# Pumpless and fanless water cooling. How doable it is?



## The red spirit (Sep 1, 2021)

I wonder if it's possible to build fanless and pumpless water cooling. Let's say the lack of flow is compensated with big reservoir (10-20 liter) and lots of radiator area. Could it possibly work?


@FireFox


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## Rithsom (Sep 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I wonder if it's possible to build fanless and pumpless water cooling. Let's say the lack of flow is compensated with big reservoir (10-20 liter) and lots of radiator area. Could it possibly work?
> 
> 
> @FireFox



That gigantic reservoir won't matter if there is no pump to move water in and out of it.

Really, what's the point of taking a pump out of a water-cooling loop?


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## The red spirit (Sep 1, 2021)

Rithsom said:


> That gigantic reservoir won't matter if there is no pump to move water in and out of it.
> 
> Really, what's the point of taking a pump out of a water-cooling loop?


Complete silence. And water should move by convection, so it's not static.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 1, 2021)

Piece of piss.

There's a massive radiator heatsink cooler on the way out with thermal pumped coolant, can't remember the name but it's Dammn effective, LTT did a video I think.


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## Jetster (Sep 1, 2021)

Technically you could use heat to make hot liquid move









						Thermosiphon - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## Rithsom (Sep 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> And water should move by convection, so it's not static.



Good point. But I'm not going to disable the pump in my custom loop to find out, lol. Anyone else want to try? 

EDIT: Does a standard D5 pump even allow flow when turned off? Or does the impeller act like a valve, preventing flow when not powered?


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 1, 2021)

Will never work. Because at the end of the day, you cant defy the laws of physics.

You need water to be pumped around the loop and fans on the radiator to remove the heat from the loop. Even if you did manage to take the pump and the fans out of the equation All you'll get is your hardware eventually saturating the water with all the heat it can absorb but cant remove.

There are some exceptions to this though. But you would need a really really big radiator and constant airflow in your room as you'll be using the ambient air to remove the heat from your loop.

I dont see any way of getting around the pump thing. You will need one weather you like it or not


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## cvaldes (Sep 1, 2021)

This doesn't work. Any water movement generated by heat isn't fast enough.

I have accidental real world experience with this. I fired up one of my custom cooling loop builds after forgetting to plug the pump's power cable back in. The CPU's temperature nearly reached its critical shutdown temperature but luckily I fired up HWiNFO shortly after boot and shutdown the system immediately.

The only way it might work is if the CPU die size were massive, like 1 meter by 1 meter for a 65W TDP chip. But then you wouldn't need a waterblock or radiator, passive air cooling would be sufficient.

Go ahead. Pour a couple of liters of water into a saucepan, put it on an electric stove and turn the burner to High. I bet you can easily stick your hand in the water after a minute but you won't be able to touch the stove without burning yourself.


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## sneekypeet (Sep 1, 2021)

Pump less, not so much, fan less, sure. Pretty sure Lian Li made a tower evap cooler like that. Think nuclear cooling tower. Not sure how well it all works, but you would need water flow in any instance I can think of. I do not think you will get thermal cycling of water from the heat source alone.






Not sure of your living situation, but there was a guy who put all the gear in a crawlspace, used the PC above it.


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## freeagent (Sep 1, 2021)

You need a really big bong for what you want to do.


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## The red spirit (Sep 1, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Will never work. Because at the end of the day, you cant defy the laws of physics.
> 
> You need water to be pumped around the loop and fans on the radiator to remove the heat from the loop. Even if you did manage to take the pump and the fans out of the equation All you'll get is your hardware eventually saturating the water with all the heat it can absorb but cant remove.
> 
> ...


What laws in particular? Isn't convection not enough with increased surface area?


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## maxfly (Sep 1, 2021)

If you want silence, simply remove the noise making components from your office. People have been putting their cases and cooling setups in other rooms for years. It works great for silence seekers. You just need a spare room or basement to house your gear in and long ass cables. 
As for a pumpless fanless loop i wont parrot whats been said other than, fanless loops are easy to achieve if you have enough rad space. You also dont need to go fanless to achieve silence in my experience.


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## FireFox (Sep 1, 2021)

Rithsom said:


> if there is no pump to move water in and out of it.


Exactly.
That's the reason i told him to open a new Thread.


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## AusWolf (Sep 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> What laws in particular? Isn't convection not enough with increased surface area?


I'm not a physicist, so please excuse my terminology.

If you use a common AIO watercooler without fans, the convection of the air will not be enough to remove enough heat needed to keep the loop in equilibrium. Meaning, your water, and consequently your CPU will slowly get hotter and hotter even without increasing the workload.

Water is a lot denser than air, so it needs a lot more energy to move by convection (or by anything). If you created a gigantic passive water-cooler, it would only create a hot spot around the CPU, leading to overheating, while 99% of your water volume is still cold. You need some external force to move something as dense as water. Convection alone won't do it.


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> What laws in particular? Isn't convection not enough with increased surface area?



as its been mention. convection wont move water around your loop fast enough for heat to be taken out of the loop. Eventually the water will become saturated/heat soaked and wont provide any cooling and your system will go into thermal shutdown or start throttling. If you have decent flow around the loop provided by a good pump then maybe the throttling and thermal shutdown can be delayed or even averted but there is still nothing taking the heat out of the loop.

Even Zalman had a small pump attached to their reserator  back in the old days.

The idea will work but you cant do it without a pump.



















The tubing and blocks for watercooling becomes restrictions so the water wont flow freely through the loop without a pump pushing them through.


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## FireFox (Sep 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Yeah, I know, but why such stigma against air? I never understood why people care about water so much, it's not early 2000s, when water cooling was the only high end cooling solution and since then I see less and less value in it. I would be more interested in passive water cooling without pump, where you connect block and radiator to big reservoir. That seems like rather practical and powerful completely silent cooling solution.


With a Custom loop i can cool GPU/CPU and if i am too paranoid about heat Ram/VRM too, all with just one loop, that's not possible lets say with a Noctua nh-d15.
I am running 13 fans which in summer spin at 1300rpm and are still very silent, then in winter at 700rpm and you don't hear a thing.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Sep 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Complete silence. And water should move by convection, so it's not static.



My D5 is sat on 4 pieces of blue tack and it cannot be heard. This will never work. My CPU-GPU custom loop has 6 fans, could possibly even cut it down to 4


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## MentalAcetylide (Sep 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I wonder if it's possible to build fanless and pumpless water cooling. Let's say the lack of flow is compensated with big reservoir (10-20 liter) and lots of radiator area. Could it possibly work?
> 
> 
> @FireFox


If I was really that determined to have things so quiet, I would put the case in a different room, make a small hole in the wall for a suitably sized junction box, run the necessary cables through it, and then I'm done! Its probably a lot easier than setting up some arcane water cooling system that would have to rely on gravity, a drainage system, and a large reservoir that will still need to be refilled by a pump or you making numerous trips with a bucket. In general, its a silly idea. I'm sure it would look "unique", but silly.


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## AusWolf (Sep 1, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> as its been mention. convection wont move water around your loop fast enough for heat to be taken out of the loop. Eventually the water will become saturated/heat soaked and wont provide any cooling and your system will go into thermal shutdown or start throttling. If you have decent flow around the loop provided by a good pump then maybe the throttling and thermal shutdown can be delayed or even averted but there is still nothing taking the heat out of the loop.


That's a lot more accurate description than mine. Thank you.

Basically, to maintain equilibrium, you need an infinitely large volume of something to transfer heat from your heat-generating component to. That infinitely large volume is the air surrounding your PC. With a passive water tank, you'd replace this infinitely large volume of air with a much smaller volume of water that would eventually heat up, and stop cooling your components, even if convection did happen. You need to transfer heat somewhere from your water tank. That's what water cooling does via radiators.


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## The red spirit (Sep 1, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> Piece of piss.
> 
> There's a massive radiator heatsink cooler on the way out with thermal pumped coolant, can't remember the name but it's Dammn effective, LTT did a video I think.


That's pretty much off-topic as it has fans. There's zero data about its performance when fanless.



AusWolf said:


> I'm not a physicist, so please excuse my terminology.
> 
> If you use a common AIO watercooler without fans, the convection of the air will not be enough to remove enough heat needed to keep the loop in equilibrium. Meaning, your water, and consequently your CPU will slowly get hotter and hotter even without increasing the workload.
> 
> Water is a lot denser than air, so it needs a lot more energy to move by convection (or by anything). If you created a gigantic passive water-cooler, it would only create a hot spot around the CPU, leading to overheating, while 99% of your water volume is still cold. You need some external force to move something as dense as water. Convection alone won't do it.


AIO simply wouldn't work well, because if you disable pump, then it just blocks water movement. Thermal convection isn't as powerful as pump, never was and will never be, as long as you remove restrictions like "dead" pump, it may or may not be enough to make cooler function.

Think about boiling water pot or kettle. There is a lot of force created there that makes water move. Obviously you don't want you CPU boiling to do that, but I wonder if such point can be reached if there's a lot of water and lots of radiator area.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> That's pretty much off-topic as it has fans. There's zero data about its performance when fanless.


Bit of a struggle then since that would obviously require more rad then the quitest example I showed a video of.

Which is already Soo massive as to just fit in most cases, your plans require the rad to scale up BIG.


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## cvaldes (Sep 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> That's pretty much off-topic as it has fans. There's zero data about its performance when fanless.


There was a homemade fanless gaming system posted a couple of months ago, but basically the whole system was the size of a refrigerator. That's not practical nor desirable.

There are numerous examples of fanless computers out there but the common theme is that they are all relatively low-powered systems. The M1 MacBook Air is fanless. There are some SFF/stick PCs that are also fanless. Is the iPad Pro a computer? That's also fanless I believe. Certainly the Raspberry Pi computers can be operated fanless but even these tiny systems can thermal throttle when running fanless under load.

For sure the smartphone in your pocket is fanless.

There's at least one fanless CPU cooler:









						Noctua's Fanless CPU Cooler Launches for $109, But Expect It to Run Hot
					

The NH-P1 uses a massive heat sink to passively cool your desktop's CPU without generating any sound. Still, it won't prevent some processors from Intel and AMD from getting toasty when running a full load.




					www.pcmag.com
				




but it comes with a bunch of caveats including the likelihood of not being able to dissipate all of the heat generated under heavy workloads.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Sep 1, 2021)

Only way i see this working is with a big header tank high up. pipes come down feeding gravity pressure water through the cooling system and radiators into a dump tank, which is then pumped back up to the top. in theory the pressure would be enough to overcome the constriction of the blocks etc.


