Acetone in water cooling system

[omegarhn]

can i use ACETONE instead of regular coolant for my water cooling system?
maybe it sounds crazy, but I would like to know if a regular water pump can handle it without any issues and also if my loops and reservoir wont be ruined cause that (PETG and ACRYLIC)

 

[Gam3r01]

No, it would eat right through the plastics, as well as numerous other issues.
Why would you want to use acetone anyway?

 

[carltonje]

why would you put a solvent in your cooling system. the acrylic will melt over time.

 

[LordVile]

Rubber and plastic would be heavily corroded and will clog the system before it eats through. Could see it working if you put effort into a full metal loop though.

 

[Karadjgne]

Acetone = nail polish remover. Any solvent that caustic, or even close, will rip apart your acrylics (nail polish is acrylic) and plastics faster and harder than you swallowing a quart of ex-lax. The results of either will be pretty close...

 

[omegarhn]

What I'm trying to find is a coolant substitute to get better performance... actually I'm using Mayhem red blood but I want to go lower without using liquid nitrogen

 

[USAFRet]

ut I want to go lower

Lower than what?

As noted above, bad idea.

 

[omegarhn]

as lower as i can in order to overclock my cpu up to 5.2ghz.
I scored 5.1Ghz fully loaded at 1.450v and 80 degrees

 

[omegarhn]

by the way... it's a i7 7700k

 

[USAFRet]

as lower as i can in order to overclock my cpu up to 5.2ghz.
I scored 5.1Ghz fully loaded at 1.450v and 80 degrees

Well...now that we have some actual numbers to work with...

Actual water is about the best you can work with. Outside of silliness lilk LN, of course.

Is this for a one off screen cap of that magic number, or is this to actually use day to day?

 

[omegarhn]

as lower as i can in order to overclock my cpu up to 5.2ghz.
I scored 5.1Ghz fully loaded at 1.450v and 80 degrees

Well...now that we have some actual numbers to work with...

Actual water is about the best you can work with. Outside of silliness lilk LN, of course.

Is this for a one off screen cap of that magic number, or is this to actually use day to day?

 

[omegarhn]

just for "the magic number"

 

[lumineZ]

For that " once magic number" just put your rad in an icebath.

Bevare of condensation!!!
<------> You have been warned. <------->
<------> You have been warned. <------->
<------> You have been warned. <------->

Besides from that. No you can not use ACETONE.

 

[Karadjgne]

Just use distilled water. Except exchange the reservoir for a very large bucket/fishtank filled with distilled ice cube water. The lower you can get the liquid temps, the more heat energy will transfer, lower cpu temp.

At 1.45v you don't have much room to maneuver and keep stability, without doing permanent damage to the cpu, regardless of temps.

 

[Gam3r01]

Agreed with the above, you really cant get better than water outside of active cooling (a chiller, LN2, etc). Water has an outstanding capacity for heat.
Hence why putting your hand in 212F water hurts really bad, but putting your hand in a 450F oven is mildly unpleasant.

 

[william p]

Water is about as good as it get for a coolant. Unless there is evaporation going on there won't be any advantage to doing that.
Acetone can be used in sealed heatpipes where it will evaporate and condense, but water under a vacuum can do the same thing just as well.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Water has one of the best specific heat capacities of any liquid, both by mass and by volume. Acetone and other organic chemicals are far, far worse.

LN2 is good because boiling absorbs heat, which happens far below ambient at room pressure, but is fairly average at actually carrying heat.

If you really, really want to remove heat around room temperature, you use hydrogen. Very large substations and generators use it, but extreme safety precautions are of course necessary.

If you want a non-conductive liquid that doesn't require serious precautions, transformer oil is probably your best bet, but be careful with compatibility with plastics and rubbers.

Phase change is another game entirely, of course. But you're getting into refrigeration there.

FWIW, water is a very very effective solvent. We just tend not to build with stuff that can dissolve in it...

 

[rubix_1011]

Pure, distilled water, as many here have mentioned....this is your 'coolant' that will provide the absolute best thermal transfer.

Beyond that, you're going to have to go the route of a couple options with water/liquid cooling in the form of sub-ambient:

TEC/Peltier - either by way of direct block application or with an indirect coolant refrigerator. You would do well to seek out 4ryan6 and his applications on this...he's been doing it for a few years. https://www.overclock.net/forum/62-peltiers-tec/1633988-chilled-water-cooling-vs-3-0-build-log.html

You can also go the route of modifying a window A/C unit and dropping the evaporator into a large reservoir (read: picnic cooler). I've done this for my beer brewing fermentation setup, but could easily be applied for PC watercooling using sub-ambient rated glycol. Water just freezes the evaporator core into a solid block of ice if you use only water, so yes, it gets very, very cold.

 

[devbiker]

On your temps - is your chip delidded? That's likely to be the best thing that you can do for your temps at this point.

Not sure where you got the acetone idea ...

 

[rubix_1011]

Just because it 'feels' cold on your skin doesn't mean it actually cools in the same manner to hardware.

 

[drea.drechsler]

On your temps - is your chip delidded? That's likely to be the best thing that you can do for your temps at this point.

Not sure where you got the acetone idea ...

Idea probably comes from overclocking on dry ice where you mix crushed dry ice and acetone (which has a super low freeze point) in an LN2 pot. You don't need all the dewar flasks and special tubing and stuff, just the pots. Jayz2cents just showed us how it's done on his youtube channel!

Trying to extend that concept to closed-loop cooling is simply crazy.

And oh yeah...cause it 'feels' cold to you skin IS a valid reason to think it would cool hardware. That's because it (acetone) evaporates rapidly, which is a phase change that takes heat from the environment. But simply piping it across surface in a closed system that inhibits the phase change wouldn't work. So all you have to do is spray a fine mist of acetone on your CPU cooler and voila! Explosions and fire!

 

[rubix_1011]

LN2 pots (copper/nickel) are very different than plastics and acrylics used for liquid cooling.

Also, jayz2cents...I'll refrain for now.

I see your logic, but in a cooling loop, acetone isn't going to evaporate - that isn't how the cooling principles of liquid cooling works. You're attempting to compare apples and apples when it's really apples and folding chairs.

Closed system = not going to evaporate. And if it could, you've only created a heatpipe and those already exist. You'd also have to remove a significant thermal load volume in order for this to work correctly. But again, very different principles than a liquid cooling loop.

 

[drea.drechsler]

.

I see your logic, but in a cooling loop, acetone isn't going to evaporate - that isn't how the cooling principles of liquid cooling works....

Which is exactly what i said

 

[rubix_1011]

.

I see your logic, but in a cooling loop, acetone isn't going to evaporate - that isn't how the cooling principles of liquid cooling works....

Which is exactly what i said

You said it better, anyway. Sorry, wasn't trying to steal your thunder.

 

[william p]

Acetone freezes at -139*F. So it's useful to wet Dry Ice to help heat transfer through a liquid.