u238

So I'm going to build myself some form of evaporative cooling tower, but I have a major issue with hard water with iron. Minerals and iron will undoubtedly build up on my water blocks so I'm trying to avoid them contacting anything but distilled water. Scale buildup in a cooling tower shouldn't be much of a problem, other than an occasional cleaing of the pump. Therefore, I want to use a heat exchanger and two separate loops. I plan to use a typical water cooling loop, but with the radiator submerged in flowing water at the bottom of my evaporative cooling apparatus. I would expect that a much smaller radiator could be utilized due to the superior thermal conductivity of water versus air, however, I am unsure how this method would fare as far as temperatures go. Clearly it would be somewhat less efficient than a straight evaporative cooling loop, but I would like to get some input from anyone who might have tried it or has experience in this area.

airplaneman

I know a bit about this stuff, let me understand what you want to do. You want to have a standard water cooling loop, but have the rad submerged in water instead of having fans blowing through it? What is an evaporative tower, pictures so I can get a better understanding would be nice

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Q9650 @ 4.5, 1.4 vCore (1.376 CPU-Z)

u238

An evaporative cooler is a device that uses the evaporation of water to remove heat from said water. They seem to be known here as "bong" coolers. Their primary benefits are their ability to cool below ambient temperature, and can handle large heats loads for minimal cost / noise.

angrysasquatch

If the water in the bottom of the bong stays colder than ambient, your temps will definitely improve. A little bit above ambient will probably also be an improvement since water conducts heat away from the rad faster than air. Just keep in mind that you have to keep the water cold, even when there's heat being added (from the computer).

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u238

I'm trying to find how using a heat exchanger will compare to an evaporative cooler alone. In both, the cooler will work toward cooling the water below ambient. I am concerned about what effect the heat exchanger will have on overall heat transfer.

erice303

Tis should work well. You need to make sure that the evaporator water flows through the radiator fins. also corrosion on the outside of the radiator could be a concern. but that could be solved with a piece of "sacrificial" metal.

assaulth3ro911

I'm guessing it should work. Just do every now and then cleaning. Don't forget. =]

Good Luck!!! =]]

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u238

I finally have a spare pump and I've started work on an evaporative cooler. Once I get it working, I'll try to make some progress on this experiment and report back.

shurik06_83

ur best bet is to have a bong and not haveing 2 loops water out of the base gose to cool ur computer then comes back top the bong passe threw air and gets coold and so on

haveing 2 loops will make it all run hotter

ur better off haveing a rad before the water comes back to the bong to cool it down slightly so the bong dosent have to work as hard

and useing dexcool gm red antifreez 50/50 mix with distiled water works grate and keeps the rig from turning into a swamp water will evap off over time and u will have to add more but the mixture of dex cool sems to kill evrything