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## The red spirit (Sep 1, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> as its been mention. convection wont move water around your loop fast enough for heat to be taken out of the loop. Eventually the water will become saturated/heat soaked and wont provide any cooling and your system will go into thermal shutdown or start throttling. If you have decent flow around the loop provided by a good pump then maybe the throttling and thermal shutdown can be delayed or even averted but there is still nothing taking the heat out of the loop.
> 
> Even Zalman had a small pump attached to their reserator  back in the old days.
> 
> ...


That's an awesome post. But some things aren't really clear. In first video their radiator was gunky and as they said their pump was clogged from residue, that loosened after water got hot. They didn't test that setup with clean radiator. I'm not saying that that could make it work, but I'm saying that gunk that was in radiator surely didn't help to see how effective that could have been and another minor nitpick is that radiator is old style with pretty much no fins. so It leaves me wondering if newer radiators are better are dissipating heat  and potentially at being less restrictive to movement of water. 

Second video is pretty close to what I'm asking, but unfortunately there was no test done without pump, so I have no idea how it would have worked out. Probably not so well, but maybe not entirely badly, if chip was something more midrange like i 5 10600K with Intel suggested PL1 and PL2.


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## FireFox (Sep 1, 2021)

sneekypeet said:


> Pump less, not so much, fan less, sure. Pretty sure Lian Li made a tower evap cooler like that. Think nuclear cooling tower. Not sure how well it all works, but you would need water flow in any instance I can think of. I do not think you will get thermal cycling of water from the heat source alone.
> 
> View attachment 215174
> 
> Not sure of your living situation, but there was a guy who put all the gear in a crawlspace, used the PC above it.



I assume that one is something like this one.










It is fanless but still need a pump


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## The red spirit (Sep 1, 2021)

cvaldes said:


> There was a homemade fanless gaming system posted a couple of months ago, but basically the whole system was the size of a refrigerator. That's not practical nor desirable.
> 
> There are numerous examples of fanless computers out there but the common theme is that they are all relatively low-powered systems. The M1 MacBook Air is fanless. There are some SFF/stick PCs that are also fanless. Is the iPad Pro a computer? That's also fanless I believe. Certainly the Raspberry Pi computers can be operated fanless but even these tiny systems can thermal throttle when running fanless under load.
> 
> ...


I disagree. Fanless computers are totally doable and aren't really that costly. I managed to keep FX 6300 under 60C at default speed and voltage with fanless Scythe Mugen 4 cooler in Cooler Master K280 case without exhaust fan, while running small FFT stress test in prime95. So basically any big air cooler is decently capable fanless cooler, if you need up to 120-140 watts of cooling power. I just wonder, if there is something more capable and still noiseless. Since we can't have bigger air cooler, I reason that water cooler is similar to air cooler, so it may work just as well in passive mode, but that doesn't look to be true.


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## cvaldes (Sep 1, 2021)

Gruffalo.Soldier said:


> My D5 is sat on 4 pieces of blue tack and it cannot be heard. This will never work. My CPU-GPU custom loop has 6 fans, could possibly even cut it down to 4


The cooling system requires depend on the components it needs cool. Naturally fewer fans will likely require you to run the remaining fans at a higher speed. You trade off cooling performance with fan acoustics.

I have a custom loop build with four fans:


Ryzen 5600X (AMD rated 65W TDP, tops out around 93W)
120mm radiator + Noctua NF-P12 redux-1700 fan
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super FE (~238W TDP max)
240mm radiator + two Noctua NF-P12 redux-1700 fans
Case fan: Noctua NF-P14r redux-1500 fan

The CPU will max out at 52 °C during Cinebench R23/Handbrake encode and the GPU will max out at 56 °C during a Unigine Heaven benchmark.

My primary custom loop build has nine fans and because of that, the fans are extremely quiet even while gaming.


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## FireFox (Sep 1, 2021)

Fanless but you still need at least a D5






Sorry for the off-topic


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## The red spirit (Sep 1, 2021)

FireFox said:


> Fanless but you still need at least a D5
> 
> View attachment 215177
> 
> Sorry for the off-topic


How does it even cool, please don't say that it just lets water to evaporate.


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## cvaldes (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I disagree. Fanless computers are totally doable and aren't really that costly. I managed to keep FX 6300 under 60C at default speed and voltage with fanless Scythe Mugen 4 cooler in Cooler Master K280 case without exhaust fan, while running small FFT stress test in prime95. So basically any big air cooler is decently capable fanless cooler, if you need up to 120-140 watts of cooling power. I just wonder, if there is something more capable and still noiseless. Since we can't have bigger air cooler, I reason that water cooler is similar to air cooler, so it may work just as well in passive mode, but that doesn't look to be true.


From a pure physics perspective concerning thermodynamics, there is certainly a way this can be done. 

However it would likely require a number of conditions like dunking something like the Noctua NH-P1 in a water bath, providing more space around the CPU socket, etc. None of this would be commercially viable based on consumer preferences. Remember that typical PCs are designed to be operated in environments that pretty commonplace to Joe Consumer.

Let's say yes, you can dissipate 200W of heat using a special fanless/pumpless water cooling system. Would you like to have a 5 gallon bucket of water next to your PC? One that needs to be topped up weekly due to evaporation? How about moving such a system? Is this a hazard to pets, infants, others?


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> another minor nitpick is that radiator is old style with pretty much no fins. so It leaves me wondering if newer radiators are better are dissipating heat  and potentially at being less restrictive to movement of water.



Old radiators are made out of brass or copper. I havent watched the video in a while but im guessing it was copper due to the amount of crap in side and the many hundreds of times they had to flush out the radiator.

Copper is the best at transferring heat as far as other metals go and the size of the radiator means there is a lot of surface area so you dont need a load of fins like you would do a conventional radiator for a PC or a car to dissipate the heat - But the two things these have in common are pumps and fans. Maybe a smaller engine can do without fans but even electric cars have fans to keep their batteries and some other things cool so its not something that can be avoided.

basically,

Its like needing to take a shit. If you gotta go, then you gotta go. You cant just *NOT *go, I mean in theory you can. but it wont be pretty, thats what im saying.

thats the kind of message im trying to put across to you.



The red spirit said:


> but unfortunately there was no test done without pump, so I have no idea how it would have worked out. *Probably not so well, *



You answered your own question here.


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## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

cvaldes said:


> From a pure physics perspective concerning thermodynamics, there is certainly a way this can be done.
> 
> However it would likely require a number of conditions like dunking something like the Noctua NH-P1 in a water bath, providing more space around the CPU socket, etc. None of this would be commercially viable based on consumer preferences. Remember that typical PCs are designed to be operated in environments that pretty commonplace to Joe Consumer.


As I understand, we just need fore heat radiation surface to water to avoid hotspots and we more or less end up at something like this:









But instead of just water bucket, we use bucket as reservoir and then add some big water radiator at the end So we have a loop and two radiators, one that radiates heat into water and other that radiates heat into air. 

It may actually function, but somebody has to try that.




cvaldes said:


> Let's say yes, you can dissipate 200W of heat using a special fanless/pumpless water cooling system. Would you like to have a 5 gallon bucket of water next to your PC? One that needs to be topped up weekly due to evaporation? How about moving such a system? Is this a hazard to pets, infants, others?


I dunno. This thread was started just to learn if something like that could even function, so such considerations weren't considered. Obviously most people wouldn't do that, but some enthusiast may do something like that as experiment.



FreedomEclipse said:


> Old radiators are made out of brass or copper. I havent watched the video in a while but im guessing it was copper due to the amount of crap in side and the many hundreds of times they had to flush out the radiator.
> 
> Copper is the best at transferring heat as far as other metals go and the size of the radiator means there is a lot of surface area so you dont need a load of fins like you would do a conventional radiator for a PC or a car to dissipate the heat - But the two things these have in common are pumps and fans. Maybe a smaller engine can do without fans but even electric cars have fans to keep their batteries and some other things cool so its not something that can be avoided.


That likely has a big effect too, here's thermal conductivity table:





						List_of_thermal_conductivities
					

List of thermal conductivities This list may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.Please help improve this list. It may be poorly defined,



					www.chemeurope.com
				




And depending on conditions, brass is at least 2.5X worse than copper at conducting heat. But compared to aluminum, it's not too bad. 





FreedomEclipse said:


> basically,
> 
> Its like needing to take a shit. If you gotta go, then you gotta go. You cant just *NOT *go, I mean in theory you can. but it wont be pretty, thats what im saying.


Oh god . It would be more similar to wanting to take a poo, but not using muscles to move shit from colon and instead relying just on gravity and uncontrollable muscle movements, rather than keeping shit in. If you just wait enough, you can probably shit it out just fine, but it's slow, so we tend to use muscles to make it faster. As far as I'm aware, colon muscles automatically contract and human can't control that willfully, so it's likely impossible to keep shit in for long anyway. It would be increasingly harder to do so. You would really need to exercise those ass muscles to keep shit in or poo will end up in a loo.




FreedomEclipse said:


> You answered your own question here.


My guess was based on how how it already got by removing fans vs when fans were on it, so I just guessed purely from that, concept itself may not be entirely wrong.


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## MentalAcetylide (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Oh god . It would be more similar to wanting to take a poo, but not using muscles to move shit from colon and instead relying just on gravity and uncontrollable muscle movements, rather than keeping shit in. If you just wait enough, you can probably shit it out just fine, but it's slow, so we tend to use muscles to make it faster. As far as I'm aware, colon muscles automatically contract and human can't control that willfully, so it's likely impossible to keep shit in for long anyway. It would be increasingly harder to do so. You would really need to exercise those ass muscles to keep shit in or poo will end up in a loo.


No, them muscles are needed to move that stuff. You have smooth muscle throughout your whole digestive tract & peristaltic waves of muscle contraction approx. every 20 min. moves stuff through the small intestine all the way through to the rectum. Without any muscle contraction from the stomach downward, it would get backed up quick and gravity wouldn't be able to move very much of it through the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum, much less the small intestines. heh, the colon is also good at reclaiming water from stool. If you hold in the fecal matter for too long, it becomes like cement. Then you develop an impaction that could perforate the transverse colon & a host of other unpleasant things. Then you either end up dead or wearing a bag for the rest of your life(i.e. "rectal dialysis").


