20 Computadoras poco convencionales con refrigeración líquida

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In Pictures: 20 Clever Liquid-Cooled PC Setups

There isn't much known about this particular rig built by Castle Computer Systemsin Redding, California. However, one common characteristic it shares with other water-cooled solutions is the clear acrylic chassis. Chosen for obvious aesthetic reasons, this type of case is relatively inexpensive, starting at around $70. Like some of the other custom builds we highlight in the pages to follow, this PC has a truly unique and artistic design.

Peter Dickison first began his how-to series back in 2003 with the goal to convert a C³ acrylic case into a tribute to vintage British science fiction.  Called Orac³, the main focus of the project during the build phase was to make everything on the inside look as good as the outside. It was finished a year later, and the resulting rig is nothing short of spectacular.

"Along the way, a use was found for unusual items, such as shower-hose and aquarium tubing, and the whole project had to follow a theme: chrome, neon-green Perspex, polished stainless steel, and clear acrylic," he said.

While we've covered steampunk mods in other articles, this particular rig is simply called Steampunk, and was created by korko czong over on Mod Planet.

According to a rough Google translation, the project originally began as a simple water-cooling implementation. However, the approaching holidays offered the modder a little free time that he eventually used to implement new ideas. Before long, the cooling project became a full-fledged modification. As seen above, the pipes aren't installed just for looks--they actually provide the rig's liquid-cooling system.

"The idea for this custom-PC build initially came about from working with thermo-electric, Peltier-based water cooling on a nano aquarium," Nano AIO wrote on his blog. "I was amazed at the selection of products and vendors in the water-cooling space. I needed a new computer for home use and my laptop was over 10 years old, so I thought I would build my own PC with liquid cooling." The design features a Danger Den Tower 26 acrylic case, rigid aluminum water tubing, and radiator intake manifolds. The construction process can be seenhere.

This water-cooled system first appeared in an article on the New York Times' Web site back in 2008. The author refers to a brother named Misha, but specific hardware details are not disclosed.

However, according to Misha, liquid cooling dissipates heat more effectively, allowing a more aggressive overclock. Misha also says in the article that water cooling in PCs is still a niche market, adding that "only us geeks take the time to set it up." Still, as the article points out, the system could be ruined if a tube sprung a leak. For Misha, that would mean $1200 of his own money going down the drain.

Located on the Overclockers Australia Forums, member "rainwulf" details Project Monolith, a water-cooled system inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey and fictional technology called Jain imagined by English science fiction writer Neal Asher.

"It will be completely water-cooled, and I mean completely," rainwulf wrote when he first began the project. "If it produces heat, it will have a water block on it." Rainwulf wasn't kidding—the motherboard, the CPU, MOSFETs, DDR2, and the northbridge and southbridge components are all water-cooled. He even covered the PhysX card, the X-Fi card, power supply, and the hard drives.

Dominoe Computers began work on Oil Spill back in April 2008 and finished the project a month later. According to the blog, the rig is made completely from scratch—starting with seven sheets of 5 mm Perspex cut to size and a special Perspex adhesive.

"This is harder than it looks," the group behind the mod admitted. "But, it's also a lot of fun trying to come up with solutions to a lot of problems." Oil Spill now features a cooling system that pumps 20 liters of white oil through its man-made veins.

You have to admit that this is a sexy beast. Popular Mechanics actually constructed this water-cooled mod in May 2009, which features a half-gallon of glycol flowing through 15 feet of Tygon tubing.

On a hardware level, the PC has a XFX nForce 790i Ultra motherboard, 4 GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM, a 3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, and a Palit GeForce GTX 280 graphics card cooled by Danger Den's Tieton water block. There's a good bet that this PC-in-a-desk could play Crysis and look good doing it, too.

Matt Slagle of AVADirect Custom Computers’ research and development department posted a description of this liquid-cooled PC on one of the company’s forums back in 2008 as an example of AVADirect's custom-built systems. While the specs of this particular rig aren't listed, Slagle writes that the company selects the best cooling system to match the demands of each custom PC it builds. For example, Swiftech Apogee GT and GTX water blocks are used for CPUs. For GPUs, AVADirect selects either a Alphacool NexXxoS VGA, a EK VGA, or a Danger Den IONE VGA water block.

This liquid-cooled system from BesTecH Computer Solutions uses coolant piped in through an actual freezer.

"BesTecH revolutionized the cooling system by using a chest freezer to further chill the liquid-cooled system they designed," the company said. "Our goal was to achieve the highest [3DMark03] score, but they also designed the computer to be used for everyday gaming." Hardware specs include the Asus Striker II Extreme motherboard, the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 quad-core processor, dual BFG GeForce 9800 GX2 cards in Quad-SLI mode, and more.

Here's another desk with a built-in, water-cooled PC. Apparently, Case Mod Blog member and modder USFORCES wanted more space on his desktop. To accomplish this, he decided to remove his tweaked Q9650-based system from its previous Thermaltake tower enclosure and integrate it into the right side of his desk.

