My buddy is using water cooling using the open bucket method and i was wondering if there would be any change if instead of H2O he used beer if there would be any major change in cooling?:chef:

But if I find you or your buddy wasting good beer I will be round your house with a lynch mob quicker than you can say "The beers are on me". :evil:
With beer being brewed in a process that involves sugar amounst other things I think the density of the beer would be significantly different from that of H2O. It will probably be slightly more difficult to cool, and probably also not draw the heat out of the water block as efficiently...

a better heat exchanger liquid would be 85% -to- 95% distilled water & 5% -to- 15% glycol.

How about liquid nitrogen? I haven't heard alot about it, but also that it might be good for it. You can basically put any liquid into a water cooling block, as long as it's as viscous as water itself.
Would it be any good for cooling?
Also, what kind of cooling liquid do they use for nuclear reactors and such?
I think that basically any liquid that heats up and cools down fast and is a good conductor of heat would be excellent.

The problem with Liquid Nitrogen is that unless you let it boil inside the "waterblock" it's not going to cool as efficiently as water. That's because nitrogen doesn't have as high a heat capacity as water so it can't transport as much heat as water.

And if you do let it boil, then it will get very expensive very fast.

Stick to water like most car engines do, it's cheap and still has a very high specific heat capacity.

Another problem with beer... The sedimentation that'll most likely happen in the reservoir... Hot water can carry more sugar than cool water, so when hot beer meets cool beer, it'll dump some of it's sugar++, thus leaving it at the bottom of the reservoir... This will lead to clogging of the tubes (as you should draw fresh water from the bottom rather than the top...

And when the beer stops flowing fast enough.... 'nough said...


As for LN2..

They use a nice little compressor, which transforms the nitrogen back to liquid..

You can offcourse do it yourself, but unless you're willing to risk the entire setup, I'd leave it to the pro's...!

.02$

ok i got it noo beer, how about tequila uke:

How about 96%? Only problem is getting it liquid again

ok, so...how about antifreeze? i figure it good enough for me car how about my computer?(proper mixture of water and antifreeze of coarse)

wow, talk about reviving an old thread.

anyways, using antifreeze probably wouldn't do much for you. the 3 main purposes of antifreeze in a car is to:

1. Keep the water from boiling
2. Keep the water from freezing
3. keep mold/organics from growing.

while it is true that you can get more out of the water by using "water wetter " this is only true in a closed loop system.

if you are using an open bucket, then a coolant aid would hurt the performance, as you cool the water via evaporation, that would be hindered by the additive

*shrugs* i found this post via google as it was the first link on my search.....i am trying to find a better cooling system for my computer so as to hopefully keep it down to a more comfortable level for me....(i prefer hovering between 107 and 111 F) and all i really have found is just some water cooling.......................just i dun have a lot of money so i don't know what to do...

water cooling isn't exactly cheap, but you can get some great cooling, and very quite too. basically there are 2 methods

closed loop
open loop (aka open bucket)

Closed loop:
sealed system, set it up, and let it run.

little -> no maitinace, unless it springs a leak.

system temp is a little over ambient temp


Open loop/bucket
open loop, usually done with a 5 gallon bucket, some long tubes, and a fountain pump (toss in a water-block for good measure )

have to fill with water to replace what has evaporated (3-4 days = about 1.5-2 gallons, in my experience)

usually at, or below ambient temp

hmm.....what other meathods of cooling are there besides water? and well of coarse the basic fan and heat sync combo...

heat sink/fan (air)
water
refrigeration
Link


it all depends on how crazy you want to go, and how much $$$ you can spend

The other day I was thinking about a watercooling setup and I got it in my head that I should build an open bucket setup using a small refrigderator as my res. This way the wayer would stay cool and not evaporate so I would have to fill it every few days. Now one of my dilemnas I came across was is a 3 1/2 gallon fridge that cools to 40F or a 5 gallon that cools to 44F best. The water block would only go to the CPU and it would go to a radiator on the way back to the res to get rid of some of the heat that would be built up. Another thing I plan is to have the res above the case, with the water going into the top of the res from the radiator while the water leaves the res near the bottom, this serves a dual purpose, one is to create a syphon if the pump fails while in operation and two is that the water that comes in will have more time to cool. I was thinking that an Eheim 1250 would be a good pump but do you have any recommendations around here?

Sounds like a good setup as long as you close the reservoir so that it doesn't get any outside air...

If you don't, you'll have to add some algea killer and that might not be so good for your radiator/block.

The Eheim should do very well, just make sure you buy the pump only, and not do as me and buy one with filters for an aquarium. (Or else you'll have to mod the pump a bit to attach a hose)
It could be a bit overkill though... It's specs says it'll push 317 gallons per hour, meaning that the water won't stay in the fridge/res for long. You could actually end up with the water gradually getting hotter and hotter with the fridge having little effect.

I suggest you do the math to calculate how long the water will stay in the rest with the Eheim 1250 and see if it might be long enough for the fridge to have any effect or not.

You could make a minature bong cooler with the fridge as the res in the bottom as it'd cool much better, but you'd have the problem of algea and dust collecting in the bottom, not to mention the fact that you'll need to add water regularly since the drop will bleed off a bit of water.
It'll also increase humidity, and should thus be placed a bit away from the case...

Sorry if I got a bit carried away, but I planned to build a bong cooler two years ago (or so), but never got started since I went a bit overboard (needing a hole in the wall amongst other things)...

(I guess you've read my old post about phase change cooling earlier in the thread)

Not really another method of cooling, but adding a peltier element will lower the temps of your cpu and if the water setup is correct shouldn't add much to your water temp...


As for adding anti-freeze, if you have an open loop system, it will pay of to use some sort of anti-bacterial compound as otherwise you'll have a lot of algea after a while.
Just make sure it doens't contain copper if you use aluminium block/radiater or vice versa. (the react to eachother and after a while the water will eat it's way through the block/rad!)
WaterWetter can work if you're using a bong system though as long as the drop is high enough (but it won't increase cooling much)...

Thanks for the good reads Mr.G Whats a bong cooler though?