Introduction
Introduction
Although there are a lot of excellent heatsinks on the market, they all pale into insignificance compared to even the most basic of water-cooling rigs. As well as offering exceptional cooling, water-cooling is also amazingly quiet, almost silent. Anyone who has had to endure a screaming Delta fan for any period of time will tell you that system noise is a very important consideration! As well as water-cooling, compulsive overclockers feel it necessary to cool their CPUs even more drastically – often to sub-zero temperatures by means of a peltier. A peltier is a gadget that accepts a fairly low voltage at quite a few amps, and get hot on one side and cold on the other. The higher rated the Peltier and the higher the voltage - the bigger the temperature differential can be, and the more heat they can transfer. (You can read a great article about peltiers at Dan's Data) Peltier units up to around 70W can be air-cooled so long as you have an excellent heatsink, but 80W+ really need water-cooling to be effective. Anything more than an 80W peltier with my Pentium III processor would just be overkill, PIIIs simply don’t run hot enough to warrant anything more powerful. Peltiers are not such a simple solution for Athlon users, since you need tremendously powerful peltiers to cool them below the ambient temperature when under full load (150W+). Watercooling alone is a much simpler solution for AMD users, so when I start going on about condensation prevention and insulation, unless you are seriously dedicated, you can all switch off :o) Note that most peltiers are rated at 14V, thus an 80W-rated peltier will deliver more like 65W at a PC's 12V output.
It is a common myth that you need to be a technical whiz in order to set up a decent peltier-water cooler, so as a complete newbie I decided to share my experiences with you. If I can do it, anyone can! The most important thing in any do-it-yourself project is to make a plan. If you go rushing in, buying all the bits and pieces only to discover that you will not be able to fit it in your case or that the waterblock is unsuitable for your processor, you will have wasted an awful lot of time, effort and money for nothing. First up, I measured my case in order to see what kind of rig would fit. Many water-cooling enthusiasts choose gigantic custom cases such as the Yeong Yang Server Cube, but in my room this is simply not an option. I aimed to construct not only an effective solution, but a practical one as well. Because of my space constriction, I chose to build a completely closed system setup rather than the more common layout with a reservoir. Reservoirs make bleeding the rig of air easier, but also mean that the setup needs topping up occasionally due to evaporation. Some reservoirs (without good seals) also provide an excellent breeding ground for algae and other microorganisms that you do NOT want growing in your PC!
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