Unlike the mineral oil pc, you don't get any of your components oily. Also, unlike traditional water cooling, you get a huge heatsink for more heat transfer to the water.

[Fasauceome]

6 minutes ago, BoisterousCoder said:

Would I ever build this pc? No. However, I think might have some small benefits over traditional water cooling and a mineral oil pc. Unlike the mineral oil pc, you don't get any of your components oily. Also, unlike traditional water cooling, you get a huge heatsink for more heat transfer to the water.

The thing about water cooling heat sinks is that they're not surrounded by water. Take the fins on a PC radiator for example. Are those submerged? Certainly not, because they need airflow over them. You say the heat sink on the outside would transfer heat from the PC into the water, but from there it goes nowhere. Since air is the ambient medium on dry land, not water, you'd need to basically be operating this PC in the ocean for the submerging effect to be of any use, since the heat needs to dissipate outward "infinitely" to actually cool the system without just creating a box of heat around the heat generating components. Same reason a mini fridge doesn't work as a cooler, the air is all trapped inside and just hot boxes the PC,