Looking for a decent water pump

[Lope]

Quiet, reliable, low power.

The water pump in my watercooled PC has died. Its getting power, but it doesn't run.
Its a 5W 220V aquarium pump.

It has run for about 5 years, initially PC was on for 6 months constantly, after it was used as a normal PC (on/off on/off etc).

I wonder if there are any industrial quiet little pumps like this. (more reliable than aquarium)

 

[Drake2007]

5 years for a pump? sounds quite reliable to me.

 

[Archer]

Why not get pumps that were designed for water cooling? Like the Swiftech 655

 

[Lope]

Nice suggestion, I see the swiftech has a design life of 50,000 hours, which is 5 years of constant use. The acquarium pump I used only got 5 years with about 1-2 years total on time.
But its 24W. Jezus, 3.1M head pressure... Way more power than I need. Its gonna be too noisy. 33 ~ 34 dBA. The pump I used can't be heard in a quiet room from 1m away.
I'll see if theres something lower power available. Their smallest pump is 12w, still much more than I need. I'll see what other watercooling pumps are available.

 

[Archer]

The Swiftech 655 is speed adjustable. And that noise reading is at ±65cm (2 feet) in a completely silent room. A whisper is generally 30dba, so double the volume of a whisper, at 2 feet, when its in a closed case, should really not be that much
Otherwise you could also look at danger den I guess. Those are the only two that get sold locally that I know of.

 

[Lope]

What suppliers have these? I checked frontosa, they only have kits. Frontosa seem to be the most 'gamer/modding' orientated.

Otherwise I've used the waterhouse pumps before (big ones), they're pretty good, 2 year warranty. I've asked them about their MTBF. I'll share what they say.

My watercooled PC is 100% silent from about 1m away, it has no fans, the only moving parts are the pump and hard drives, and they're wrapped up and vibration damped. So I want to keep it that way.

 

[Archer]

landmarkpc is the only place I know of that sells decent water cooling gear. Everyone else just has those lame kits that are usually noisy and underpowered.

edit: and you must either have one heck of a radiator, or a very low power PC to get away with no fans. PICS!! Very interested

 

[Lope]

Cool thanks, I'll check out landmarkpc.

I don't have any recent pics online, this is from 2005 when I first set her up, before painting her black.

back in the day I used 15% antifreeze to prevent corrosion and algae.
But its an all copper rig, and algae grew after 6 months. Then I drained all the coolant, painted the radiator black, as well as all the external pipes, covered the inside of the window with black plastic to keep the light out, and its been running 4.5 years with no algae.
I also cut a little hole in the top for an 80mm fan that runs on 5v, it hardly turns, it just basically lets the heat buildup out.
Everything that generates significant heat is watercooled, but ofcourse all components in the PC generate heat. Adding the little fan on top dropped the internal temperature a good 15C (I'd guess) and you can't hear it, because it hardly turns. Its not nice having a fan in my fanless system, but yeah, its practical. I haven't even bothered to connect it properly, I just shove the wires into a molex connector, sometimes they fall out hehehe, then I'm like 'oh, the fan's not running' a few weeks later. Just having the hole there helps.
It wasn't a ground up build, it was a hack, conceptual evolution.
Its not the best silent system ever, it was my first build, I've got much better designs in mind, but lack of a decent garage/workshop/workspace and free time means its vaguely in the future.
The only custom PC I've built since then is my low power server. Also sort of a hack.

When I get my hacking/building site up I'll put it all on there, construction pics etc.

It looks a lot more sealthy now. Just a silent black box where the air is kind of warm above it. People don't know what the **** it is

It was good to experience passive radiator. Next time I won't go 100% passive radiator, but I'll go 100% passive water flow.

 

[Lope]

my first hard drive waterblock, technically higher performance, but tricky to build well, I scrapped it.

an early test run with some old parts

 

[Lope]

Sho, those landmarkpc pumps are not cheap hey... lol, acquarium pumps are like 10% of the price.