Watercooling + Ice

[TheProcess]

Ok so I'm pretty low budget but I call myself an enthusiast; my current mobo can't overclock. I however am getting a new mobo and moving to LGA775 sometime next week.

 

I've had a Zalman Reserator 1 for some time now; and through extensive testing on a NON-OC'd system, well, it kinda sucks.

 

 

Ok, it sucks.

 

 

I'll be getting a decent $50 Gigabyte mobo and an E2180, so overclocking will be done. I won't be getting any extreme clocks on my budget, but I want to sit right at my mobo's ceiling.

 

My question/idea is to stick a frozen bottle of water in my Reserator1's resevoir, this actually cools the water in it quite well and technically should make up easily for how much this thing generally fails to cool like water should.

 

The resevoir facilitates this very well actually, it fits in nicely and the pump is at the bottom, it should always be pulling in the coldest water.

 

 

The concern: Condensation. I wouldn't think there will be much once a CPU is keeping the waterblock a little warmer than the water, and the tubes naturally won't really be cold enough to freeze so I don't expect condensation there.

 

 

I guess why I'm posting is to make sure I haven't looked over anything, because I don't have the budget to screw up anything; so I want to make sure I'll be ok. What would be the best fluid to use? Right now i'm 100% Distilled water, no add-ins.

[apocracy]

i use distilled water with a little bit of biocide added, but issue i see is cpus put out alot of heat so the frozen bottle of water wouldn't remain that way for long

[TheProcess]

i use distilled water with a little bit of biocide added, but issue i see is cpus put out alot of heat so the frozen bottle of water wouldn't remain that way for long

 

 

I realize it wouldn't be a 24/7 thing, switching out ice bottles would start to get old quick, but when I'm doing intensive things like benchmarking etc I think it would be nice to be able to drop the entire thing that extra few degrees.

 

My big wonder is condensation; I have the reserator, tubes and blocks up and running with ice in the system right now (contained ice of course in a water bottle) and I don't feel problematic condensation on the blocks or tubes after about an hour of running with the ice inside. The tubes are noticeably cold and the fins of the radiator are a little moist, but the real concern is the block. The tubes can be insulated easy but I dont want to screw with insulating the block etc.

 

Would turning on a nice warm CPU under the block help STOP condensation or encourage it?

[apocracy]

codensation is moister(how ever you spell that fancy word for water) in the air, rather it forms or not depends on how much colder the tubes are then surrounding air and what hummidity is. as long as water block and return tube are being heated by core to above ambient they will not have condensation form on them, but the input may

[TheProcess]

I guess the best way to see how it works is to fire up a CPU under it. I have the system on a single-core 4000+ (s939) at default clocks of course; it's not my main system so that's where I'll test it!

 

It has a 7600GT in the loop too so that will change the results a bit (I wont be putting my 3850 on water, my block only does GPU and it has pretty warm RAM)

 

but hey, we'll see. I'll get back here with results, as others may be interested. It just happens to be a really well-designed resevoir for dropping in a brick of ice.

[Onion]

I have tried dipping my rad in ice and water and trust me, the whole loop condenses. I thought maybe a little bit around the radiator, but it was crazy, within 5 minutes it was dripping off my tubes.

 

codensation is moister(how ever you spell that fancy word for water)

 

Moisture...not all that difficult lol.

Edited July 7, 2008 by l33t p1mp