New Case and Water Cooling Required. I think.

[Bill Anderson]

Back in September I invested in a new build with an Asus P9X79 and an
Intel i7 Sandy Bridge. My only real problem was that I needed to install
everything in a horizontal case, which meant low clearance for the
processor cooling fan. With Paul's help, I settled on this little thing:

http://snipurl.com/26tjtmh

The new system works almost kinda great running Win7 and I'm pleased,
except...

I have everything set up in a nice, attractive Ethan Allen computer
cabinet which I bought years ago when horizontal desktop computer cases
were practically the norm. (Actually they weren't quite the norm any
longer, and that's how I got the thing on sale.) The cabinet even has a
handy sliding shelf for the computer so I can pull it out when I need to
work on it, and push it back inside the cabinet when I'm done.

All has gone well over the years, but now, when I render video files
with my new build, my processor temps shoot up so alarmingly that I have
to slide the computer out and remove the top of the case in order to get
sufficient airflow to keep the temps around 60-65 degrees C. The other
night when I was rendering some video I'd captured with my Hauppauge
Colossus card -- planning to make my own BluRays of Game of Thrones -- I
forgot about the temperature problem and left the lid on. It wasn't
long before my system popped up a warning that my processor had reached
80 degrees C. Yikes! (As I sit here typing this with nothing going on
in the background, Aida64 reports the current processor temp is 37
degrees C with the case lid off. Want to see what I've been talking about?

http://paintrock.net/1903/computer4.jpg

But I can't really function with the thing stuck out like that all the
time, so I think it's time to reconsider my configuration and see if a
vertical computer case will help me. I can remove that sliding shelf,
which will give me just over 19 inches of vertical space

I do want to put the computer inside the cabinet. In fact, I'll just
keep things the way they are if that solution turns out to be unworkable.

With just 19.2 inches of vertical clearance (and 22 inches from the
front to the back of the cabinet), I'll need a mid-tower. And it can't
have any controls or USB ports or whatever on top, as so many mid-towers
do these days, because there's just no room. I have found this, which
looks like a possible solution. At 18.2 inches vertical, at least it'll
fit:

Thermaltake Level 10 GTS: http://snipurl.com/26tjkc3

The documentation for that case says it allows for a top-mounted "240mm
radiator," and I've found a couple of possible candidates that I assume
would fit, a Corsair and a Cooler Master that look very similar and both
cost $109 -- except the Cooler Master is on sale right now:

http://snipurl.com/26tjqsb

Now after all that, here's what's on my mind:

Does anybody have any experience with venting a processor liquid cooling
radiator where there's only one inch of clearance for the fqans to blow
into? Will it work? Will it cook the wooden top of the cabinet space?
Will my condo start to smell like a campfire fueled by Ethan Allen
furniture? Ideas? Recommendations? Thanks.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

[Paul]

You sure know how to have fun :-)

My answer to problems like this, is custom furniture. I build furniture
to suit the application. I've built three different computer tables,
to solve specific problems. And, they're not "furniture grade", just
pine, sawed, drilled, and sanded. I buy the laminated pine for large
surfaces, so I can avoid the "twisty lumber" problem.

*******

Anyway, the technical nature of this problem, is moving heat from
inside the Ethan Allen, to the outside room. To some area which can
sink the heat (eventually, that might be air conditioning for example).

If you put the computer on a table top, and do the video render,
and it overheats, then it's never going to work any better
inside the Ethan Allen. So your very first experiment, is to
see decent temps, with *no* walls around the computer.

You don't have to buy liquid coolers, with fixed hose assemblies. You
can buy a water block, pump, many feet of hose, radiator, and locate
the radiator and reservoir, in another room. That's a way of "transporting"
the heat, out of the current room. Of course, how do you cover the hoses ?
And, if the hoses leak (and the hoses use water with dye in it), how do you
clean up the mess ? Regular plain water won't work, because it becomes
a bacteria haven, and rapidly gets cloudy. Additives to pump water, like
say copper, prevent the growth of "stuff" in the water. But at the same
time, increase the odds of staining something.

In this picture, you can see the way they used to build liquid cooled
systems. The radiators went outside the case. And some people went to the
trouble, of running hoses down the hallway, so the cooling system noise
was in another room.

http://martinsliquidlab.i4memory.com/img/SwiftechMCR320.jpg

*******

When I look at this picture...

http://paintrock.net/1903/computer4.jpg

I see an opening in the back of the furniture, that seems to align
with the card slots on an ATX case.

