I am kinda a DIY audio hobbiest and have been planning a HTPC project for the last year. I am still in the idea gathering stage and planning, as I have to finish up a laundry list of amps, preamps and power filtering projects for myself and others.
I plan to build my own case from, essentially scratch. Or at a minium strip out the frame of cheap case and built out the shell to my liking. I have seen some of the solutions like Atech Fab that are ungodly expensive (although that isn't really the issue) but I was thinking of something a little more creative.
My questions
Has anyone thought of, built, tried, etc to use heatpipes in conjunction with a water cooling solution? I mean, what if you use heatpipes from all the 'hot stuff'
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
Seems like 1) one could avoid leakage issues inside the case, 2) avoid galvanic corrosion by having the side mounted radiator and a larger water cooling radiator made of the same material, 3) have ease of maintainence and layout. Construction of course is not trivial, but I have seen some really remarkeable projects here of equal or greater difficulty.
Well this is my idea thus far. I have some newbie questions though. How far away can I place the pump, radiator (not the side radiator), etc? I would like to have all the loud and ugly stuff in the basement just below the room where my HTPC will reside.
I was thinking of then running tubes up to the HTPC from the basement where the pump and radiator are. Is this too problematic? I read that air can get trapped in the higher radiator, how much of a problem is this?
If I had a pump with the gusto to drive water uphill to the HTPC, will there be too much noise, even with the pump in the basement? I.e. will the swurling of water through the hose and radiator likely make a lot of noise? My goal is silence if you haven't inferred that already.
Thanks!