Water Cooling

Garick

Hey guys... I was toying with the idea of using water cooling for my PC for the first time since I enjoy overclocking, but I live in an area with a lot of earthquakes. (about 100 a year) I couldn't find much information on how dangerous shaking is to a WC system. but I'm obviously worried about frying my whole computer if it does leak.

Any experts out there wanna give me an opinion on if I should just give up on water cooling and stick with my good ol' fans? Or can you make/purchase a system that is robust enough to withstand some good jolts occasionally?

Foomy

Most people when doing WC these days just go with an AIO(all-in-one, or sealed) unit like corsairs H series like this: http://www.corsair.com/en/hydro-series-h100i-v2-extreme-performance-liquid-cpu-cooler

And in that case you wouldn't have any more risk of damage to the computer than having a normal heatsink.

As for custom loop cooling, I wouldn't trust it with repeated shaking.

SmokeStacks

I have a Corsair H60 that has survived a couple moves and still works like a charm.

If it's your first time watercooling a closed loop cooler would probably be a good idea, you'll only have two things in the loop (radiator and pump) with two tubes instead of a minimum of radiator, pump, and reservoir with three tubes in a custom loop setup. You'll only have 4 points of potential seal failure instead of 6+ as a result.

They go through shipping from the manufacturing plant to a store or to a warehouse and then your house, and I'd be willing to bet it'll get knocked around more during the average Fedex trip than it would sitting in your rig with a couple small quakes a week. If anything I think it might be better for your mobo since you won't have a heavy heatsink/fan combo hanging from it during the shaking.

Malgaras

There seems to be a lot of talk about the AIO already so I thought I'd chime in about the other side of water-cooling.

First the obvious: Do it yourself water-cooling is horribly impractical in almost every way imaginable. It makes maintenance and moving the computer more difficult, and introduces additional scheduled maintenance to boot. It's extraordinarily expensive and the price to performance ratio is horrible vs just buying better hardware. There is a small but non-zero risk of frying something (or a large risk if you try to cut corners with parts/research/testing). In short, if you are interested in it primarily for any sort of practical reason, don't bother. Get an air cooler or an AIO. That said, if you are interested in it purely as a fun hobby project, it is a lot of fun and an AIO unit really can't provide the same experience in that aspect.

If you decide to go the DIY route, there are a couple things to be concerned with re: earthquakes.

1. Leaks. Some small vibrations probably aren't going to do that much, honestly I suspect you'd probably be fine. Caveat being that I would highly recommend going with compression fittings over barbs in your case. They are more expensive but I'd be much less concerned of them coming loose over time due to the shaking.
2. Air bubbles. Pumps and parts can generally handle small air bubbles without too much issue. They need to when you initially bleed the system if nothing else. It might potentially heart your cooling performance a bit though.

Garick

Hmmm, interesting. Thanks for the advice, I might go with a closed loop then.

Bloodycow

There are also things from EKWB (their predator lineup) and Artic cooler that are AIO's, but have the capacity to loop more things into the system with quick connects and things like that.

zepherin

You could also not cool with water and use a different liquid. Mineral oil Is a popular coolant because it is non conductive.

This is an interesting way to cool a PC
https://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php