Liquid cooling your power supply...

[bambihunter]

You all are right, and some are slightly off...

For a silent HTPC they are great. I have the 1300 watt Koolance model. It uses 2 different loops. An internal bath of non-conductive fluid and a liquid to liquid heat exchanger. The water itself doesn't go into the powersupply, just goes through the exchanger.
I have mine running on 220v for 1700 watt max, although I don't currently use it all.

I know the OP was about a do-in-at-home kit for an existing power supply, but the pre-made options out there are very nice. Worth the money? Probably not, but they are very powerful, completely silent, and have a $hitload of connectors. Since I already had a water setup (mostly Koolance anyway) with plenty of cooling overhead, and had a bad power supply. When it came time to upgrade, this was an obvious choice. Some of us live by the Mythbusters motto "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing". :-)

[csgrafix]

Originally Posted by AlphaElite

I`ve been told that to water cool the power supply adds to the overall coolness of the ambient temperatures in the case in general, and of course to build a system that operates nearly silently. Especially if we`re using 1200 -1500 watt power supplies and giving the juice to an extremely overclocked system. Even if the performance increase is marginal, I`ve heard it`s supposed to do something to help out the cooling of the system overall. BUt it doesn`t sound like it`s really needed from what I`m hearing from all of you experts out there. Thanks. Any other thoughts?

I see the benefit in quieting thing a bit. I have have 1200 and it makes the most noise in my system. Probrably wouldnt hear a thing if I had a psu with less dba

[JosephOhSnap]

Originally Posted by FX5200

It's inefficient, hinders proper cooling of the other components,not necessary, and anyway, PSU's don't overclock very well.

This is just like the mini-fridge chiller someone else posted. It's innovative and all, but it's just not needed.

But it is pretty extreme. Granted, it might be extreme in the wrong direction, but i still think it fits with the name of this site!

[davidhammock200]

Originally Posted by JosephOhSnap

But it is pretty extreme. Granted, it might be extreme in the wrong direction, but i still think it fits with the name of this site!

Any "proven good" 1200W + PSU fits in just fine with Extreme OverClocking!

[Nagoshi]

Originally Posted by bambihunter

You all are right, and some are slightly off...

For a silent HTPC they are great. I have the 1300 watt Koolance model. It uses 2 different loops. An internal bath of non-conductive fluid and a liquid to liquid heat exchanger. The water itself doesn't go into the powersupply, just goes through the exchanger.
I have mine running on 220v for 1700 watt max, although I don't currently use it all.

I know the OP was about a do-in-at-home kit for an existing power supply, but the pre-made options out there are very nice. Worth the money? Probably not, but they are very powerful, completely silent, and have a $hitload of connectors. Since I already had a water setup (mostly Koolance anyway) with plenty of cooling overhead, and had a bad power supply. When it came time to upgrade, this was an obvious choice. Some of us live by the Mythbusters motto "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing". :-)

I dont know of anybody that would need a 1300W power supply to run an HTPC.

[bambihunter]

Originally Posted by Nagoshi

I dont know of anybody that would need a 1300W power supply to run an HTPC.

Depends what you have it doing... Some of us want more than the simple dual tuner, dual core systems like I have in two bedrooms.

[Nagoshi]

So you run quad-SLI GTX295 on a Skulltrail with two QX9650 under LN2 overclocked at 5+GHz each with 16GB of DDR3 RAM, a PCI-E RAID card with 4 SSD in RAID0 with 4x2TB in RAID1, with thousand of fans and blinky lights all around, just to watch BD movies on a 1080P plasma screen... something that a single core with a HD4xx0 video card can do easily?

Here's a small reminder of what a HTPC really is. What you think you want to do with your rig is called a Gaming PC, not a HTPC.

Hell even top gaming rigs doesn't even need 1300W of power.

Additional Comment:

BTW, there are tons of low-wattage CPU that are fairly quiet. My Strider is one, and my PC P&C Silencer 700W is also quite silent. It's not like you have your HTPC sitting right beside you when you watch a movie.... and I dont know for you, but I watch my movies with volume, so I dont hear anything around.

[davidhammock200]

No worries, I doubt you could get one to fit in a HTPC case!