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## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

MentalAcetylide said:


> No, them muscles are needed to move that stuff. You have smooth muscle throughout your whole digestive tract & peristaltic waves of muscle contraction approx. every 20 min. moves stuff through the small intestine all the way through to the rectum. Without any muscle contraction from the stomach downward, it would get backed up quick and gravity wouldn't be able to move very much of it through the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum, much less the small intestines. heh, the colon is also good at reclaiming water from stool. If you hold in the fecal matter for too long, it becomes like cement. Then you develop an impaction that could perforate the transverse colon & a host of other unpleasant things. Then you either end up dead or wearing a bag for the rest of your life(i.e. "rectal dialysis").


This is some nice knowledge, thank you. Anyway, this is getting a bit off-topic. Despite hoe much I love poor stories and learning things about digestion, we shall not soil this thread with that.


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## joemama (Sep 2, 2021)

You are probably looking for something like this: https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/data-center-us/applications/immersion-cooling/
but this still requires cooling otherwise the heat will still accumulate.


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## cvaldes (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I dunno. This thread was started just to learn if something like that could even function, so such considerations weren't considered. Obviously most people wouldn't do that, but some enthusiast may do something like that as experiment.


Okay, let's pretend that you have a Ph.D. in physics and have profound knowledge of computational fluid dynamics and thermodynamics. And you know a way to accomplish this type of cooling. Because of standard case configurations and off-the-shelf parts, you can't do this with normal consumer gear, you'd still have to make your own. Maybe it's something like a Noctua NH-P1 with extra long heatpipes, a special water reservoir with copper fins, whatever. Do you have the material? Do you have the equipment and expertise to create such parts? Do you think you can nail it on the first try? And what will it cost you?

Let's say you're a PC enthusiast who got a B+ in high school physics. Pretend that it would take you 20 prototypes to get whatever your dream design right. Do you have the time or money to do this?

Can someone build an electric car that gets 1000 miles (2200 km) off of one charge with current technology? Sure. But how well would that car perform? What would be the cost? How long would it take to recharge? Would you be filling up the passenger cabin with batteries?


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## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I wonder if it's possible to build fanless and pumpless water cooling. Let's say the lack of flow is compensated with big reservoir (10-20 liter) and lots of radiator area. Could it possibly work?



It can be done using convection; cars of old had tall radiators and no pump.


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## thesmokingman (Sep 2, 2021)

joemama said:


> You are probably looking for something like this: https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/data-center-us/applications/immersion-cooling/
> but this still requires cooling otherwise the heat will still accumulate.


lol Fluorinert is 600 bucks a gallon. Good luck with that.


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## cvaldes (Sep 2, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> It can be done using convection; cars of old had tall radiators and no pump.


I know some Porsches from the Sixties and Seventies were air cooled. They had a tendency to overheat when stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic which is pretty much why there are no air-cooled mainstream automobiles today.

I believe there were a bunch of air-cooled motorcycles back in the day as well.

But this is all elementary since we're talking about major manufacturers and their products.

This thread is about a single enthusiast spending the time/money to do something that is definitely possible with enough expertise and budget. The problem is that it is unrealistic to believe that there's a large number of people who have both of those characteristics plus the free time and inclination to do so.

Within the laws of physics, almost anything is possible. Can I build a refrigerator that is 10% more efficient than what is out there? Sure. It might take me twenty years and I'd probably burn through all of my retirement account funds plus a bunch of bucks from investors. And ultimately, I'd probably end up with a solution far less marketable than whatever some Dow Jones company sells at Home Depot.


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## thesmokingman (Sep 2, 2021)

cvaldes said:


> I know some Porsches from the Sixties and Seventies were air cooled. They had a tendency to overheat when stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic which is pretty much why there are no air-cooled mainstream automobiles today.
> 
> I believe there were a bunch of air-cooled motorcycles back in the day as well.


Porsches were air and oil cooled. They didn't overheat in traffic, they have gigantor fans to keep them cool. They switched to water (956 and 962) in motorsports basically because they had hit the wall on what they could pull from an air and oil cooled mill. Hell production Porsches didn't switch to water on the 911 till 98. All hail the 993, last of the oil pumpers!


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## Rithsom (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Oh god . It would be more similar to wanting to take a poo, but not using muscles to move shit from colon and instead relying just on gravity and uncontrollable muscle movements, rather than keeping shit in. If you just wait enough, you can probably shit it out just fine, but it's slow, so we tend to use muscles to make it faster. As far as I'm aware, colon muscles automatically contract and human can't control that willfully, so it's likely impossible to keep shit in for long anyway. It would be increasingly harder to do so. You would really need to exercise those ass muscles to keep shit in or poo will end up in a loo.





MentalAcetylide said:


> No, them muscles are needed to move that stuff. You have smooth muscle throughout your whole digestive tract & peristaltic waves of muscle contraction approx. every 20 min. moves stuff through the small intestine all the way through to the rectum. Without any muscle contraction from the stomach downward, it would get backed up quick and gravity wouldn't be able to move very much of it through the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum, much less the small intestines. heh, the colon is also good at reclaiming water from stool. If you hold in the fecal matter for too long, it becomes like cement. Then you develop an impaction that could perforate the transverse colon & a host of other unpleasant things. Then you either end up dead or wearing a bag for the rest of your life(i.e. "rectal dialysis").



Speaking of human anatomy, our bodies have a trick up our sleeves (pun intended) for getting rid of excess heat: sweat. Sweat works on the principle of carrying heat away from the body through evaporation. But sweat is able to evaporate even though its temperature never gets near the boiling point of water. I'm not a chemist, but I'm pretty sure that vapor pressure is the concept of evaporation below the boiling point. For sweat/water, that value is 2.33 kPa.

I mean, besides the work that the sweat pores must do, the heat removal process is passive. Maybe this concept can be applied to passive PC water-cooling somehow...


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

thesmokingman said:


> lol Fluorinert is 600 bucks a gallon. Good luck with that.


That's nothing, people are buying 3k RTX 3090s nowadays. 0.6k is peanuts.


----------



## cvaldes (Sep 2, 2021)

thesmokingman said:


> Porsches were air and oil cooled. They didn't overheat in traffic, they have gigantor fans to keep them cool. They switched to water (956 and 962) in motorsports basically because they had hit the wall on what they could pull from an air and oil cooled mill. Hell production Porsches didn't switch to water on the 911 till 98. All hail the 993, last of the oil pumpers!


Oil cooling is still another liquid. There are other fluids that can be used for cooling. Freon is now banned as a refrigerant but some industries still use glycerine. I believe the ISS uses ammonia in its radiators.

However the main point is that you really need to be a world-class expert on cooling systems to build an alternate CPU cooler that isn't a typical air cooler or water-based radiator system. 

Like I said before, I'm sure it's possible from a thermodynamics standpoint. I am just not seeing it from anything that resembles a reasonable cost standpoint, either from a hobbyist tinkerer or a commercial endeavor.


----------



## MentalAcetylide (Sep 2, 2021)

thesmokingman said:


> lol Fluorinert is 600 bucks a gallon. Good luck with that.


And hope they don't end up generating perfluoroisobutene when they use it or at least invest in some catalytic scrubbers for it.  Going this route, one ends up just pissing money down the drain for no other purpose than to say they have a desktop quietly submerged under their desk. I wonder if they could add a bubbling effect to the liquid.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

thesmokingman said:


> Porsches were air and oil cooled. They didn't overheat in traffic, they have gigantor fans to keep them cool. They switched to water (956 and 962) in motorsports basically because they had hit the wall on what they could pull from an air and oil cooled mill. Hell production Porsches didn't switch to water on the 911 till 98. All hail the 993, last of the oil pumpers!


So you tell me that if we change a fluid in water cooling system, it may perform better in fanless and pumpless mode?


----------



## thesmokingman (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> So you tell me that if we change a fluid in water cooling system, it may perform better in fanless and pumpless mode?


No, the problem is your scienceless assumption that it is possible. Water is the most abundant element in the world, is stupid cheap and is leagues better at thermal capacity and thermal conductivity vs air. Asking if its possible in your OP just shows how far far from reality your thinking is.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

thesmokingman said:


> No, the problem is your scienceless assumption that it is possible. Water is the most abundant element in the world, is stupid cheap and is leagues better at thermal capacity and thermal conductivity vs air. Asking if its possible in your OP just shows how far far from reality your thinking is.


Water isn't the only abundant liquid. Why not use alcohol, which evaporates easier? Wouldn't it make heatpipes perform better or better yet, why not use low viscosity oil in liquid coolers?


----------



## MentalAcetylide (Sep 2, 2021)

Rithsom said:


> Speaking of human anatomy, our bodies have a trick up our sleeves (pun intended) for getting rid of excess heat: sweat. Sweat works on the principle of carrying heat away from the body through evaporation. But sweat is able to evaporate even though its temperature never gets near the boiling point of water. I'm not a chemist, but I'm pretty sure that vapor pressure is the concept of evaporation below the boiling point. For sweat/water, that value is 2.33 kPa.
> 
> I mean, besides the work that the sweat pores must do, the heat removal process is passive. Maybe this concept can be applied to passive PC water-cooling somehow...


Yeah, but you're not going to build a contraption that mimics the very VERY large surface area of the body, at least not cheap enough or small enough to be affordable for a DIY project. Very few metals(and very expensive metals at that! gold & platinum come to mind) are ductile enough to be fabricated into something like that. Sure, it can be done, but the cost eventually does overtake the feasibility of actually doing it.


----------



## thesmokingman (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Water isn't the only abundant liquid. Why not use alcohol, which evaporates easier? Wouldn't it make heatpipes perform better or better yet, why not use low viscosity oil in liquid coolers?


You really need to educate yourself before throwing out these ideas. Alcohol will perform worse than water. Oil? Oil is much worse than water. Why do you think the company that stuck an engine in the back despite science finally switched to water?


----------



## MentalAcetylide (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Water isn't the only abundant liquid. Why not use alcohol, which evaporates easier? Wouldn't it make heatpipes perform better or better yet, why not use low viscosity oil in liquid coolers?


You can't just throw any liquid that "seems" like it would work better. You have to consider both the physical & chemical properties. You do not want to use volatile liquids like alcohols for liquid coolers due to rather obvious reasons. Hell, dichloromethane would be awesome at cooling or even making water freeze, but its not necessarily a good idea, again, due to its chemical properties.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

thesmokingman said:


> You really need to educate yourself before throwing out these ideas. Alcohol will perform worse than water. Oil? Oil is much worse than water. Why do you think the company that stuck an engine in the back despite science finally switched to water?


