Anybody have a liquid coolant leak in their PC and did it go well after regarding the cleanup?

[Willem]

I understand that, but I have the distinct impression that energy efficiency is improving at a faster rate than the need for more speed.

 

[Raindog123]

I understand that, but I have the distinct impression that energy efficiency is improving at a faster rate than the need for more speed.

Do you have a quantitative estimate for this “than the need for more speed”? In MIPS or FLOPS? Eg, the processing power needed for a state-of-the-art PC game (played on a state-of-the-art monitor configuration) over the past 10-20 years?

 

[Willem]

No I don't. What I do notice is that PCs remain much longer usable than they did in the past (I go back a long time). I also notice that my university has replaced all traditional power hungry desktop PCs with little mini boxes that are now more than good enough for even my friends in econometrics. The energy saved added up to quite a hefty sum (and helps saving the environment). But of course, and as I said, cooling may remain necessary for the most powerful machines. Gaming is not part of my computing universe.

 

[bigjacko]

After comparing the performance to cost, I choose air cooler. It also does not have leak issue and have longer life span. One detail for liquid cool is if you pull the heat from the radiator into the case, other components like GPU may suffer.

 

[Chromatischism]

I understand that, but I have the distinct impression that energy efficiency is improving at a faster rate than the need for more speed.

Over about 5 PCs, my CPU temps have been the same for two decades, despite large improvements to efficiency. That is because chip makers are constantly pushing the performance they can get out of each chip's thermal envelope. To not do so leaves performance on the table. Certainly Intel can't afford that with how strong AMD has been, and now Apple, ARM, etc.

It just depends what the goals are. On the other end of things, you can make small fanless computers now (ARM chips in our smartphones are a good example).

 

[jae]

Negative pressure liquid cooling

More about it here:

And here:

Data Center Cooling Technology | Liquid Cooling Solutions

An efficient direct-to-chip liquid cooling system that reduces data center operating costs and eliminates the risks associated with liquid cooling.

www.chilldyne.com

There is a consumer solution for this for custom loops from aquacomputer called the leakshield (a pain to get as it's always out of stock):

It's a nice insurance for typical enthusiast water loops. I have a couple on order but I may or may not use it in my final setup. The main disadvantage is that it only provides about 450 mbar of negative pressure, which is enough for a typical D5 pump used in a computer, or for a dual D5 setup running at about 75% speed each. It will only protect against small leaks but that is most cases. It has neat features like an alarm and having the ability to directly power off the PC when connected to the motherboard power header. The software is powerful and can be configured to lower pump speed or even send you an email or notification when certain events are triggered. Apparently the 450 mbar is a software limitation, as the company did not want to allow people to use higher pressure due to water boiling at lower temperatures while under pressure.

 

[Tks]

Oh, it's definitely not passive. The continuous load is at least 700W when "idle" (cryptomining when they aren't being used) and even higher when it is being used on other tasks. The tank itself will be connected to an external radiator setup. Specifically, there will be a pump circulating the heat from the top of the tank on one side to the bottom of the tank on the other, and in between this line will be a small brazed heat plate exchanger.

Then, connected to this heat plate exchanger will be a typical external radiator setup with another pump. The rad will have 200mm fans running at low rpm, which is virtually inaudible. I will probably be using two of these even if I don't do this immersion project because I like the silence regardless and can use it with my existing loop:

Its possible to run the dielectric fluid directly from the tank to the radiator like a typical WC loop, however this is a lot of unnecessary volume of dielectric fluid (which is expensive). So a plate exchanger in this situation is ideal so you can use cheap water/glycol coolant on the air exchange while keeping the good stuff in the tank.

In the winter, the 700W+ load will be some very nice, silent, passive heat for the home. In the summer, the versatility of the external radiator can allow me to dump the heat outside without heating up my space further. I've seen people do interesting things like use the waste heat from their setups to do things like heat water in their homes or for under-floor heating, or even using running water from indoor tap/plumbing to cool the system with a heat exchanger in places where water is cheap or virtually free. I know a guy that personally dumps all his heat from a 30KW immersion setup into a nearly lake on his property and circulates the cool water from the lake back up to his shed. It can be scaled up pretty easily and the heat exchanger can be as small as a PC radiator with fans to an industrial dry cooler.

The setup I described is really not much different from traditional watercooling. It's just that instead of having multiple waterblocks and connections between components, everything is just submerged in tank and the only connections are between the tank and however you're exchanging the heat.

I just can’t understand why not go the traditional route then. I imagine any issues with any of the units of hardware, become annoying as hell to manage.

I read you find it nice being able to dump the heat during summer and all that, but this can be achieved with relative ease using hoses hooked up to a window and whatnot if need be.

I simply don’t understand the benefit of this full immersion setup especially so now that you explained it will be active.

 

[jae]

I just can’t understand why not go the traditional route then. I imagine any issues with any of the units of hardware, become annoying as hell to manage.

I read you find it nice being able to dump the heat during summer and all that, but this can be achieved with relative ease using hoses hooked up to a window and whatnot if need be.

I simply don’t understand the benefit of this full immersion setup especially so now that you explained it will be active.

The heat being dumped elsewhere isn't really a feature of the immersion setup, it can be done with any traditional watercooling setup with an external rad and it's currently what I do now already. I would be lying if I said the novelty of an immersion setup and my own boredom wasn't part of my motivation to do it. While its not really "necessary" for a single PC setup I definitely hope to eventually convert the rest of my rendering/mining machines (with many GPUs each) to a larger immersion setup purely for the sake of quietness, cost savings, life of the components, and efficiency in the heat exchange. So really I am just thinking about this as an experiment that I will continue using and also further scaling up in a larger setup if I don't find it to be too inconvenient for my personal computer. Even if it has the potential to be moderately troublesome with a personal computer, the benefits for something like a server or rendering machine significantly outweigh the negatives.

As I mentioned there would be a significant cost savings as buying multiple water blocks long term is much more expensive than dielectric fluid and the one-off cost of the tank, even if it is only for for 1-2 gpus, let alone dozens. There is significantly more flow and surface area of the components being cooled so while coolant-ambient deltas (the number one most important thing to control in water cooling) may not be changed that much on their own, component deltas (peak temperatures of individual components or certain ICs on components) would see significant dips in package temperature allowing for more performance headroom for overclocking, and/or longer component life.

Being able to subambiently cool does have some practical applications beyond just benchmarking or using something niche like a peltier or chiller on a personal rig, especially at scale. An example would be if I had my heat exchange outdoors, even at subzero temperatures, I would not want to risk damaging my components that were water cooled. Cooling would need to be tightly monitored and regulated to avoid this at a loss of performance of the cooling system and components, and is not something you can reasonably do with a water cooling setup.

 

[Krazy Mitch]

View attachment 163540


Immersion cooling, Baby!

I always chuckle when I see this picture making the rounds.
This was a Pentium III in deionized oil (transformer oil) at the 2000 ComDex in Los Angeles. The computer was a 1 GHz, running stable at 3.5 GHz.
And I know the specs of it: because I created another one for a Project, and Koolance exec saw it, and asked me to build them one for ComDex, over the years more and more system builders have gone more extreme than this. I've seen full immersion of the entire mainboard, with SSD/RAM & GPU, of course no fans needed, a fluid pump helps move the oil.