sn3nut Posted April 24, 2006 Share Posted April 24, 2006 Do you have a HTPC installed as part of your home theater system? Are you tired of hearing the whining of the blower fan in the case while you are listening to music or watching videos? I was. There is a cooling solution available that not only works great, but looks great as well. I installed a liquid cooling system this weekend and am totally happy with the results. It is the Thermaltake CL-W0042 Rhythm. It comes ready to install with pre-filled coolant. It took about an hour to disasemble the PC, remove the motherboard, attach the supplied cooling block to the processor, and reassemble the computer. All required parts were included in the Thermaltake kit including drip-less quick disconnect valves. Operating temperature on the processor dropped from about 31 degrees C at idle to 21 degrees C. At full load (real-time transcoding of a DVD), the operating temperature dropped from 41 degrees C to 32 degrees C. The system is almost totally silent, with only minimal noise from the airflow over the radiator. This unit is designed to look like a high-end DVD player and looks very good sitting on a shelf with my receiver, HTPC, and other components. Cost is around $200 (US) at most mail-order sites. I bough mine from Directron. If you are like me and tired of the noise, you might want to give this a try. Thermaltake has a couple of other water-cooling solutions, including a fan-less unit and one that looks like a vertical flat-panel speaker. Here is the Thermaltake URL: http://www.thermaltake.com/watercooling/cl-w0042Rhythm/cl-w0042.htm Here is a hardware review (there are many others; just Google for CL-W0042): http://stores.tomshardware.com/rating_getprodrev.php/product_id=16248070/id_type=M// Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 not bad but then you need to add another component ontop of your htpc! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RTTR Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 Mmmm water cooling. Here is my setup. D-Tek Pro-120 Radiator, Swiftech MCP655 Pump, Swiftech STORM CPU Water Block, Danger Den 3-1/2" Reservoir, Swiftech MCW55 VGA Water Block, Valvoline Zerex Racing Super Coolant, Tygon 1/2" ID Tubing, Delta 120x38mm Fan .Bad picture but here. And here is a link to the rest of my PC specs click Picture of some of the parts, minus the reservoir and some other small things Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 to be honest, for around 200 dollars I rather get the zalman fanless watercooling system. There is no noise Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHoff80 Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 Right now, I'm personally looking at some of the pre-done stuff, because I have no experience with watercooling whatsoever. I'm looking at the Coolermaster R80 CPU setup, along with possibly (depends on how much it costs by the time I get it) the Sapphire Toxic watercooled X1900XTX video card. It also depends on what components I can fit in the case. I'm currently looking at the OrigenAE X11 HTPC case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j-malotky Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 What I did with my HTPC is put it in the storage room behind my rack to keep the noise out there. I then bought a USB external case so I could mount my IDE DVD player in my rack and run the USB wire through the wall. I also use an RF remote where I programmed a button to shut down my PC. Everything I need is in the room, noise in another room. JM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redtop Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 If you are looking for a cool and quiet HTPC check out this new case from Antec. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article591-page1.htmlThere's just something about having water (or other liquid coolant) running around near electronic components that just calls out to "Murphy"...[]Just my 2 cents... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHoff80 Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 I was considering mATX but couldn't find any cases that really stood out to me, this one included. I could probably manage with 4 slots if I had to, but I need an external 3.5" bay, and I'm not a fan of the silver front with the black case. This still looks like too much of an old desktop PC case to me, even if I was to stealth the drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 If you are looking for a cool and quiet HTPC check out this new case from Antec. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article591-page1.html There's just something about having water (or other liquid coolant) running around near electronic components that just calls out to "Murphy"...[] Just my 2 cents... that is an age old myth...... The water that you should be using for the cooling (distilled) is not conductive. What makes water conductive is electrolytes in water (aka salts like sodium cloride, potassium chloride, etc) and yes the same electrolytes as you lose in sweat (thank you gatorade commercials) The salts (an ionic compound) tends to in water act like separate compounds. I.e. the sodium tends to become conductive in water because in water it acts like two separate elements and sodium is a metal. Also when you sweat you lose the salts and when you drink only water, you replenish the water but not the lost salts in which you can go into shock. Since your body is made of nerves, the electrolytes act as wires to transmit the tiny electric pulses you nerves send along to whatever you want to move. That is why in