Running water cooling AIO 24/7/365?

[eccerr0r]

Does anyone here run an AIO or other liquid cooled CPU cooling solution 24/7/365 / on a server? Do you feel comfortable with possible failures? Should I be worried about pump failures? Pump failures causing leaks?

Having reservations on a second hand cooling system on a PC. So far it's pretty good, keeps things nice and cool but I've never had long term experience with 24/7/365 operation of water cooling, AIO or not. Might have to downgrade to an air cooled system for peace of mind?

[stj]

they dont leak,
the failure modes are pump dying and liquid slowly being replaced by air causing air-traps.

the liquid thing takes several years,
the pump failure is no different to a fan failure, the pump output's a tacho signal to the motherboard.
so the system will detect the failure and shutdown.

[eccerr0r]

I'm worried about water boiling and causing vapor gaps, and thus possible thermal damage. I'd imagine a regular heatsink would be far better at dissipating heat long term if the fan died versus pump failure.

Then there's also the fan on the radiator, and that can fail too. Two possible points of failure?

Just wondering if I should chance using the liquid cooling system until it dies or preemptively switch to a heatsink/fan combo which will indefinitely dissipate at least some heat... anyone using water cooled systems on a 24/7 server? Trustable?

BTW I got this computer with the water cooling AIO system and wonder if I should ditch it for a regular hs/f if I wanted to run it 24/7... that's the ultimate issue here versus considering buying a water cooler system... definitely not, IMHO.

[stj]

i tried / tested unplugging the pump on one,
the bios shuts the system down real fast if the cpu goes over 70'
so no worries.
you arent going to boil the fluid anyway, it's got chemicals like glycol in it and the cpu is not going to go over maybe 60' unless your doing something stupid.

[eccerr0r]

Oh I will be doing something "stupid" ... like compiling things overnight (Gentoo Linux). Also I'd much rather have it throttle than shutdown... perhaps for this constraint, air cooling is better?

[petehall347]

will thermosyphon work i wonder ? maybe have it in place as a redundant system ? i dunno

[eccerr0r]

I don't know of any off the shelf cooling systems that are redundant... and all water cooling/AIOs at least, are all waterblock and pump-on-cpu.

[stj]

first, nothing wrong with compiling or torrenting overnight.
by "stupid" i meant things like overclocking or reducing fan-speed.

lets look at the 3 cooling systems.

1: traditional sink+fan
it puts a lot of stress on the board with the weight, and the sink fills with dust slowly,
but the 80mm+ fans never seem to fail.
so the failure mode would be a slow increase in temperature from dust buildup, and you would notice.

2: AIO
pumps can fail - never seeen it but i believe it.
liquid slowly gets air in it - or some other gas maybe.
i dont see a problem adding a "T" to the hose to top one off or purge&fill if it gets old.

3: traditional waterblock
open system so you can see the fluid reservour and top it off,
pumps are well made,
very fucking expensive unless you DIY one using and old AIO maybe for the cpu plate.
probably gonna leak when you first build it.

check out Jay's 2cents on YT - he'sthe water cooling expert.
https://www.youtube.com/@Jayztwocents/videos

[stj]

just a thought,
if you build a sealed system with an expansion vessel you could use alcahol or maybe cheap vodka would be safer.
the expansion tank is essential because alcahol expands hugely as it warms up.
vodka would only be 40% alcahol so not so bad in that regard.