At 12:57am -0400 Thu, 08 Apr 2010, Jonathan Aquilina wrote: > i know there is non conductive water which if it gets on > something shouldnt conduct electricity but how safe is a > water cooled system?
As regards non-conductive water, you're correct: *pure* water has a very high resistivity, something like 18 MΩ-cm. (Effectively, not conductive for home-uses.) However, pure water has to be manufactured, and water is also very good at dissolving and dispersing conductive ions. (Sugar with tea, anyone?) So, it's still not smart to play with a toaster in the tub. I have no experience with water cooled systems specifically, but I believe the point is to suck heat from the high-heat components, and not to just willy-nilly douse your entire box in water. For instance, you might replace the standard fan and heatsink on top of your CPU with a waterblock. The water would then be pumped through tubing of some kind to the waterblock (on top of the CPU), and back to a cooling radiator of some kind. The water never leaves it's circuit, but still disperses heat from the top of the chip in the socket. How safe is it? I can't answer empirically (no experience), but in theory it's just as safe as air. Water is never in contact with any electrically charged object, and never leaves it's tubing channels. Kevin _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