Now, if you took a saw, and enlarged that area, you could make a hole
which aligned with the exhaust fan on the existing computer case. That
would allow hot air to escape, near where your cabling goes through. Now
it depends on how close to the wall, the Ethan Allen is located. It
can't be too close (snug fit), because that would bust the connectors
on some of your computer add-in cards.

I would sooner cut a hole in the Ethan Allen, than attempt to use
water for cooling. The sealed systems with fixed hoses, certainly
aid in solving the "leak" and "purge" problems, but what they don't
solve, is the hot air has only moved a couple inches from the CPU!
Is that worth a hundred bucks ? You need some additional element,
to get the heat right out of the enclosure... somehow...

The 240mm dimension on the Thermaltake case, means it's 240mm tall
when laid on its side. There appears to be room for that. It's just,
when I look at the layout of this thing, the air circulation is all
dead-ended, and insulated in the Ethan Allen. The Thermaltake is
"designed for a windy day", and the Ethan Allen "wants to insulate it".
Seems... pointless.

http://www.thermaltake.com/db/Editor/Assets/level10gts/air.jpg

You need to re-engineer the cabinet, for adequate cool inlet air,
and adequate exhaust air. You would prefer the inlet and exhaust
to be on different sides of the cabinet (so no dead-zone loops form).
There has to be sufficient air movement around the Ethan Allen, so
that corner of the room doesn't "overheat".

*******

With regard to CPU overheating:

1) The CPU is protected two ways, against overheating.
2) For minor excursions to 80C, it uses throttling. Your
video takes longer to render. You're not getting the
full power of the CPU. Improving case cooling, means more
of the CPU is available to do work. At this time, we don't
really know how much performance you're losing. Perhaps it'll
take a lot of airflow to get the temp to drop below 80C.
3) If the cooling is so poor, that throttling isn't fixing
the thermal problem, the temperature continues to rise.
At roughly 20C above that point, THERMTRIP turns off
the computer power. You may need to CHKDSK after this
happens. The CPU will not allow things to get entirely
out of hand. Intel saw to that. THERMTRIP provides absolute
protection. Unlike the early Athlons, which could fry.
4) You're missing the other issue. Hard drive temperature.
While the CPU looks out for itself, nobody looks out for
the hard drives. If they're getting over 50C to 60C,
that's not good for them. Write performance varies with
temperature, and some drives have temperature compensation
methods, to adjust to the variation in write performance.
I don't consider it a wise idea to run them 60C for long,
because you're dry out the lubrication in the disk drive
motor.

If extending the hole in the Ethan Allen at the back,
isn't "fixing" it, that fancy water cooling is going
to do zippo for you. The Ethan Allen is the problem.
You need an "Ethan Allen Upgrade Kit" :-)

If you need to learn more about custom water loops,
you can try this forum for inspiration.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?70-Liquid-Cooling

You learn to become a plumber. With long enough
hoses, you can run the heat off, elsewhere.

http://www.abload.de/img/img_7236wu6l.jpg

The CPU is not the only heat source in the
computer case. That's why, in the liquid cooling forum,
multiple water blocks are used, one on the CPU,
one on each video card, and so on. Some even
take the chipset heatpipes off, and replace with
water blocks.

Even with "all that water fitted", a small amount
of airflow through the case is still required. For
example, the power supply kicks out heat, and nobody
in their right mind, puts water inside the PSU.

Now imagine the fun, of sliding the computer
back into the Ethan Allen, and having to arrange
purging or filling of the system, leak check etc.
Um... challenging.

******

Now, some math. If I can find the formula.

1) Take a Kill-O-Watt meter, and measure the computer case
total power. That will include the heat from the PSU for
example. Do a video render, record the peak power. This
determine the "watts of heat", to be exhausted from the
Ethan Allen "box".

http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

2) Plan for a reasonable delta_T inside the case. If room
is 25C, perhaps 35C is a relatively aggressive case temperature
to aim for. 10C is 18F degrees. The idea is, a 35C case, might
not cook the hard drives too bad. The drives will still have
their own delta_T, so they're not going to be 35C as well.
They'll be hotter than that.

Cabinet cooling equation...

CFM = 3.16 * Watts / Delta_T_degrees_F

Now, say the computer dissipated 200W. My equation looks like:

CFM = 3.16 * 200 / 18 = 35CFM to "cool the Ethan Allen"

Now, that's a pretty ordinary case exhaust fan. You need to make sure,
that the airflow is not short circuited, leaky etc, and is all working
to cool the thing. (In other words, if relying on the rear case
fan, to cool the Ethan Allen box, all the air it blows out, has to
leave the area.)