Who knows. Those geniuses are naming electric cars "Turbo" and yet there isn't any turbo in them at all.



MentalAcetylide said:


> You can't just throw any liquid that "seems" like it would work better. You have to consider both the physical & chemical properties. You do not want to use volatile liquids like alcohols for liquid coolers due to rather obvious reasons. Hell, dichloromethane would be awesome at cooling or even making water freeze, but its not necessarily a good idea, again, due to its chemical properties.


What chemical properties are important in coolers?


----------



## MentalAcetylide (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Who knows. Those geniuses are naming electric cars "Turbo" and yet there isn't any turbo in them at all.
> 
> 
> What chemical properties are important in coolers?


If you have to ask that, stay away from chemicals in general. Flammability for one thing.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

MentalAcetylide said:


> If you have to ask that, stay away from chemicals in general. Flammability for one thing.


Can you even answer a simple question? No need to be tsundere all the time.


----------



## joemama (Sep 2, 2021)

The fluid selection really depends on your cooler design, in general they usually need low viscosity to work. For the immersion cooling they prefer something that vaporizes when the CPU heats up to create liquid flow to bring the heat away from the CPU. But for normal open loop water cooling, the vaporized fluid will cause an increase of pressure which could lead to a leakage at one of the many joints, thus they don't want the fluid to vaporize but rather just to heat up so they need something with a large heat capacity. Since the fluid just heats up and doesn't flow by it self, open loops require a pump to carry away the heat.


----------



## cvaldes (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Who knows. Those geniuses are naming electric cars "Turbo" and yet there isn't any turbo in them at all.


That's the marketing department. You don't seem to have any grasp on how the marketability of a given item is more important than raw specs.

And here you are asking if a pumpless/fanless system can cool a computer.

Sure, such a cooling system can be devised at an unknown cost. Most likely the development costs would be substantial. It's not like no one has ever dreamt of this before.


----------



## thesmokingman (Sep 2, 2021)

cvaldes said:


> Sure, such a cooling system can be devised at an unknown cost. Most likely the development costs would be substantial. It's not like no one has ever dreamt of this before.


A few years back some students at UAH devised an evap system using Novec, no fans etc but using Novec. Novec is 500 bucks a gallon lmao. And it cannot handle anything more than a craptastic 4 core cpu.

Anyways, just spitballing if we have to rely on these 3M engineered fluids.... that defeats the point. The DoD uses like 60 thousand gallons of Fluorinert lol. Oh and in case anyone gets any ideas these 3M liquids are the most devastating chemicals, ozone instant killers.


----------



## claes (Sep 2, 2021)

All of red spirits threads are like this : popcorn :


----------



## cvaldes (Sep 2, 2021)

thesmokingman said:


> A few years back some students at UAH devised an evap system using Novec, no fans etc but using Novec. Novec is 500 bucks a gallon lmao. And it cannot handle anything more than a craptastic 4 core cpu.


Technologies change.

That said, I doubt if those UAH students paid for the Novec out of pocket.

Circling back to the OP's inquiry, a lot of it comes down to the feasibility of the solution. College is a great place to experiment with a lot of dumbass ideas, especially if someone else is footing the bill. And I'm not talking just about engineering experiments.

OK, so I think I can create a fanless & pumpless CPU cooling system. It's butt ugly, might take $5000 in expenses, and have zero long-term reliability. What point have I proven? That I'm a rich wasteful slob dumb enough to spend four figures on some sort of crazy "proof of concept" trophy that might not even survive a month?

For laughs let's pretend that I accomplished what the OP is asking with $1000 of off-the-shelf components that I spent two weeks working on. But it doesn't cool any better than a $35 air cooler or a $70 AIO. So all that I have proven essentially is that I can blow $900+ tilting at windmills. That might be good enough for me to qualify as a candidate for a government contract.
How many people will want to do that? And more importantly, how many people will want to *ADMIT* to that?


----------



## claes (Sep 2, 2021)

If the guy thinks Noctua is trash for innovating ICs, plastics, motors, bearings, etc to make a better fan I’m gonna say nah


----------



## xtreemchaos (Sep 2, 2021)

Gruffalo.Soldier said:


> Only way i see this working is with a big header tank high up


or connect to the house water supply by tap and let it flow through the system to a drain. but i dont really think theres a pratical way of doing it or there would be something on the market.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

cvaldes said:


> And here you are asking if a pumpless/fanless system can cool a computer.
> 
> Sure, such a cooling system can be devised at an unknown cost. Most likely the development costs would be substantial. It's not like no one has ever dreamt of this before.


What are you talking about? Passive cooling already exists and isn't that expensive. Just buy any chunky tower or dual tower cooler and CPU can be cooled. You can also do oil submersion computer, but it's very impractical and does degrade some components. I just wonder if noiseless liquid cooling could be done.



cvaldes said:


> Circling back to the OP's inquiry, a lot of it comes down to the feasibility of the solution. College is a great place to experiment with a lot of dumbass ideas, especially if someone else is footing the bill. And I'm not talking just about engineering experiments.


But it's awful place to do that. You can't just use their facilities as you want and you certainly can't just play with some ideas that freely. And if your ass depends on grades to pass subjects, then just forget about that.  



cvaldes said:


> OK, so I think I can create a fanless & pumpless CPU cooling system. It's butt ugly, might take $5000 in expenses, and have zero long-term reliability. What point have I proven? That I'm a rich wasteful slob dumb enough to spend four figures on some sort of crazy "proof of concept" trophy that might not even survive a month?
> 
> For laughs let's pretend that I accomplished what the OP is asking with $1000 of off-the-shelf components that I spent two weeks working on. But it doesn't cool any better than a $35 air cooler or a $70 AIO. So all that I have proven essentially is that I can blow $900+ tilting at windmills. That might be good enough for me to qualify as a candidate for a government contract.
> How many people will want to do that? And more importantly, how many people will want to *ADMIT* to that?


The point of this thread is that you may be able to do that with ghetto water cooling setup. Basically a car radiator and 20 kg water bucket. That's not very expensive. Impractical, yes, but if that actually works, compared to some other passive solutions like these:


















It's quite cheap and doesn't impact upgradability. So it's an interesting solution with potentially good results.



claes said:


> If the guy thinks Noctua is trash for innovating ICs, plastics, motors, bearings, etc to make a better fan I’m gonna say nah


Noctua's biggest innovation is stealing from Scythe and Nidec. That's only in fan blades. In terms of motors, they haven't done anything spectacular. And beyond that, they haven't done anything innovative. Just making bigger heatsinks isn't an innovation.


----------



## FireFox (Sep 2, 2021)

xtreemchaos said:


> or connect to the house water supply by tap and let it flow through the system to a drain


You read my mind.
Last night when trying to sleep i was thinking the same thing.


----------



## ThrashZone (Sep 2, 2021)

Hi,
Sure just ghetto rig a wheel to replicate the electric pump and add a gerbil or squirrel to make the fluid circulate heck it would only cost you peanuts to operate lol

Last I checked tap water only has pressure because it comes from pumping stations lol


----------



## Deleted member 24505 (Sep 2, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Sure just ghetto rig a wheel to replicate the electric pump and add a gerbil or squirrel to make the fluid circulate heck it would only cost you peanuts to operate lol
> 
> Last I checked tap water only has pressure because it comes from pumping stations lol



Tap water pressure is sometimes from a header tank in the roof too, it would be pretty hard to maintain pressure if the pumping station is fifty miles away. Maybe they have local pumps to maintain pressure.


----------



## ThrashZone (Sep 2, 2021)

Gruffalo.Soldier said:


> Tap water pressure is sometimes from a header tank in the roof too, it would be pretty hard to maintain pressure if the pumping station is fifty miles away. Maybe they have local pumps to maintain pressure.


Hi,
Yes water towers 
But they still use pumps to get it up there


----------



## Deleted member 24505 (Sep 2, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Yes water towers
> But they still use pumps to get it up there



we don't have water towers in the UK, not sure how it works here.


----------



## ThrashZone (Sep 2, 2021)

Gruffalo.Soldier said:


> we don't have water towers in the UK, not sure how it works here.


Hi,
Water towers are usually used for small areas 
Large towns all use pumping stations same for waste water except separate of course because


----------



## Deleted member 24505 (Sep 2, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Water towers are usually used for small areas
> Large towns all use pumping stations same for waste water except separate of course because



Doesn't matter where you are, you are still drinking recycled pee


----------



## ThrashZone (Sep 2, 2021)

Gruffalo.Soldier said:


> Doesn't matter where you are, you are still drinking recycled pee


Hi,
Think we're getting off topic a tad
But think researching the difference between older used septic feild waste and waste water treatment plants might clear up any confusion of how clean city.. drinking water is


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

I went on internet and found this:








						Raijintek Shows Off Pumpless Liquid Cooling System
					






					www.anandtech.com
				




Seemingly it can be done, but not with water, if water is replaced with different liquid, which boils at 60C, then Raijintek is confident that it will work well. In fact, it could dissipate 200 watts of heat. The cons of that Raijintek demo unit is that room temperature can't exceed 40C, loop must survive some pressure, radiator must be above cooling block, loop must be filled in vacuum and retain vacuum. Most of these requirements aren't outrageous, but some are a real pain, like vacuum. Other than that, it seems to work surprisingly well or at least Raijintek says that it does.


----------



## lowrider_05 (Sep 2, 2021)

Der Bauer did what you want but I don´t know if it is that easy:


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> What chemical properties are important in coolers?



Specific heat is probably a leading one, and that is what makes water so desirable; I once put too much anti-freeze in my car and saw the engine temperature rise a little more than usual on a hot day.


----------



## maxfly (Sep 2, 2021)

The biggest problem imo with passively water cooling a modern high end cpu or gpu is heat density. There is so much heat being generated in such a small area, without a pump they will very quickly cook themselves. Anyone that's forgotten to connect their pump after a new build or leak test, knows what i mean. Even at idle, the heat generated has to be moved away from the block or within minutes your in shutdown range.
The problem with passive cooling is the way our loops are built. They simply aren't meant to be used without a pump.
If one day someone found a way to move water silently(move the water itself without it making noise) without a pump passive wcing would become a reality. Until then i think im about as close to silence as one can get


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

If the radiator is tall enough the liquid convective flow might be sufficient.


