removing parts from PCBs

[Eric J Korpela]

While I don't use a water immersion system, my main system has a water
cooled processor, motherboard, hard drive and graphics card. Actually it's
automotive windshield washer fluid, 30% methanol, with an added surface
tension reducer. A methanol mixture has a lower viscosity and better wetting
properties than water alone, so it runs better through the hoses and
transfers the heat better. The drawback of low viscosity is that a methanol
mixture will leak even when water doesn't.

I like a quiet machine, so I keep the pump and reservior in the garage,
where I allow things to be a bit noisier. My next step in my quest for quiet
will be to attempt to build a sealed oil filled power supply with a heat
exchanger to transfer the heat to the water. I'm also thinking of soldering
copper tube to the SDRAM heat sinks.

It would probably be cheaper just to buy a noise cancelling headset.

Yes, this does violate the 10 year rule.

Eric

On 11/16/05, Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote:

> The real problem with water is not it's conductivity. High power
> tube transmitters have used distilled water in the past as it's a
> really poor conductor if kept clean.
>
> DEC experimented with water cooling too. The Aquarius project was
> a water cooled VAX. Too many headaches with leakage, heat transfer
> to the environment and installation issues. Systems like that use
> a chiller and heat exchanger to cool the closed loop water system.
> Those are costly and difficult to install. Murder if it should leak
> in a computer room. Then there is an efficientcy problem as you end
> up using power to move heat which adds heat..
>
> With all that, the circuits they were trying to cool were getting more
> power efficient. So by time they worked out wet cooling air cooling
> was again attractive or at least far easier.
>
> It's still packaging. ;)
>
>
> Allison
>
>