Newbie Water Cooling Question

[jd53887]

I have no idea on how the water cooling thing works, well i have some idea, but here is my question. The way I see this is that Alcohol is a lot colder than water. It takes heat in more also. And if it spills, it dries up and vanishes faster. Why dont we replace the water with alcohol?

[metallicat666]

price. alcohol would be much more expensive. im sure theres another reason aswell that i saw discussed somewhere ages ago

[Darthtanion]

Something else to consider is that most water cooling systems use a food grade tubing throughout. I've not researched it, but how safe would an alcohol based liquid be to this type of material? Just something to think on.

[amd_man2005]

I don't know how bad alcohol corrodes things, but I'm sure it would be much harder on the CPU block, radiator and possibly the pump than what water is.

[JSN]

not to mention....flammable

[tweaky]

It would eventually eat thru the tubing...

[Quicksilver62160]

Re: Newbie Water Cooling Question

But at least you'd have a good drinking buddy... until the computer drinks you under the table and you take a sledge hammer to it.

Alcohol is so expensive too, as aformentioned, not to mention the highly unstable nature of alcoholic beverages, its molecular structure can't compete against good ole water.

[Harpoon]

Re: Newbie Water Cooling Question

The price wouldn't be too expensive, especially if you used something like methylated spirits, which is mostly ethanol, with some methanol, a dye, and soemthing to make it taste and smell bad (pyridine?).

Alcoholic beverages would have other substances in them like sugars and whatever gives them their flavour.

Flammability is an issue, but there shouldn't be any sparks to ignite the alcohol vapour, and case fans will quickly remove vapour from the case. Hopefully you're a non smoker too
However, breathing in methylated spirits is not recommended (it can cause blindness and death in larger amounts).

I'll have to find out about how alcohol will affect tubing and the copper blocks.

IIRC silicon tubing is used in most setups?

Check out http://www.homedistiller.org/materials.htm
and http://realbeer.com/jjpalmer/brewcorr.txt for more info on corrosion.

[Eaglee]

Re: Newbie Water Cooling Question

It would eventually eat thru the tubing...

nice avatar