----------



## claes (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Noctua's biggest innovation is stealing from Scythe and Nidec. That's only in fan blades. In terms of motors, they haven't done anything spectacular. And beyond that, they haven't done anything innovative. Just making bigger heatsinks isn't an innovation.


Here you are trying to find innovation in a thoroughly iterated method of cooling and you don’t see the irony?

If you don’t respect science and innovation you’re just going to continue having pointless conversations that ignore science and history. All advancements are iterations of previous work. It’s not like Nidec invented fans, and if you call that stealing, well, you’re blind.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

claes said:


> Here you are trying to find innovation in a thoroughly iterated method of cooling and you don’t see the irony?


Irony or not, but other companies do things differently once in a while, try new things and Noctua is behaving like 90 year old grandpa in the market. And then they charge twice or thrice more for their expensive hunks and profit from clueless or unscrupulous. And despite stealing shit left and right, their fans are still too damn loud and their price/performance ratio is complete garbage. Also none of their fans, except AF12s are exceptional (else what they steal turned out to not be so good), rest of them are matched by generic 7/9 blader and their airflow fans managed to fare even worse. 




claes said:


> If you don’t respect science and innovation you’re just going to continue having pointless conversations that ignore science and history. All advancements are iterations of previous work. It’s not like Nidec invented fans, and if you call that stealing, well, you’re blind.


Noctua ripped off Gentle Typhoons though. Nidec with Scythe actually developed them. At least Scythe still makes Wonder Snails, which may be similar to GTs, but guess who gets all recognition about making one of the most iconic fans ever made? It's Noctua, who did next to nothing.


----------



## ZenZimZaliben (Sep 2, 2021)

Yes this can be done. So instead of having a reservoir, pump, radiator - you have the loop hook into your houses cold water system. You no longer need a pump, or radiator because all the heat gets flushed right out.


----------



## claes (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Rant full of ad homs, conjecture, lack of understanding of advancements in PWM, fan frames, blade tolerances, quality of materials, etc; everyone who cares about this garbage knows GTs were the king for years, even with their ticking



Noctua fans are loud... That’s a new take. Have you listened to a GT next to an A12? We must have very different ears. Good luck on your search for silence.


----------



## freeagent (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Noctua's biggest innovation is stealing from Scythe and Nidec


They stole the most from Thermalright IMO. No patents equals fair game.


----------



## cvaldes (Sep 2, 2021)

Gee, I must love loud fans too since I appreciate Noctuas. All those reviewers who claim Noctua fans are quite are wrong. They are noisy AF and I love it!

They are nearly unbearable at the low RPMs that I've set my fan curves to.


----------



## claes (Sep 2, 2021)

freeagent said:


> They stole the most from Thermalright IMO. No patents equals fair game.


I mean _everyone_ stole from thermalright. It’s too bad they aren’t more widely available in NA, definitely my favorite 140mm fans.


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

I think you want something like an IceGiant.



Andy Shiekh said:


> If the radiator is tall enough the liquid convective flow might be sufficient.


Not an issue. They solve it by connecting different gauge intake-exit hoses. Hot water carries enough low pressure to initiate flow.


----------



## maxfly (Sep 2, 2021)

Noctua fans are loud? Hrmmm
How did the thread go from passive watercooling to noctua bashing?
If were searching for a passive solution, fans are the first victims getting checked off the list


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> Not an issue. They solve it by connecting different gauge intake-exit hoses. Hot water carries enough low pressure to initiate flow.



How does area help?


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> How does area help?


Well those are solid pipes, but I think flexible hoses aren't all that different and can do it(although not having seen it in person, they might cave in). There were a couple of innovative coolers a few years back with this being the best candidate among the marketplace. They were a bit expensive. I think this is just $150, the others started from $250 without price matched performance.


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

Ummm... but how does "They solve it by connecting different gauge intake-exit hoses" work?


----------



## r9 (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit is here to uncover the conspiracy about the water coolers where unsuspecting pc enthusiasts pay a lot of money for pumps and fans in their water loops where their systems can work fine without them. When the president was asked to comment he refused to answer adding more fuel to the fire! Stay tuned ...


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Ummm... but how does "They solve it by connecting different gauge intake-exit hoses" work?


PS: something like Captherm MP1120 & MP1240, Akasa 925 all work with that pressure difference principle in intake-exit hoses. I'm not a science buff.
They used to make the coldplate out of explosive welded copper since any other material wouldn't have enough contact conduction with the phase change material.


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> PS: something like Captherm MP1240, Akasa 925 all work with that pressure difference principle in intake-exit hoses. I'm not a science buff.



Makes sense, but I don't understand the role area/gauge plays.


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Makes sense, but area/gauge does not play a role.


I'll quote a citation if I can find it. There is a principle behind it that I don't recall, but it is due to a pressure gradient forming in the siphon - maybe that is why they call them 'thermosyphons'?


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Irony or not, but other companies do things differently once in a while, try new things and Noctua is behaving like 90 year old grandpa in the market. And then they charge twice or thrice more for their expensive hunks and profit from clueless or unscrupulous. And despite stealing shit left and right, their fans are still too damn loud and their price/performance ratio is complete garbage. Also none of their fans, except AF12s are exceptional (else what they steal turned out to not be so good), rest of them are matched by generic 7/9 blader and their airflow fans managed to fare even worse.
> 
> 
> 
> Noctua ripped off Gentle Typhoons though. Nidec with Scythe actually developed them. At least Scythe still makes Wonder Snails, which may be similar to GTs, but guess who gets all recognition about making one of the most iconic fans ever made? It's Noctua, who did next to nothing.


Do you ever stay on topic.

I have never seen such a tangetialist  

It's your thread your derailing here ,crap though it is.

Why not crack on and back your theory mongering up with some actual action for a change, do you believe the folks here arguing haven't tried ,Air, water water and air ,I did tap water. Years ago and believe most have excessively messed with pump and fan profiles to the stars and back, we are not guessing.

It's doable but not reasonable to do for 98% of the 2% niche of enthusiasts.

Tip, pros would try and get one to two phase changes involved Before the heat hit's the water even.


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> I'll quote a citation if I can find it. There is a principle behind it that I don't recall, but it is due to a pressure gradient forming in the siphon - maybe that is why they call them 'thermosyphons'?



OK, I agree, it's the buoyancy of the hot water, like a hot air ballon; its the 'different gauge' part that confused me.


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> OK, I agree, it's the buoyancy of the hot water, like a hot air ballon; its the 'different gauge' part that confused me.


Okay, so I got a quote on multiphase cooling performance;


> It's shows the MP-1120 running 4c cooler than H80.


Considering a single fan multiphase cooler can perform to the current AIO standards, there is one key point that it delivers: like air coolers it is free from temperature spoiling(afaik? Do novec fluids spoil with temperature?). In summary it maintains AIO performance with the reliability of air coolers.


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

My bad; I didn't realize this was multi-phase...


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

claes said:


> Noctua fans are loud... That’s a new take. Have you listened to a GT next to an A12? We must have very different ears. Good luck on your search for silence.


I don't have Noctua fans, but they just don't make any truly quiet versions of their stuff. Sure they may have 800 rpm version of some fan, but they are never available to buy and 800 rpm is fixed, they don't go lower than that. And I'm not looking for silence. I already have silence in my machine, but I wonder how far can passive cooling go of some sort, that isn't hunk of metal with heatpipes.


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> My bad; I didn't realize this was multi-phase...


No problem, it was really expensive stuff until IceGiant commercialized the technology.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

freeagent said:


> They stole the most from Thermalright IMO. No patents equals fair game.


Perhaps they did steal from them too, I'm not familiar with Thermalright, I'm only aware that they have been for ages in this business and have made some  really great coolers.



r9 said:


> The red spirit is here to uncover the conspiracy about the water coolers where unsuspecting pc enthusiasts pay a lot of money for pumps and fans in their water loops where their systems can work fine without them. When the president was asked to comment he refused to answer adding more fuel to the fire! Stay tuned ...


Really? This comment is so wrong many levels, but I will tell you again. It's about complete silence, 0dB, not maximum performance.


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

claes said:


> Noctua fans are loud... That’s a new take. Have you listened to a GT next to an A12?


If you could stop making bait commentary, I advise you check up on ball bearing versus FDB difference. I am not very knowledgeable, but I wouldn't doubt Arctic referring to ball bearing hubs as the higher reliability version just as a marketing spin - Arctic is a 3rd party fan manufacturer that is too big to resort to cheap tricks like that, _just like Nidec._


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> Do you ever stay on topic.
> 
> I have never seen such a tangetialist
> 
> It's your thread your derailing here ,crap though it is.


I don't see a problem with that. 




TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> Why not crack on and back your theory mongering up with some actual action for a change, do you believe the folks here arguing haven't tried ,Air, water water and air ,I did tap water. Years ago and believe most have excessively messed with pump and fan profiles to the stars and back, we are not guessing.
> 
> It's doable but not reasonable to do for 98% of the 2% niche of enthusiasts.
> 
> Tip, pros would try and get one to two phase changes involved Before the heat hit's the water even.


How many watts of heat can pumpless and fanless loop dissipate?


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I don't see a problem with that.
> 
> 
> 
> How many watts of heat can pumpless and fanless loop dissipate?


How longs a piece of string, without more definition to your question who the f#@£ knows.
Plus I'm not here to prove you right or wrong, just to express my opinion on the matter.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> If you could stop making bait commentary, I advise you check up on ball bearing versus FDB difference. I am not very knowledgeable, but I wouldn't doubt Arctic referring to ball bearing hubs as the higher reliability version just as a marketing spin - Arctic is a 3rd party fan manufacturer that is too big to resort to cheap tricks like that, _just like Nidec._


Ball bearings in theory and in practice should work longer, but if you look at fan OEMs that actually make fans, they only specify MTTF of 50k hours instead of some crazy figures of 200k hours. They last longer, but even sleeve fans can last a very long time. I still have over decade old sleeve fans and they still work just fine and they likely survived a lot more than rated 30k hours.


----------



## DeathtoGnomes (Sep 2, 2021)

I'll just drop this here, it still needs a pump






						Nuclear Tower Water Cooling - Overclockers
					

ED NOTE: This article is 5 pages long. Those of you running peltier cooled T-Bird rigs are probably aware that you are pushing the limits of standard water cooling methods. Many vendors claim their coolers are capable of “handling” several




					www.overclockers.com


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> I'll just drop this here, it still needs a pump
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Obviously they don't make it out of multiphase heat carrier materials... they don't work at 60°C, too. Suppose the water instantly vapourised in a nuclear plant, that wouldn't be too good.


