Water cooling from a scientific perspective - Overclock.net

Apocolypze01 · 07-25-09

Why is water cooling more efficient than metal cooling (heatsinks, etc)?

Well, read on to find out.

=========== A Few words you may need to know ===========

=== 1 Mol ===

- 6.02 x 10^23 atoms. Could be 1 mol of chairs, people, etc.

=== Grams per mol. (Simply G/mol) ===

- How many grams of a given substance contain 6.02 x 10^23 particles. Effectively, how many grams per mol.

=== Specific Heat Capacity ===

- How much energy is needed to raise a specific amount of a substance by 1C

=== Joules ===

Unit of energy

================================================== =======

Im assuming the water in water cooling is H2O or some other liquid. Thats just silly of me!

Anyways.

Liquids generally have a higher specific heat capacity than metals.

For example:

H20 has a specific heat capacity of 4.2joules/gram/C

This means that H2O needs 4.2 joules of energy per gram to raise the temperature by 1 degree Celsius.

Metals on the other hand may have great thermal conductivity, but do not have a high heat capacity, and heat up very quickly from a relatively small amount of energy.

For example:

Copper has a specific heat capacity of 0.385joules/gram/C

Gold has a specific heat capacity of 0.2291joules/gram/C

As you can see, these metals have a relatively low specific heat capacity. As do generally all metals. Most, if not all, are under the 1.000joules/gram/C mark.

================================================== =====

These values may not mean much to you. But i will explain how they arise here:

Per mol of H2O molecules (6.02 x 10^23 molecules of H2O), there are 18grams. So the MOLAR mass of H2O is 18g/mol.

The MOLAR mass of copper is 63.54g/mol.

Given the same mass of Water and Copper, there will be more molecules in the water sample.

Lets say we have 63.54 grams of copper. There will be 6.02 x 10^23 copper atoms in there.

If we have 63.54 grams of H2O, there will be 2.13 x 10^24 molecules of H2O

More molecules per gram = more ways to store heat energy = high specific heat capacity.

When a molecule is heated, or a substance, the atoms move faster and faster due to the kinetic energy being gained. If there is more molecules/atoms present per gram, then there is more degrees of freedon to store energy.

This in turn requires a considerable amount more energy to raise the same amount of H20 than it does the same amount of Copper.

================================================== ======

So there you have it. Waters high heat capacity makes it a winner. As it can absorb more heat than heatsinks without heating up as fast. Roughly 10x more than copper.

Oh and watercooling is similar to the bodies cooling system. We sweat, and the sweat absorbs the heat energy from our skin. This in turn makes us feel cool as the sweat absorbs the energy and dries from our skin. Or in my case, never dries : o

================================================== =======

I hope you enjoyed it. And if anyone has any corrections, please feel free to comment them. NO ABUSE PLEASE.

After all, im only a year 11 chemistry student

jws2346 · 07-25-09

Holy crap

This is one great article for those of us that passed the "rocket scientist" test

For us people that failed that test (like me) I believe we just saw the great results from a real life perspective. We amazingly figured out for ourselves the efficiency, convienience, no brainer simpleness and the "bling" of a top flite computer water cooling system I'll admitt it was rough at times

IMO water cooling loops look a hell of alot better than a gimongus 3 pound air HS, with a hair blower sounding fan

I also hear WCing is a true blue babe attractor (for those not walking on the "wild side" and in need of female company, like me)

Apocolypze01 · 07-25-09

hope you liked it.

if you read it

BioHzrd · 07-25-09

Make like no sense to be mut i do get the basic's of it....Water = WIN lol

Nice bit of info though !

cuy50 · 07-25-09

Awesome post! I will be sure to refer to this post when people ask me why I watercool my computer!

jws2346 · 07-25-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apocolypze01

hope you liked it.

if you read it

Oh yeah, I read it alright

. I read about the "- 6.02 x 10^23 atoms" and I read about the "H20 has a specific heat capacity of 4.2joules/gram/C" I'll admit I didn't understand all I know about it, but I was impressed by the facts (I think they're true blue unexagerated and unbias facts

), plus if they're exagerated or bias I don't really care

. I just know for a fact that WCing works

. (it also seems to work for many peeps in the computer world

)

astrodanco · 07-25-09

Please do remember that the water is only being used to transport the heat elsewhere. You still need to get the heat out of the water. There are many methods of doing that. The most popular one is to run the hot water through a large (much larger area than the heat sink that put the heat into the water in the first place) copper radiator with fans attached. That means we're still dumping the heat into the air, just doing it elsewhere and with a larger area. Thus we're still limited to ambient temperatures. Another method is an evaporative cooler, sometimes called a bong. That can get us down to wet bulb temperatures. Evaporative coolers have many interesting variations. I think that's the end of the cheap and easy coolers though. The others tend to be difficult and/or expensive.

Bigshades92 · 07-25-09

Mass to moles, and moles to mass, always use molar mass!

The fun in Chemistry!

r11 · 07-25-09

Great read. I appreciate it! Makes sense to me. Can you explain Phase Changers to me?

+Rep Apocolypze01

boydyboyd · 07-25-09

That was frankly, an excellent Read. I read it all and, as i said in my rep comment, learnt something despite doing Physics at A level, lol.

Thanks for that. If you want to explain other stuff please do. I'm sure i wouldn't be the only one to read it. lol.

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Water cooling from a scientific perspective

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