Extremely oversized reservoir. Good idea or bad?

R

Rock&Roll

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 22, 2000
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So, I'm getting ready to put together my first CPU water cooling loop. I have everything I need on hand except some clamps and a reservoir. I held off on the reservoir knowing that I can just run a t-Line. However, I had another idea creep into my head....

Using a 5 gallon bucket for a reservoir. Distilled water is cheap. New 5 gallon buckets are cheap. Mod the bucket with some 1/2" barbs and away I roll. Put outlet in the bottom, where the coolest water would be, and dump the return in the top.

What I'm thinking is that the increased volume of water will help the system stay cool under extreme situations, like full load in the summer heat. With more water, if the radiator is getting a little over whelmed, the extra volume would help make sure temps don't rise really fast.

Not that I'm extremely worried or anything, as I'm going to be using a 3x120mm rad just for an overclocked core i7. Still, I have that bigger-is-better itch.
 
It's a matter of thermal capacity. Yes, it would take much longer for a huge volume of water to warm up and during high CPU and GPU loads your temperatures would be lower for a much longer time, but when the water heats up it would take much longer time for it to cool down, meaning that your temps will fall off gradually.

This solution sounds OK when you run your PC under full load occasionally, but if do that 24/7 there's no excuse to use a large reservoir.
 
Tex is exactly correct, all it will do is provide a "buffer" so that it will take longer for your machine to come up to its operating temp, and it will not be all that long either. I agree there is no good reason under normal circumstances for a large res. (unless you are using a swimming pool etc. - its been done ) res is to have spare water to keep pump from going dry due to the minor water loss all systems experience and remove air from the system. It will not hurt anything to have a 5 gal res but it will not really help anything either /shrug.
 
Bill and Tex Spot On. What you really want to do is make sure the Rad is good enough. Res is just a convenience. Thats all a res is....convenience. Makes it easier to do things like bleed and add more liquid with the system running.

Rad is Critical though:).

If you want to solve a heat problem fix the Rad.

Also large Res will make it hard to move the comp. If you plan on moving it ;-P

I still need to put mounts on my system for the quad rad I have. That way all I grab is the chassis and everything comes with it when I move the computer.
 
What they said :) Also if you use a bucket you'll have to keep filling it as it will evaporate over time. If you could get that bucket O' water about 3ft underground and in an aluminum container with lots of fins all around it then you'd be on to something. You'd have to bury it though so forget about moving it anywhere.
 
Jiggaman2576 said:
What they said :) Also if you use a bucket you'll have to keep filling it as it will evaporate over time. If you could get that bucket O' water about 3ft underground and in an aluminum container with lots of fins all around it then you'd be on to something. You'd have to bury it though so forget about moving it anywhere.
Click to expand...

Ha. Yeah, I had already pretty much given up on the idea. These guys were correct.

But thanks for dropping to idea to bury it. Though not realistic now, I wouldn't completely write it off for some years on down the line.:p
 
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