Ultimately, he built an entirely new desk from scratch using 3/4" oak plywood sheets. He mounted most of the hardware behind the desk door, while placing the two BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC graphics cards in an area just under the desktop, highlighted with UV and green LEDs. USFORCES also built a special dual-loop acrylic reservoir just for this particular setup.

Not much is known about this particular rig, but on the Overclockers forum, modder mwillman writes that this water-cooled PC features a quad-core CPU and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 FTW Edition graphics card.

"I'm getting over 19 000 on my 3DMark score and it's running at an average temp of 36 [degrees Celsius] with active water cooling," mwillman said. The clear acrylic chassis is Danger Den's Water Box Plus, which has a base price of $209.95. System builders can add additional features, such as colored motherboard trays, a colored top panel, and stainless steel fan grills.

This water-cooled gaming rig by Madman originally appeared on the Montreal Racing Forums, but the link is now dead.

On the cooling front, the machine reportedly uses an industrial Swiftech water pump with a double radiator that brings in water through ClearFLEX tubing from a Danger Den reservoir. There is also a single fan controller and four 120 mm and two 8 mm Antec Pro fans. As for the rig's go-fast hardware, it includes two EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS cards in SLI, an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 GHz quad-core processor with 8 MB of L2 cache, a Razer AC-1 sound card, and more.

Over on the Xtreme Systems forums, member zonex8 showcased his first water-cooled rig in November 2009. Other than a few images, no other details are available. However, the rig uses an Intel Core 2 processor, two Nvidia graphics cards in SLI, a SilverStone chassis, an X-Fi sound card, and lots of green and blue tubing. There are at least 10 fans installed throughout the system and an LG Blu-ray optical drive is mounted on the front.

Originally posted on TechPowerUp in March 2009, this oil-cooled PC was inspired by a similar rig designed by Pugent. According to system builder chooky, the cooling system went through several variations before reaching its current state.

"The cooling system has been an evolution from pumping oil through an air-cooled radiator, to evaporative cooling with a bong, to Peltier cooling [next to the PSU]," chooky said. Eventually he settled on a system using a 20 000 liter above-ground pool pumping water to a heat exchanger and a homemade CPU heat block. To see this pool-cooled PC, head here.

Created by Godfather1138 and posted on the Overclockers forum, project "Don't Screw This Up" shows how the modder constructed this water-cooled, Nvidia-themed PC.

"The case was given to me, so I decided to play with water cooling and overclocking," he said. "I started by placing some orders that would get my 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 off of OEM support." The water-cooling system employs Swiftech's Apogee GT CPU water block, the Black Ice GTS 240 dual radiator, the Iwaki MD-20RZG-2 pump (which is in the section behind the Nvidia logo), and Danger Den's Fillport reservoir.

Although Project: Epic Spider doesn't look all that spectacular under normal lighting conditions, the rig's inner design lights up to reveal a purple and red network of tubing and black lights when the room goes dark.

Built by The Jesus in May 2008, Project: Epic Spider's cooling system consists of a main radiator with three 120 mm fans, a reservoir/pump, a second radiator with a single 120 mm fan, and four GPU blocks. The cooling system runs from the pump to the CPU, the second radiator, the GPUs, the main radiator, and then back to the pump. UV-reactive paint, red and UV cathode lights, and a red UV floppy cable create the lighting effects.

Now here's a liquid-cooled PC that looks good both during the day and at night. Called the Jules Verne, the system gets its steampunk persona from thick copper, over 300 machine screws, and plenty of gears yanked from an old clock.

With two water pumps at the top of the box, the rig's cooling system consists of copper water pipes and plastic cooling, the latter of which highlights the red and green coolant. Thermaltake radiators are also used, while holes are drilled into a copper sheet that is attached to the radiators to protect the fragile alloy fins.

The Dead Men Tell No Tales Mountain Mod is another liquid-cooled system on the Xtreme Systems forums that is worth a look. The system flashes neon purple against the red and black theme. As for cooling, the system uses a Swiftech MCP655 pump, the ThermoChill PA120.2 radiator, the D-Tek Fusion V2 CPU block, and a Swiftech MCRes-Micro reservoir.

As far as hardware goes, the Mountain Mod sports an Asus Striker 2 Extreme motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor, two Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 OC2 boards running in SLI mode, and two 2 GB modules of OCZ Reaper DDR3 RAM. The hardware is mounted in a Mountain Mods' U2-UFO CYO hyper-modular chassis that is decked out with a custom etching on the side.

Don't want to use liquid to cool the PC? Why not use foam? As seen above, this system builder assembled the PC without an actual chassis, installed the classic Windows 98 SE operating system, and then tested the final configuration. The modder immediately covered the hot mechanical parts with paper and cardboard, and then hosed the entire thing down with three cans of 750 ml polyurethane foam.

"Once everything was dry, [I] just cut out the connectors again with a sharp knife, made sure the drives could open and close, and cut out a hole for the air intake," the modder said. "No screws, no sheet metal, no plexi."

Fuente: http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/555-liquid-cooled-oil-cooled-popular-mechanics.html