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By   posted Friday, 3rd February, 2012 2:19 AM   Comments 0

In most computers, fans do a pretty good job of keeping electronic components cool. But for people who want to use high-end hardware or coax their PCs into running faster, a fan might not have enough power for the job. If a computer generates too much heat, liquid cooling can be a better solution.


A liquid-cooling system for a PC takes advantage of a basic principle of thermodynamics that moves heat from warmer objects to cooler objects. As the cooler object gets warmer, the warmer object gets cooler.


Computer components generate heat as a byproduct of moving electrons around. A computer’s microchips are full of electrical transistors. The more transistors a chip contains and the faster they change states, the hotter the chip gets.


The thermal conductivity of liquid water is about 25 times that of air. Obviously, this gives liquid cooling a huge advantage over air-cooling because liquid cooling allows for a much faster transfer of heat.


The specific heat capacity of liquid water is about four times that of air, which means it takes four times the amount of energy to heat water than it does to heat air. Once again, water’s ability to soak up much more heat energy without increasing its own temperature is a great advantage over air-cooling.


Despite water’s incredibly superior heat transferring characteristics, there are a few drawbacks associated with it. First is the liquid coolant’s electrical conductivity. Second, is to consider the maintenance factor. Third is that the water-cooling components are much more expensive than their air-cooling counterparts.


With all these negatives, it seems like liquid cooling would be a hard sell. However, liquid cooling isn’t nearly as dangerous as it sounds, if you are careful with the materials, the risk gets greatly diminished. As far as maintenance is concerned, today’s coolants need to be replaced quite rarely, maybe once a year. As for price, any equipment that delivers top-tier performance can be justified if it’s important to you.