[Techtalk] Asking for new PC recommended specs

[Alvin Goats]

> There =are= quieter fans out there (I have two or three in the box
> by my left foot), but when you have 5 or 6 case fans, 2 power
> supply fans, 2 processor fans, and a disk drive fan, it all adds
> up.  If noise is an issue you might want to look at water coolers.
> 
> And if you have any experience with them, please let me know.  I
> want to buy one ;-)


Most of the water coolers require de-ionized (DI) water and suffer from
corrosion (de-ionized water is very corrosive, more so than tap water)
and algae growth. To improve the effects of the "chiller" (a more common
name for them), you have to add anti-freeze. If you are doing this in a
business, set the chiller OUTSIDE of the computer room, they add a lot
of heat, noise and often smell of anti-freeze. Temperature is set and
maintained by a refrigeration unit built into the chiller.

You are actually better off with a sealed, closed "outside the PC box"
(and possibly in another room) refrigeration system. More expensive,
less smell, no algae, not anti-freeze and no DI water.

The better settups have a modified heatsink similar to the one with the
fan attached that you currently use, only it has a serpentine wound pipe
in the fins for the fluid to flow. You'll have an inlet and outlet hose
for each item being chilled (processor, memory, drives,...). If other
things in the box still need some air cooling, you may have a problem
due to all of the hoses. You can't daisy chain the hoses as each hot
item heats the chilled fluid up and by the time the chilled fluid gets
to the last item to cool, it's too hot to do much good. So lots of hoses
in the box.


IF you do go the chiller route, look for a box or rack that is designed
for use with a chiller. It'll be pretty expensive, but the design allows
for hoses and chiller plates (the specialized heatsinks) as well as
having sufficient room for some forced air cooling of the rest of the
board.

Alvin