Hi I'm building a water cooling system for my cpu. I have a couple of weeks to wait for my water block and radiater but I went out today and got a water pump for a small garden fountain. The size and flow is about right, adjustable up to 1000 litres per hour. My question is, since the pump is standard 240 volt and will be plugged into the wall seperatly, is there a way to have it start when I hit the power button to my PC? well I know its possible but how would I go about this? what would I need?
You could use a control relay that operates from the 12 Volt buss of the PSU. When the PSU turns on, the 12 volts energizes the relay's coil. This closes the contacts and provides the 240 volts to the pump. I'd wait for the correct pump. A proper relay, relay socket, enclosure, hardware and wiring would be more expensive than you might think. I'd also add a fuse to the 240 Volt side. Be advised that 240 VAC can kill you. I do this sort of thing for a living and know how to do this safely and correctly. Do you? I forgot to add a diode across the leads going to the relay coil. I'd try a 1N4001 and make sure you have it installed reverse biased. This will keep your PSU happy by not spiking it everytime the relay operates.
Hey, Thanks for that detailed info. I will try track down an old freind of mine who is an industrial sparky. Rest assured I never atempt anything before fully understanding what it is I'm trying to do.
I hope it works for you! I thought about the 240V and a waterpump and with water and V not mixing well I thought I'd just be cautious.
If I were you I would think about buying a 12v pump that can plug right into your computers power supply. There are plenty of great pumps out there like the swiftech mcp355 or 655 that use a 4 pin molex connector for power. The 655 is a great pump and can handle loops with multiple blocks and/or rads. What is all going into your loop?
Will be cooling the cpu only, my vid card already runs very cool and the northbridge has a quiet fan, ram has heat spreaders. I'm currently using an oversized copper heatsink and powerful fan for the cpu, it does its job with my current overclock but is very very noisy. The 12 volt pumps I were looking at started from $200 (my fiance hates me spending money on computers). Things like this are expensive here in NZ. Having already spent $170 on a waterblock and rad I went for a 240v submersable for $40 from a garden shop, seems to be of pretty good qaulity. I have a nice little foam box to submerge the pump in, should keep it nice an insulated. Being a steel fabricator, I will make a metal housing to fit the foam box in and to mount the rad off.
wow $170 waterblock? $200 pump? Where do you shop at?? Check out performance-pcs.com or jab-tech.com or frozencpu.com. There are some other good watercooling sites out there but I cant think of them off the top of my head. Anyways, the swiftech mcp655 pump I was talking about is around $80 and can definately handle a loop with only one waterblock in it. As for your waterblock, you can get a very nice waterblock for $60 or less. What cpu are you overclocking and how far do you plan to push it? I just think you are spending way to much money than you have to to get the job done.
Got them all local. $170 NZD for block, rad and 120mm fan including shipping. I looked around some overseas shops and the prices work out alot cheaper but the shipping to NZ cost around $70 USD ($90 NZ) just for a single waterblock with approx 1 month wait.
oh I didnt know you lived in NZ. Wow that sux that shipping costs that much! Well if you can find a 12v pump it would cause you alot less headaches installing it than a 240v pump. Good luck with whatever you decide to do!
Well I have decided to get a proper 12 volt pump that I can fit neatly in the case. I got all my other parts and rigged them all up this weekend with the 240 volt pump, all I can say is wow! Even after bumping the FSB, multiplier and Vcore even higher, I'm 12 degree's C above ambient, 39C idle and 44C on full load after running a stability test for 6 hours.