extreme cases the body just collapses and starts to twitch, as there is sporadic connections but not strong enough to tell what the muscle to do. I use to stick my bare hands in distilled water with live wires that were 500 volts and 50 amps when I worked at a laboratory....... normal outlets are 115 volts, 15 amps. I am still alive.... And I know its scary as hell the first time. Also wanna know something funny, you can clean computer components with soap and water. just let it dry and everything will or should be fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 also I forgot. The thing about why people are soo afraid of the watercooled system from leaking is not the water but the fact that the heat can spike from like 30c to like 300 c and fry the system before system can shut down. This is due to no real air cooled heatsink. Regular heatsinks still have some heat dissapance when the fan fails. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shade Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 I've been eyeing that zalman for a while now. I'll probably pick one up whenever I either build a new PC, or get around to setting up a dedicated HTPC. Been keeping my main PC in the living room, pulling double duty as an HTPC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSoundBroker Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 to be honest, for around 200 dollars I rather get the zalman fanless watercooling system. There is no noise I run this exact cooling system and while I love it, there is an issue...the pumps tend to go bad. The early units also had leaky flow indicators (as I found out with a puddle in my office one day) but Zalman stepped up and sent out a new part right away and it has been totally leak free the past several years. Also, there is not enough coolant flow with the stock pump to cool a truly heat intensive computer. When my pump went wonky and started making noise, I bought a Eheim aquarium pump that pushes about twice the coolant and it works beautifully (cheap and reliable too!). There are some other mods that make it even more effective (check the Zalman cooling forum). Now that I have it sorted, I can NOT tell you how nice it is to have a totally silent computer in my office...you don't realize just how incredibly annoying it is to have that thing whirring away next to you until the noise totally disappears. I run temps around 115 degrees cooling both the processor and video card. Only issue is that the radiator is very cool looking but it isn't small. I have it next to my desk in my office on the floor and I don't have a problem...but for an HTPC in a rack...it may not be ideal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RTTR Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 also I forgot. The thing about why people are soo afraid of the watercooled system from leaking is not the water but the fact that the heat can spike from like 30c to like 300 c and fry the system before system can shut down. This is due to no real air cooled heatsink. Regular heatsinks still have some heat dissapance when the fan fails. I have my motherboard bios set to give off a warning at 45C and shut off at 55C, I never reach half thoes temps normally but if my pump and or radiator fan failed, I know my CPU and video card won't get fried. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 also I forgot. The thing about why people are soo afraid of the watercooled system from leaking is not the water but the fact that the heat can spike from like 30c to like 300 c and fry the system before system can shut down. This is due to no real air cooled heatsink. Regular heatsinks still have some heat dissapance when the fan fails. I have my motherboard bios set to give off a warning at 45C and shut off at 55C, I never reach half thoes temps normally but if my pump and or radiator fan failed, I know my CPU and video card won't get fried. the thing is without waterflow it can spike quite fast. Actually without constant flow, think of the water more of a insulator than a conductor of heat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted April 27, 2006 Share Posted April 27, 2006 eheim is probably the most reliable well known water pump out there. There are some aquarium filters that are as old as me 21 that are from eheim also yes its not made for the heating rack but then again just get some longer tubing and extend it to outside the rack. Also what about the power supply and their fans? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSoundBroker Posted April 27, 2006 Share Posted April 27, 2006 Yeah, all the reading I did convinced me Eheim was the way to go. As for the rack...yes, you can extend the lines...but many people may not want to have a big honkin' blue tower sitting in their room. Again...I personally think it is cool, but I could see some objection. On the power supply, you can get a fanless power supply that is pretty darned good these days. I happen to run a ps with fans, but they are rated at something like 18 db and I have the computer in a cabinet so I don't hear them. Net effect...I hear nothing from the computer unless the DVD player is spinning up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted April 27, 2006 Share Posted April 27, 2006 i wonder about the reliability with those power supplies without fans........ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wstrickland1 Posted April 27, 2006 Share Posted April 27, 2006 I can't hear anYTHiNG! over this damn ringing!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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