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Water Cooled

M0ses

M0ses

Sep 11, 2009
3,715
1,079
Los Angeles
#1
Well yeah I just had this silly idea and figured I would bother TB with it :smug:

Anyway, yeah, I was thinking, wouldn't it be sweet to water-cool an amp? I guess over-heating probably doesn't really happen all that often, but even so I'm sure that it would be beneficial to performance, endurance, reliability, etc. to actually efficiently cool an amp. I mean let's face it the fan and/or radiator doesn't get the job done, you can fry eggs on some amps, ESPECIALLY if they're crammed in a rack!

So what do you think? Too much hassle? Too expensive? Too much danger of a leak? Or is it a GREAT IDEA?!?
 
#3
Too much hassle? Too expensive? Too much danger of a leak? Or is it a GREAT IDEA?!?

Yes to all but the latter
Since a fan gets the job done and modern amps produce less heat than earlier designs, why bother?
Of course if you're going to that much trouble; why limit yourself to water when liquid nitrogen is available ;)
 
#9
Renaissance said:
You would still need a way to cool the water. Why not just skip the water and use whatever you were gonna cool the water, to cool the amp.
Click to expand...

Have you never heard of computer water cooling? Look it up. I don't have the numbers, but I know that the efficiency and effectiveness of water cooling is way, way beyond that of a simple fan system. If you do things really smart, you can get your components cooler than the ambient air. Which of course could cause condensation, so even smarter would be to not do that.
 
#10
Water IS a better fluid for cooling than air is. But it offers a fair amount of challenges so it's usually easier, cheaper, & actually more reliable to use air.

Most systems I've encountered that use water to cool computers use an intermediary fluid between the heat source & sink.
 
#12
I read a little bit about the aftermarket PC kits, and it sounds like they're used mostly to keep the heat at bay while you increase the clock speed in a, say, 1.8 ghz cpu to 2.25 ghz, so video game gee*s, uhrrr, afficienados can play faster games. Comparing the need for it in an ultra fast pc vs. a bass amplifier is kinda' like comparing a Ferrari to an old Volkswagon bug. Which was also air cooled.
 
#14
You just need more efficient amps.
Class-d amps can be 90+ percent efficient.
At 1000 Wats you'd get 100w of heat. Not 500W heat for 1000w like a typical amplifier.

At least in big IT shops water or other cooling is here to stay.
The processors have millions of transistors in a tiny space. Even with high efficiency you need to get the heat out of these tiny processors. The water can conduct it to a bigger heat sink - essentially making a thermal transformer from a small area to a large area. No sense freezing the air in a computer room, run the water pipes to big outside cooling areas. Since computer rooms are getting overall smaller because computers are more powerful. You actually won't need a special room with separate air conditioning. Much cheaper overall and easier to move if your lease runs out.
 
#15
That could be pretty awesome if you needed to extract 1000 watts out of a 100 watt amp. Or cram 100 1000watt amps in a small room to run at once.

But fortunately 1000 watt amps are much cheaper with less negative side effects than water cooling kits and stay cool enough on their own with air. And I don't think I could hear anything with that much power amp used anywhere.
 
#20
You all do realize that if you have WATER, you can use electronics, even if it is doused?

Pure water, I mean. We went over this in a science class once. If it's pure H2O, it will not hurt electronics. I've seen videos of people putting a cell phone under pure water and using it. What hurts electronics is the other crap that is inevitably in the water.

So... if you were able to get pure water to cool it with, you wouldn't even really have to worry about a spill.
 

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