Now, this is the highest capacity fan I own. 121 CFM. If run
at full power, you won't be able to stay in the room for more
than 30 seconds. I usually keep this cranked down - which tells
you I shouldn't have bought a fan this powerful in the first place.
This is just to establish an extreme. A normal fan would be 25mm thick,
and this one is 38mm thick, which is what gives it the additional
"horsepower" for moving the air. If you buy one like this, you run
it off a Molex, not a fan header!

http://www.circuittest.com/cfa1212038mb-12vdc-ball-bearing-120mm-fan.html

They also make AC fans. For example, an AC fan could be fitted to the Ethan
Allen, to improve airflow. But be warned, the noise level on these is not
too good. I bought a tube axial... and regretted it.

Yes, this one is 34dBA (30dBA would normally be comfortable), but
this thing makes a "tone" when it runs. Fans which make white or
pink noise, you can put up with those. Fans making a "tone", are
to be shunned.

http://www.circuittest.com/cfa1158038hb-115vac-ball-bearing-80mm-fan.html

For example, you could make a hole in the bottom of the Ethan Allen,
fit an AC fan to it, and get the air out that way. Of course, floor
dust will go... everywhere.

Be creative,

Paul

[Bill Anderson]

On 4/12/2013 10:19 PM, Paul wrote:

> You need an "Ethan Allen Upgrade Kit" :-)
>

That was some great advice, Paul. Thanks. Maybe I don't need a new
case and cooler, though I do wonder whether that little cooler you found
for me back in September is capable of doing the job. I wasn't
considering a liquid cooling system with pipes into another room, as
that really wouldn't work in my one-bedroom condo. I was just thinking
of a cooling system that is contained completely in the case. But I
really knew that exhausting into a 1-inch space wasn't going to work.
I'm just trying to find a way to drop the temperature of my CPU, and I
look at that little fan that's on there now and I think I could do better.

Now about your furniture advice: My cabinet sits three inches from the
wall, and after checking I've discovered that the back panel is held in
place with screws. So unless the panel serves a structural purpose, I
can probably just remove the whole thing. And if it does serve a
structural purpose, as I think it might, I think I can just remove it,
saw it in half, and screw the left side back in place. That oughta keep
it sturdy enough.

I'm headed out of town for a few days. That'll give me time to think
about all this and work on a strategy. Thanks again!

[Bob F]

I just built my first PC with a high powered graphics card, which I quickly
discovered really heated up the inside of the case. The graphisc card had
already had its origional heatsink/fans assemblies replaced with aftermarket
ones, so there was no shroud around them.

My solution was to add shrouds to the GPU and the processor to direct the heat
immediately out of the case. For the GPU. I made a shroud out of posterboard and
white glue. The shroud collects all the hot air coming out of the card, and
directs it straight up from the top of the card. The shroud goes all the way to
the side of the case to a 1"x12" slot I cut in the side of the case, so all the
heat from the GPU immediately exits the case. Since all that heat is gone, the
processor stays way cooler. I was careful about this, so very little of the hot
air can stay in the case.

I also made a cardboard shroud for the CPU fan assembly that directs the air
coming out of the heatsink in the direction of the power supply and back exhaust
fans, so it also leaves the case ASAP. I also added an air input duct above the
heatsink fan to enable it to pick up air near to the side of the case, rather
than picking up some of the air it has already heated around its base, and
removed the extra drive covers on the front of the case to allow more air input
to flow directly towards the processor , which again helps it pick up fresh cool
air.

For you, I would suggest a power supply with a big exhaust fan on its side next
to the processor heatsink along with appropriate shrouds to direct the heat to
that fan and the back exhaust fan. Also, those two fans in the middle of the
case just mix the internal heat through the case, and probably do next to
nothing to help the heat problem. They would certainly defeat most of the effect
of the shrouding I described. You need to think about the directions air will
flow, and direct it out of the case. And you don't need fans blowing into the
case, since the GPU and CPU/power fans are both exhausting hot air, thereby
drawing in the needed cool air.

These changes made a HUGE difference in the heat of my GPU and cpu. I bet they'd
solve your problem also.

One more thing. That cabinet you slide your PC into will also tend to collect
and re-circulate heat, so you need to think about how the hot air coming out
will be kept away from the air inlets of the case. Large front panel inlets
would probably be your best solution to this.