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> I advise you check up on ball bearing versus FDB difference.



Hard drives went from ball bearing to FDB, I think that says a lot; it wasn't all about longevity, but also vibration damping.


----------



## freeagent (Sep 2, 2021)

Just throwing this out there but my Noctua fans are the loudest I have ever owned lol.. they even top my mighty TY-143 lol..

iPPC 3K..


----------



## MentalAcetylide (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Can you even answer a simple question? No need to be tsundere all the time.


I did by mentioning flammability for one and advising you to stay away from chemicals if you don't know about the importance of considering the physical & chemical properties of a substance before trying to use it in a given environment. Otherwise there's a possibility that you'll end up destroying components, causing an explosion, and/or poisoning yourself.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

MentalAcetylide said:


> I did by mentioning flammability for one and advising you to stay away from chemicals if you don't know about the importance of considering the physical & chemical properties of a substance before trying to use it in a given environment. Otherwise there's a possibility that you'll end up destroying components, causing an explosion, and/or poisoning yourself.


This thread isn't about actually building things, it's just about figuring out if it is possible. I won't switch from air cooling, I'm just curious if completely silent passive cooling could be achieved with what resembles water cooler.


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

Yes, so long and the radiator is tall enough; no pump needed.

I apologize for the repetition

I feel a pump is not needed (buoyancy can do the job)
Someone says a pump is needed
so I feel the need to repeat.

The alternative is to have a thick aluminum case and run heat-pipes to it; I have seen this done, but that is not water cooling.


----------



## freeagent (Sep 2, 2021)

Some people laughed at my bong comment, but even with that you still need a pump and a fan I think.


----------



## claes (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I don't have Noctua fans, but they just don't make any truly quiet versions of their stuff. Sure they may have 800 rpm version of some fan, but they are never available to buy and 800 rpm is fixed, they don't go lower than that. And I'm not looking for silence. I already have silence in my machine, but I wonder how far can passive cooling go of some sort, that isn't hunk of metal with heatpipes.


What are you talking about? Every noctua fan (except redux IIRC) comes with resistors to lower the speed... They also make like three low speed versions of the A12.


mtcn77 said:


> If you could stop making bait commentary, I advise you check up on ball bearing versus FDB difference. I am not very knowledgeable, but I wouldn't doubt Arctic referring to ball bearing hubs as the higher reliability version just as a marketing spin - Arctic is a 3rd party fan manufacturer that is too big to resort to cheap tricks like that, _just like Nidec._


Huh? Noctua is not Arctic. Noctua uses a custom hydrodynamic bearing.


freeagent said:


> Just throwing this out there but my Noctua fans are the loudest I have ever owned lol.. they even top my mighty TY-143 lol..
> 
> iPPC 3K..


Get the feeling y’all are just trolling me.


----------



## freeagent (Sep 2, 2021)

Just for fun it’s all good buddy I don’t mean anything by it at all. I am just an idiot.


----------



## maxfly (Sep 2, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Yes, so long and the radiator is tall enough; no pump needed.



The only way convection alone would work is if you designed a water block that allowed the water to basically boil off of the die instantly and rise into the rad(with separate chambers for the hot and cold sides). No block that's ever been made for a closed system would work. They all rely on water movement.

Edit- somewhere there's a video of a 9900k or some other high core, high wattage cpu running submerged in a fluid(no heatsink or block). It may be the fluid that thesmokingman was referencing earlier in the thread. Its a great example of how fast an idling, stock cpu will boil water even when fully submerged. If i can find it ill post it.


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

Hot water will do the job (no vaporization needed).

Old cars worked this way and as I recall so did old heating systems.

Old houses, old heating systems (heatinghelp.com)
"The original coal boiler gravity system heated slowly through natural convection, as there was no pump on the system."


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

maxfly said:


> The only way convection alone would work is if you designed a water block that allowed the water to basically boil off of the die instantly and rise into the rad(with separate chambers for the hot and cold sides)


Wouldn't it just work in LN2 pot? Why cool it if it just goes away?


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

claes said:


> Huh? Noctua is not Arctic. Noctua uses a custom hydrodynamic bearing.


FDB is hydrodynamic bearing fyi.



maxfly said:


> The only way convection alone would work is if you designed a water block that allowed the water to basically boil off of the die instantly and rise into the rad(with separate chambers for the hot and cold sides). No block that's ever been made for a closed system would work. They all rely on water movement.


That is actually how heatpipes work, although I don't recall any heatpipe with an insulation jacket in between the ports.


----------



## maxfly (Sep 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Wouldn't it just work in LN2 pot? Why cool it if it just goes away?



That could work but you would run into the same problem. Replacing or cooling the heated water back down.


----------



## bogmali (Sep 2, 2021)

Let's stick to the topic and less on the personal attack and off-topic rant, can we? Also, don't report something and then turn around counter it with your own reportable comment  It's counter-productive and will only get you points for abusing the report system-that applies to everyone!


----------



## thesmokingman (Sep 2, 2021)

maxfly said:


> That could work but you would run into the same problem. Replacing or cooling the heated water back down.


It won't work.


----------



## maxfly (Sep 2, 2021)

thesmokingman said:


> It won't work.



You think it would just overwhelm the small amount of water?


----------



## mtcn77 (Sep 2, 2021)

Lucky me, reporting is only for normies and not trolling chiefs, such as myself...


----------



## thesmokingman (Sep 2, 2021)

maxfly said:


> You think it would just overwhelm the small amount of water?


You'd have to build something with insane pressure to get it to a liquid state again which cancels out the temp gain. As I wrote previously some grad students used 3M Novec to do just that but it was limited in how much it could cool not to mention that Novec is like 500 bucks a gallon.


----------



## maxfly (Sep 2, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> FDB is hydrodynamic bearing fyi.
> 
> 
> That is actually how heatpipes work, although I don't recall any heatpipe with an insulation jacket in between the ports.



Yes of course.
Im not talking about heatpipes.
Im talking about someone creating a water block that would/could/maybe cool the die while allowing convection to occur simultaneously. Silently...
Im picturing a flat block with a simple but large outlet on top and bottom for cold inlet.
Edit- my first iteration wasn't worded completely.



thesmokingman said:


> You'd have to build something with insane pressure to get it to a liquid state again which cancels out the temp gain. As I wrote previously some grad students used 3M Novec to do just that but it was limited in how much it could cool not to mention that Novec is like 500 bucks a gallon.



I gotcha. 
No i was thinking he meant using the pot by itself and dumping some ice and water in it.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

That's it, I found it! Somebody has done what I asked about, but the person i question, pretty much built a thermosiphon:





						Silent Convective Water Cooled PC - Pumpless and Fanless
					

Passive Convection Water Cooled PC - Project Overview




					www.vonslatt.com
				




It's quite cheap to make and cools well too. So doing something like that is actually doable, but it requires different preparation than from building a loop


----------



## maxfly (Sep 2, 2021)

Not the video i was looking for but it gives an idea of what kind of block would have to be made and the volume it would need to support in order to cool a modern cpu.











The red spirit said:


> That's it, I found it! Somebody has done what I asked about, but the person i question, pretty much built a thermosiphon:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Its a single core athlon +2400...
Edit- i remember seeing this. If memory serves. His gear was pretty old when he made this how to. Now if you could somehow multiply the cooling factor 100x youd be in business!


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 2, 2021)

maxfly said:


> Its a single core athlon +2400...
> Edit- i remember seeing this. If memory serves. His gear was pretty old when he made this how to. Now if you could somehow multiply the cooling factor 100x youd be in business!


It still has TDP of 62 watts, that nearly the same as my current i5 10400F. Chances are that something like locked i5 would survive with such cooling. Perhaps without turbo boost, but itself cooler works quite well.


----------



## freeagent (Sep 2, 2021)

PL2 on your CPU is over 130w..


----------



## robal (Sep 2, 2021)

Interesting idea.
Water will happily flow through the loop using convection only (common in coal fired boiler in house central heating), but that requires massive differences in temperature to work.
It's unfit for CPU/GPU cooling because delta T is much lower. Waterblock is only ~30 deg C above room temperature and needs water to be almost room temperature to be able to take the heat away.
At this delta T, the water will barely move, and won't take heat away from the waterblock.

What does work at small delta T are heatpipes. These could carry the heat away from the hot component into something larger (that could passively dissipate that heat).


----------



## Shrek (Sep 2, 2021)

Good point, but if the up pipe were broad, it might make for sufficient flow; with cooling happening on the down flow.

But I agree, heat-pipes are the way to go.


----------



## erocker (Sep 2, 2021)

A D5 pump on a low setting should be silent.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 2, 2021)

I quite like a bit of noise, evens out the one ear tinitus.
But my pc is pretty inaudible while doing most things though not loaded up it's still fairly quiet though.
My laptop's noisier.

In my thoughts about making this practical included encasing a 8 pipe tower cooler with a box., Sealed tank with return big diameter pipe to the bottom and similar at the top , piped to a 360 rad external mounted.
Back a. Ways, I had a mild go but that case isn't as easy to form by hand with no tools as I thought, I have given up on it in truth, like tecs.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 3, 2021)

freeagent said:


> PL2 on your CPU is over 130w..


It is freely adjustable in BIOS. Even with 65 watt PL2, i5 boosts to 3.3-3.4Ghz.


----------



## Deleted member 24505 (Sep 3, 2021)

erocker said:


> A D5 pump on a low setting should be silent.



Mines mid 3-4 sat on 4 lumps of blu-tak, and is indeed silent


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## Ferd (Sep 3, 2021)

If the goal is silence it can be achieved via air convection, basically you have big volume of air surrounding you, so no need for big water reservoirs, yes water dissipates heats better , but again if air does the job there is no need to bother with something harder to implement, weight of the system including the water reservoir is going to be problematic, on the other hand you can use a big aluminum heatsink and it will be much lighter than the water solution, it has been done before, I’ve seen it on LTT and diy builds elsewhere, it works ,it’s proven,it’s silent, it’s lighter and less hazardous, 
Talking water only is hard to implement without pressure and proper water flow orientation, which  is exactly  what pumps do , pump use energy to do work which results in water flowing , by taking out the pump and it’s energy (electric energy ) you need to replace both so the system operates as before,  energy is already there you can use the heat from the cpu , but what about the mechanical force required to move the water ? You can use that heat to a force using natural convection right? Problem is you want cpu below 100 C ! And water only starts boiling at 100 C so you need to pressurize that water in a container that’s contacting the cpu , well that’s exactly what heatpipes do so you’re back to square 1 ..


