tl;dr
High volume low speed airflow rocks for cooling a home desktop computer.
I just did a mechanical service on the home build I started just before all
the caching issues broke out last year. Overall performance is quite good
but it is the servicability issues which worked out the best.
This was my first water cooling system and I went with push pull cooling
for the radiator.
By far this cooling setup outperformed my expectations. I had really only
expected to reduce the ambient noise when the heat and p/s load issues
would spin up the various cooling fans. Its the secondary effect of passing
the air through the box at a constant low speed which surprised me the
most. Not only is this the quietest home PC Ive ever had, its the cleanest.
Interior environments differ across the board in terms of heat, dust and
humidity but the home environment is the stickiest due to the higher
concetrations of cooking oil particles in the air. We've all seen the
pictures of dust encrusted neglected power supplies and box cooling fans. I
certainly saw enough of them in my time and generally keep a small
assortment of fans around. I had fully expected that after one year I would
have to pull the interor radiator fans for cleaning and swap them to the
exterior and vice versa
I was happily surprised when I opened the unit up completely for a service.
Not only did it appear to have less than typical (for my place) dust
adhesion around fan blades and hubs, the planar surface was almost pristine
with the usual hotspots conspicually absent significant buildup. The fan
for cooling the vidio card was fine and so was the p/s. A few swipes with
99% isopropanol swabs cleaned the fan blades and the interior side of the
radiator. I didn't have to touch the exterior ones. Those fans tended to
blow the settling particles away and they land on the inside of the
exterior grill vent.
Once and a while, if I listen carefully, I can hear the cpu cooling pump or
the video card fan but I actually have to listen for it, instead of being
bothered by it.
All in all I'm quite sure the additional expense at build time for water
cooling and extra indirect ventilation will pay off in the long run. If not
in actual extention of serviceability til EOL but in ease of service.
TODO,s
I have to construct an adapter plate for the exterior radiator fans.
Currently I am using a Canadian Red Green fix as opposed to the tradional
IBM blue wire fix. ie. One screw and a couple of strips of duct tape hold
the pull fans to the frame.
The optical audio cable doesnt seat properly. I think the tiny flap on the
mb connection side has some dangling chad dross I have to take care of.
All in all a fun robust build with better than expected results considering
all the meltdown suff that started just after I comitted to this particular
form.