[bambihunter]

Originally Posted by davidhammock200

No worries, I doubt you could get one to fit in a HTPC case!

Who said you would have to use a HTPC case to have a HTPC?

All you really need is video playback capability. For a TRUE HTPC, I'd say you need to add a few tuners, a DVD or blue ray drive and a remote.

I have 4 HTPC's. One Windows 7 64 Bit ultimate, one Vista Ultimate 64, one Vista Home Premium 32 bit, and one XP MCE.
The processors range from a single-core 3.4ghz and 4gb of ram to a 955BE @ 4.0, from a single card dual analog tuner in one computer to two dual analog & dual digital (I'm only using 4 channels in that one, but you can use both analog and digital together for 8 tuners if you needed) in another. The video-only storage space ranges from 160gb in my small one to 4TB in my bigger one.
My next build will be the WS board running several GTX295's or 300's (if I wait that long). I also fold with EVERY pc in the house. As long as it doesn't take away from its primary role then it is still HTPC.

I keep having to double-check to make sure I am on the EXTREME forums. I am starting to wonder if I ventured into the barely above normal forums.

[davidhammock200]

Timothy tried to blow it up & you want to burn it down!

Noise generation, heat generation, electrical load, you are both the power company's dream customer &
its biggest nightmare at the same time!

I suppose you cook dinner over a open nuclear plie too?

[Deluded]

Originally Posted by davidhammock200

I suppose you cook dinner over a open nuclear plie too?

I thought you knew that. We Iranians do that in our spare time, whenever we stop cackling madly about the impending doom of the homosexual repressive Obama.

[Nagoshi]

Originally Posted by Deluded

I thought you knew that. We Iranians do that in our spare time, whenever we stop quackling madly about the impending doom of the homosexual repressive Obama.

Yeah you have that nuclear stuff full your missiles to do that... it's like nuclear power in cans LMAO

Also fixed for your own vocabulary

[bambihunter]

Originally Posted by davidhammock200

Noise generation, heat generation, electrical load, you are both the power company's dream customer &
its biggest nightmare at the same time!

I won't disagree about using the juice and creating lots of heat, but my noise is minimal.
Seriously, my old single-core P4 is louder than my HTPC.

[kazuya]

I wish we knew someone who had one so we could see like a chart of nose and temps in the case over all. Those koolance power supply are pricey but if they were giving them out id be first in line :P lol

[davidhammock200]

Originally Posted by kazuya

I wish we knew someone who had one so we could see like a chart of nose and temps in the case over all. Those koolance power supply are pricey but if they were giving them out id be first in line :P lol

[H] reviewed one a while back.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2008/..._power_supply/

Read forum thread linked on the last page, some German guy goes nuts over these!

[kazuya]

thanks for the link pretty interesting

Originally Posted by davidhammock200

[H] reviewed one a while back.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2008/..._power_supply/

Read forum thread linked on the last page, some German guy goes nuts over these!

[larrymoencurly]

Do you really want to have water running through something that operates at 340 volts???

At the very least, leave the high voltage portion alone because:

a) Some heatsinks in the high voltage section are connected to high voltage -- I've measured 170VDC on heatsinks PSUs from Enermax, Antec (old SmartPower, TruePower, both Channel Well Technology designs), and Delta.

b) Even when those heatsinks aren't connected to high voltage, they're insulated from it only by thin layers of mica or silicone rubber between them and the transistors mounted to them.

[davidhammock200]

Originally Posted by larrymoencurly

Do you really want to have water running through something that operates at 340 volts???

At the very least, leave the high voltage portion alone because:

a) Some heatsinks in the high voltage section are connected to high voltage -- I've measured 170VDC on heatsinks PSUs from Enermax, Antec (old SmartPower, TruePower, both Channel Well Technology designs), and Delta.

b) Even when those heatsinks aren't connected to high voltage, they're insulated from it only by thin layers of mica or silicone rubber between them and the transistors mounted to them.

Excellent advice! If you want a WC PSU, buy a good UL listed one, this is NOT a DIY project!

[bambihunter]

Originally Posted by davidhammock200

Excellent advice! If you want a WC PSU, buy a good UL listed one, this is NOT a DIY project!

Agreed!