----------



## Shrek (Sep 3, 2021)

Ferd said:


> If the goal is silence it can be achieved via air convection, basically you have big volume of air surrounding you



I like air cooling, but I think it takes more than this, one needs to get the heat into that big volume; one way is a chimney over the heatsink to get cooling by convection (again assuming to fan).


----------



## Ferd (Sep 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> I like air cooling, but I think it takes more than this, one needs to get the heat into that big volume; one way is a chimney over the heatsink to get cooling by convection (again assuming to fan)


Definitely takes a lot more. The calculations that go into designing a fanless thermal management solution isn’t complicated, but it is very case specific, altitude and ambient temps play big role , but there already commercial computers totally fan-less and pump-less with decent powerful hardware , the problem is they’re so chunky and expensive you need a lot of material and machinery too , so yeah it’s doable without fans ( for aircooling) , not so much for water(not without pumps)


----------



## DeathtoGnomes (Sep 3, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> Obviously they don't make it out of multiphase heat carrier materials... they don't work at 60°C, too. Suppose the water instantly vapourised in a nuclear plant, that wouldn't be too good.


the post is dated for 2001, long before any real water cooling was a thing.. 

multiphasic heat carrier materials... BWAHAHA!


----------



## Shrek (Sep 3, 2021)

An old idea is an electrostatic pump, should be silent and have no moving parts, but if this was practical it would have already been implemented. One problem would be dust collection; but one could counter this by having a closed case with fins on it and then circulate air internally with the electrostatic pump.

But this thread is specific to water cooling, so I could be accused of being off topic.

Then again... a crazy idea... electrolysis... make hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis which would rise rapidly and so drive flow, and then one would need a means to safely recombine the gasses at the top; I believe one can buy battery tops that contain a catalyst to accelerate recombination.
Battery Recombination Caps - Doyle Shamrock Industries

which puts me back on topic.


----------



## Dredi (Sep 3, 2021)

robal said:


> What does work at small delta T are heatpipes. These could carry the heat away from the hot component into something larger (that could passively dissipate that heat).


Heatpipes are exactly what OP wants, closed loop water convection devices (although enhanced with phase change).

One could even build a loop (and weld it shut) and just pull enough vacuum to make the water boil inside the cpu block in order to make it carry enough heat away without forced convection.


----------



## DeathtoGnomes (Sep 4, 2021)

Dredi said:


> Heatpipes are exactly what OP wants, closed loop water convection devices (although enhanced with phase change).
> 
> One could even build a loop (and weld it shut) and just pull enough vacuum to make the water boil inside the cpu block in order to make it carry enough heat away without forced convection.


cars/trucks dont weld shut their A/C, some part use double o-rings.  These vacuum down to roughly 29  inches


----------



## dont whant to set it"' (Sep 11, 2021)

It is ready for a test , only thing left is to find a platform and an appropriate backplate,need be I search for one because dr(half a double "W")nk I am getting in such.

The bullet point's:
1. The radiator is of a cross flow design type as in the input and output ports are not on the same side of it, fluid enters trough one side to pass through if conditions be met only to exist the port on the other side and it is my only radiator.
2. The water block is not of a non reputable brand because I will not pay premium for some maybe acceptable build quality so that I discover horrendous design flaws.
3. It took me about 1 hour to undo the previous loop configuration to complete this one.
4. The attached picture does show it with respect to the planet's gravitational field/well.

Doable I know it is, but up to what TDP a rig can be pushed?


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 11, 2021)

dont whant to set it"' said:


> Doable I know it is, but up to what TDP a rig can be pushed?


No idea, but I would start with 65 watts.


----------



## dont whant to set it"' (Sep 11, 2021)

I'll start it as low as settings allow it to post and complete or sustainably run a program at full core thread count load. 775 or am2+ ?
Le: I've got dual core LGA's and dual/quad core 939/am2/+ on hand.


----------



## The red spirit (Sep 11, 2021)

dont whant to set it"' said:


> I'll start it as low as settings allow it to post and complete or sustainably run a program at full core thread count load. 775 or am2+ ?
> Le: I've got dual core LGA's and dual/quad core 939/am2/+ on hand.


You could start with dual core AM2+ chip. It's probably going to consume more than 65 watts, so be warned.


----------



## dont whant to set it"' (Sep 12, 2021)

This should of been yesterdays progress , but I got "hammered X smashed". The bios was reporting CPU temperatures in the mid 70 C before adjusting the multipliers to 5 across the board CPU , NB, HT; cant adjust voltage down.

Had to first try it on my Ryzen since I planned a tim change in the coming days, then busy was I drinking and playing video games, thus getting ready for a hangovered Sunday and I can't find a usb WiFi adapter to finish setup.

As per the clamp meter it rarely pulled over 3 Amps installing w10 with 3.37 amps peak that I've noticed , mostly in the range of 2.5 A, so ... .

Am2+ , Quad-Core Phenom (1)


----------



## Ellertis (Oct 1, 2021)




----------



## Space Lynx (Oct 1, 2021)

plot twist, Bioshock 3 the game has been announced.  gaming rooms you rent in the ocean, a submersible takes you down to your designed room, due to climate change the surface is too hot to game anymore... don't worry games!  the ocean depths will passively cool your heatsinks and the water tight seal from the copper pipes to the socket of your water tight little gaming dome!

welcome to the future!  the ultimate heatsink is the ocean!!!  victory! with some hot pockets and microwave, and a way to flush your waste into the ocean depths, you will never need to leave your little dome!


----------



## Lei (Oct 11, 2021)

Fanless is possible

I was using 5 gallons of water and had no fans not even a rad.
I could cool my cpu and gpu that were 105+150 watts. However the coolant would reach 50 degrees after 5 hours of gaming. 
I think most days you won't be using your pc that much. And it can endure longer in winter.

Pumpless? now I should read this topic! 



The red spirit said:


> I wonder if it's possible to build fanless and pumpless water cooling. Let's say the lack of flow is compensated with big reservoir (10-20 liter) and lots of radiator area. Could it possibly work?


----------



## onetimeuserprobably (Oct 28, 2021)

@The red spirit
Here's an example. I think key point with this project is that the tank is 2,5m above the cpu+gpu and overall there's a lot of water. Description says "In addition, a small 220V pump is connected to the system, which can be used in the event of a very heavy load on the processor and the graphics card built into it". At 8:46 the author turns of the pump by command and shows how the temperature is rising and then falling. He explains that with pump the water flows in opposite direction vs when only on gravity and it adds part of time needed for temperature tu drop (30c at 11:53). To give more information .. He says he uses the setup for long and has to make new wooden mount (pressing water block to cpu) each time he changes cpu. Says his readings are inaccurate for about 20 degreees. At 3:40 he turns the pump on and sensor shows 18C (meaning real is about 38). 30C without pump means c.50. This is with 2/4 cores at around 100%. Says he's running some monero-minning process for few days and calls the efficiency of cooling "a bit lower" because the water got warmer due to that process. "Would be more efficient if the tank was outside the house" (says 5C outhere at the moment). It was in 2017.


----------



## kapone32 (Oct 29, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Complete silence. And water should move by convection, so it's not static.


Get a quality pump with PWM control from Alphacool or EKWB. You won't hear it over your case fans. Here is an example of what I am talking about. Too bad it has gone up in price by $60 vs when I bought it.



			Amazon.ca


----------



## The red spirit (Oct 29, 2021)

kapone32 said:


> Get a quality pump with PWM control from Alphacool or EKWB. You won't hear it over your case fans. Here is an example of what I am talking about. Too bad it has gone up in price by $60 vs when I bought it.
> 
> 
> 
> Amazon.ca


This thread is strictly about pumpless and fanless water cooling, I don't need any other advice.


----------



## Shrek (Oct 29, 2021)

The boiling idea is not so bad but perhaps with a non flammable fluid that has a lower boiling point than water. One might also be able to play some tricks with reducing the pressure in the system to vary the boiling point.

Then again a boiling kettle can be quite noisy, so one might want to add a 'pollutant' to have nucleation points around.

But now we are no longer water; convection seems the way to go.


----------



## tekjunkie28 (Oct 29, 2021)

I have skimmed over this thread but I will put in my 2 cents..  OP why are you so pressed on silence? I have built hundreds of computers and used the cheapest fans and no one has ever said anything about noise. Though they did make noise no one ever asked if it could be more less noisy. I need to know more about what your wanting to do so I can help if I can. 

I have a vast background in air flow and thermodynamics but in computer cases not so much. The same air flow and physics still apply though. You can have fans and they will can still be silent. My pc now is a older HAF X case with the original fans from ~2012.  I just recently decided to make it silent by using Asus Q Fan and it worked extremely well but my temps are now slightly higher.  I cant even hear my PC anymore unless it gets to 60C and then it only audible for a few seconds. 

You can do a silent pc but there are laws of dissipation and convection that can not be broken. If you need to removes X amount of heat then you need X surface area. Heat moves to cold. That is why we use fans on heat sinks to remove the heat built up around the fins which improves efficiency. The same goes for water or any other liquid. A pump would be needed if you were to keep a regular PC case. You could use a passive heat sink but HEAT SOAK is still the issue here. If you could make a heat sink out of silver with proper design then it may work. This also would be dependent on heat load of course. An open air case would have to be a must.  

Another factor would be room air flow if using a open air case. I have never ran across a single building that has had proper air mixing within rooms that have not had a Manual J load calculation done along with a manual S and D and even a T.  The Manual J, S, D, and T are calculation used by the HVAC/Energy auditors industry (mind you probably not use properly but this is a whole other topic) to calculate what a home needs as related to Heating and cooling. The goal of this is to provide the occupant with a healthy and comfortable space with low to zero air flow noise. This is a little off topic but knowing this could help you in determining how to achieve a silent pc.. 

You could scrap the whole case an get a fish tank and vegetable oil. Then get some custom heat sinks and submerge the PC in oil. I believe toms hardware did a article about then 16-17 years ago or so. No matter what you are not going to be able to achieve this with a conventional PC component unless you lower the fan speed but a fan or some sort of air movement will ne necessary. This is of course if your cooling you average processor. IF you are cooling an i3 or something then you could go fanless.


