I did some serious clean up and made some overdue physical changes to my system yesterday.
My PC is water cooled and a flow sensor I had installed failed some time ago. It would occasionally spin and make a bunch racket every so often but I had delayed removing it because that meant making a new water tube.
I switched to hard tubing rather than flex several years ago because the evaporation rate using flex tubing was annoying. I had to add water almost monthly before and the current setup has lasted 2 years without having to add any water. The downside to hard tubing is you have to custom bend and cut every path. It takes some time and I frequently end up messing up one or two during the process. I usually just buy a 10 pack of tubes so I have extra.
Another thing that had been bugging me was the fan noise. Normally water cooling is rather quiet. But on this last build, I installed a new, larger radiator and bought three high efficiency fans. I didn't test them first and just set them to "normal" speed (a 3 position switch - Advanced, Normal, Hybrid). Well, "Normal" was 2000 RPM and the sound was rather noticeable. Three of them running all the time and in an open frame case was NOT quiet and the switches were not accessible because they are mounted behind the radiator.
So yesterday afternoon, I drained the water lines and reservoir, pulled the fans out, and removed the busted flow sensor and tubes connected to it.
Then it was time for dust removal - the space between the fans and radiator looked like a dust bunny factory! Remember, this set up has been running for 2 years now. So after some careful vacuuming and wiping down a few places, I once again had a clean system. This also gave me a chance to reduce the fan speed to 1200. I also opted to remove one of the fans completely so only two are now installed. I'll be watching temps for a few day and hopefully I can stay with the setup as is.
Finally, it was new tubing time. I only had to make one new tube and I had a reference of the previous tube (now two pieces) and it wasn't a complicated set of bends - just two 90° bends the right distance apart. Still, I managed to screw up the first one. Embarrassingly, I put the bending tool on the tubing inside of the two 90° bends which meant when I made the second corner, the bending tool was trapped on the pipe! One forehead smack and cutting of the now useless pipe to retrieve the bending tool later, I remade the tube and installed it.
I re-ran and zip tied a few cables for neatness and pulled the motherboard power connection to install a jumper so I could power up the water pump on the bench without firing up the whole system. When you drain and refill a PC water cooling system there's always a lot of air bubbles in the system and air bubbles mean seriously reduced cooling. Running the water pump for several hours is necessary to allow the bubbles to move and become trapped in the reservoir. We went out last night so I let it run all night. This morning, I topped off the reservoir and replaced the PC under my desk, reconnected everything, and mashed the power button and I'm writing this post on it now.
The changes - removal of the flow sensor and one fan, and reducing fan speed - made it SOOO much quieter it's almost unbelievable. I can now occasionally hear the heads click while moving in the hard drives in my server 10 feet away in a rack, stored in a cubby.
My system is up-to-date and running well, snapshots and backups are automatic, so I'm wondering what to do next...
The tube on the far right is the one I made yesterday.
My PC is water cooled and a flow sensor I had installed failed some time ago. It would occasionally spin and make a bunch racket every so often but I had delayed removing it because that meant making a new water tube.
I switched to hard tubing rather than flex several years ago because the evaporation rate using flex tubing was annoying. I had to add water almost monthly before and the current setup has lasted 2 years without having to add any water. The downside to hard tubing is you have to custom bend and cut every path. It takes some time and I frequently end up messing up one or two during the process. I usually just buy a 10 pack of tubes so I have extra.
Another thing that had been bugging me was the fan noise. Normally water cooling is rather quiet. But on this last build, I installed a new, larger radiator and bought three high efficiency fans. I didn't test them first and just set them to "normal" speed (a 3 position switch - Advanced, Normal, Hybrid). Well, "Normal" was 2000 RPM and the sound was rather noticeable. Three of them running all the time and in an open frame case was NOT quiet and the switches were not accessible because they are mounted behind the radiator.
So yesterday afternoon, I drained the water lines and reservoir, pulled the fans out, and removed the busted flow sensor and tubes connected to it.
Then it was time for dust removal - the space between the fans and radiator looked like a dust bunny factory! Remember, this set up has been running for 2 years now. So after some careful vacuuming and wiping down a few places, I once again had a clean system. This also gave me a chance to reduce the fan speed to 1200. I also opted to remove one of the fans completely so only two are now installed. I'll be watching temps for a few day and hopefully I can stay with the setup as is.
Finally, it was new tubing time. I only had to make one new tube and I had a reference of the previous tube (now two pieces) and it wasn't a complicated set of bends - just two 90° bends the right distance apart. Still, I managed to screw up the first one. Embarrassingly, I put the bending tool on the tubing inside of the two 90° bends which meant when I made the second corner, the bending tool was trapped on the pipe! One forehead smack and cutting of the now useless pipe to retrieve the bending tool later, I remade the tube and installed it.
I re-ran and zip tied a few cables for neatness and pulled the motherboard power connection to install a jumper so I could power up the water pump on the bench without firing up the whole system. When you drain and refill a PC water cooling system there's always a lot of air bubbles in the system and air bubbles mean seriously reduced cooling. Running the water pump for several hours is necessary to allow the bubbles to move and become trapped in the reservoir. We went out last night so I let it run all night. This morning, I topped off the reservoir and replaced the PC under my desk, reconnected everything, and mashed the power button and I'm writing this post on it now.
The changes - removal of the flow sensor and one fan, and reducing fan speed - made it SOOO much quieter it's almost unbelievable. I can now occasionally hear the heads click while moving in the hard drives in my server 10 feet away in a rack, stored in a cubby.
My system is up-to-date and running well, snapshots and backups are automatic, so I'm wondering what to do next...
The tube on the far right is the one I made yesterday.