----------



## AVATARAT (Nov 1, 2021)

My 2 cent.
You can go fanless CPU/GPU cooling, but the Case cannot. Because there are components that need a little fresh air, but one fan must be enough.
Just one or if the loop is too big, two pumps and enough copper pipe under floor can cool a lot just passive.


----------



## Lei (Nov 1, 2021)

Pump must be inside reservoir, to muffle the noise and chance of going dry goes nil.



AVATARAT said:


> My 2 cent.
> You can go fanless CPU/GPU cooling, but the Case cannot. Because there are components that need a little fresh air, but one fan must be enough.
> Just one or if the loop is too big, two pumps and enough copper pipe under floor can cool a lot just passive.


For the Chassis, just leave it open to get fresh air.


----------



## FreedomEclipse (Nov 1, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Water isn't the only abundant liquid. Why not use alcohol, which evaporates easier? Wouldn't it make heatpipes perform better or better yet, why not use low viscosity oil in liquid coolers?



Alcohol would eat away at the rubber tubing and seals contained in water blocks. Also oil doesnt get rid of heat as quickly/easily as water. It retains the heat, hence why such things as 'oil/immersion heaters' exist. water is the best at carrying the heat away and dissipating it under the correct conditions.

Alcohol also wouldnt work as well because it would evaporate and you'd constantly be spending money to refill the loop while also replacing rubber seals and tubing. Even water can evaporate in a properly set  up loop. Liquid can also evap out of a closed loop AIO

Mineral oil is also a laxative so you dont want to be eating or drinking any of it and this is another risk that puts water at the top.

Mineral oil is also a bitch to clean if you spill it everywhere. It might even cause discoloration on the furniture and clothing that it touches - If you spill some water, Just get a cloth and wipe it up. Simple.




The red spirit said:


> You can also do oil submersion computer, but it's very impractical and does degrade some components. I just wonder if noiseless liquid cooling could be done.



It degrades only if you used Mineral oil that contained sulphur. That sulphur causes corrosion. Good mineral oil from reputable brands shouldnt cause corrosion as it should have been refined and processed correctly.

Mineral oil is refined from crude oil - thats where the sulphur comes from.



The red spirit said:


> That's it, I found it! Somebody has done what I asked about, but the person i question, pretty much built a thermosiphon:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It wasnt fanless - He still had a fan in it to cool the block and N/SB chipsets. Although he claimed it made zero difference to CPU temperatures. Cooling that CPU at that time might of been easy due to the process node and he only tested for 30mins which isnt long enough for a good bead on how well the setup performs.

Water needs time to warm up and reach an '_equilibrium_'. 30mins isnt enough. Had he tested it for a few hours then im willing to bet the results would have been different because thats just how water works. Water needs time to normalise.

water from the tap is always cold unless its been put through some heating process like a boiler. The same way that fluids in a car dont jump straight to operating temperature straight away the moment you turn the ignition. It slowly rises to operating temperature where it normalises.



The red spirit said:


> It still has TDP of 62 watts, that nearly the same as my current i5 10400F. Chances are that something like locked i5 would survive with such cooling. Perhaps without turbo boost, but itself cooler works quite well.



Its all to do with the amount of transistors a CPU has. The Athlon XP 3200+ used in the system has 63million transistors. Intel has stopped disclosing transistor count since Broadwell because they think it gives them the edge over AMD and obviously would like to keep that kind of information a secret.

A 4790k has 1.4billion transistors, I cant even begin to estimate how many a i9 9900k or a 11900K has though some websites would put the 11900k at 6 billion.

So many resistors constantly switching on and off creates a hell of a lot of heat. You could probably get around this by using a bigger radiator then the guy used but you wouldnt get away with cooling your 10400F with the same setup. the surface area of that radiator just isnt enough.

Part of the reason why his setup would have worked (if it did) was because he used a small automotive radiator usually used to cool transmission or engine oil so it doesnt have the same restrictive flow of a normal cooling radiator - be it for PC or the automotive industry.

(and to bypass flow restrictions - they have a pump)


----------



## The red spirit (Nov 2, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> It degrades only if you used Mineral oil that contained sulphur. That sulphur causes corrosion. Good mineral oil from reputable brands shouldnt cause corrosion as it should have been refined and processed correctly.
> 
> Mineral oil is refined from crude oil - thats where the sulphur comes from.


Luke from LTT had mineral oil computer. The problem wasn't corrosion of metals, but that some plastics melted or became brittle.




FreedomEclipse said:


> Water needs time to warm up and reach an '_equilibrium_'. 30mins isnt enough. Had he tested it for a few hours then im willing to bet the results would have been different because thats just how water works. Water needs time to normalise.
> 
> water from the tap is always cold unless its been put through some heating process like a boiler. The same way that fluids in a car dont jump straight to operating temperature straight away the moment you turn the ignition. It slowly rises to operating temperature where it normalises.


30 minutes might just be enough for that.





FreedomEclipse said:


> Its all to do with the amount of transistors a CPU has. The Athlon XP 3200+ used in the system has 63million transistors. Intel has stopped disclosing transistor count since Broadwell because they think it gives them the edge over AMD and obviously would like to keep that kind of information a secret.
> 
> A 4790k has 1.4billion transistors, I cant even begin to estimate how many a i9 9900k or a 11900K has though some websites would put the 11900k at 6 billion.
> 
> So many resistors constantly switching on and off creates a hell of a lot of heat. You could probably get around this by using a bigger radiator then the guy used but you wouldnt get away with cooling your 10400F with the same setup. the surface area of that radiator just isnt enough.


It's not transistors, but their density and layout. Ryzen has chaplets and it's notoriously hard to properly distribute pressure of IHS with them and thus lots of heat is stuck on chips, instead of being transferred to cooler. And if you want a very easy to cool CPU, architecture matters a lot. Bulldozer architecture was great to cool, because it divided pipeline in more quicker steps and thus heat was spread in whole chip better. It also helped to make it more temperature resistant design, which didn't experience as many cold bugs or high temperature failures as previous Phenom. It was overall, tremendously mature design for overclocking. Meanwhile Ryzen isn't, Intel is just average right now, not great, but miles ahead of Ryzen in terms of heat transfer efficiency. 




FreedomEclipse said:


> Part of the reason why his setup would have worked (if it did) was because he used a small automotive radiator usually used to cool transmission or engine oil so it doesnt have the same restrictive flow of a normal cooling radiator - be it for PC or the automotive industry.


And? That's just some great thinking and picking right parts for job. I never claimed that pumpless and fanless water cooling was expected to happen with typical AIO or CLC parts. Anything goes as long as it's water or just liquid in general.


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## Mussels (Nov 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I wonder if it's possible to build fanless and pumpless water cooling. Let's say the lack of flow is compensated with big reservoir (10-20 liter) and lots of radiator area. Could it possibly work?
> 
> 
> @FireFox


Congrats, you invented the heatpipe!

Convection etc cant work in a water loop, you need air and space for it to move away, condense and come back


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## The red spirit (Nov 2, 2021)

Mussels said:


> Congrats, you invented the heatpipe!
> 
> Convection etc cant work in a water loop, you need air and space for it to move away, condense and come back


Heatpipe transfers heat, but doesn't cool by itself (perhaps it does a bit, but it's not meant to do that, so it's likely very ineffective at that.


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## AVATARAT (Nov 2, 2021)

Lei said:


> Pump must be inside reservoir, to muffle the noise and chance of going dry goes nil.
> 
> 
> For the Chassis, just leave it open to get fresh air.


Yes, pump inside reservoir is noiseless. I tried both variants 

 If the system is overclocked will be hard, especially for the RAM.


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## joemama (Nov 2, 2021)

Then probably the 3m immersion cooling with copper fins added on outside of the case to dissipate heat


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## AVATARAT (Nov 2, 2021)

You can water-cool RAM and Chipset and PSU but that is pointless. One fan on lower rpm is near to noiseless.


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## Dredi (Nov 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Heatpipe transfers heat, but doesn't cool by itself


What does cool by itself?


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## Shrek (Nov 2, 2021)

A Peltier cell (thermoelectric effect), and it is also silent; but is not very efficient.


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## Lei (Nov 2, 2021)

Watercool PSU, no thank you.



AVATARAT said:


> You can water-cool RAM and Chipset and PSU but that is pointless. One fan on lower rpm is near to noiseless.





Andy Shiekh said:


> A Peltier cell (thermoelectric effect), and it is also silent; but is not very efficient.


Please, we're all trying to (just giving press conference about) stop global warming.


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## AVATARAT (Nov 2, 2021)

My previous CPU was FX-8370E@4.8GHz and I passively cool it with 2x4.5m 6mm copper pipe in cement, so 350W+ under prime95.
Now I use the same floor cooling for my 5600x and the water in the loop is a 2-3C degree over ambient under prime95 ~130W.
I have and Peltier in the loop just for benchmarks, but it is not very effective, just 1-2C under ambient.


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## Lei (Nov 4, 2021)

You mean the piping is 2 meters? with 4.5 inner diameter and 0.75 thickness? 
What volume is your coolant in liters?



AVATARAT said:


> My previous CPU was FX-8370E@4.8GHz and I passively cool it with 2x4.5m 6mm copper pipe in cement, so 350W+ under prime95.
> Now I use the same floor cooling for my 5600x and the water in the loop is a 2-3C degree over ambient under prime95 ~130W.
> I have and Peltier in the loop just for benchmarks, but it is not very effective, just 1-2C under ambient.
> 
> View attachment 223419View attachment 223420View attachment 223423


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## AVATARAT (Nov 4, 2021)

Two pipes 4.5 meter each, 6 milimeter diameter.


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## looniam (Nov 4, 2021)

AVATARAT said:


> My previous CPU was FX-8370E@4.8GHz and I passively cool it with 2x4.5m 6mm copper pipe in cement, so 350W+ under prime95.
> Now I use the same floor cooling for my 5600x and the water in the loop is a 2-3C degree over ambient under prime95 ~130W.
> I have and Peltier in the loop just for benchmarks, but it is not very effective, just 1-2C under ambient.


your post reminded me of a case few years ago(?) that had the cpu/gpu heatsinks integrated to the case. i think paul (paul hardware) did a test and the temps weren't great but "usable" esp only a few gpus would work since you took off the stock cooler.

btw, nice job!! i love that type of ghetto rigging.


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## Lei (Nov 4, 2021)

@AVATARAT
Once upon a time, I was using this much copper:







AVATARAT said:


> Two pipes 4.5 meter each, 6 milimeter diameter.
> 
> View attachment 223710


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