Liquid Cooling Part 1 - Cluster

After finding some small 15x15x5mm heatsinks, I decided to create an ODROID cluster using water cooling in order to reduce its temperature and noise. I started with a single ODROID-XU4 to see if the small heatsinks were powerful enough to distribute heat away from the board. After the initial tests, I connected the cooling system to the rest of the cluster, as shown in the images.

Cooling equipment

  • Alphacool DC-LT 3600 Ceramic - 12V DC, Alphacool DC-LT Plexi top, and Alphacool reservoir (http://bit.ly/1vDYvJJ)
  • Alphacool MCX ram copper edition (http://bit.ly/1C3t8Ml)
  • Alphacool MCX 5x divider (http://bit.ly/1qYh1vr)
  • Alphacool NeXxus Monsta 140 Radiator with NB-Blacksilent Pro PK2 (http://bit.ly/1Fi5yrA)
  • 120mm radiator
  • 8V pump with reservoir
  • Adjustable DC-DC step-up convertor to control the speed of the fan and pump

Figure 1 - The setup is not overly complicated if you want to go liquid cooling.

Cluster

  • 10 x ODROID-U3
  • 1 x ODROID-XU
  • 1 x ODROID-XU4
  • 2 x 5V 20A PSU
  • 24 Port NW-Switch
  • 2 x 8 Port-HDMI-Switch

Figure 2 - Here we see the Liquid cooled ODROIDS on a sweet setup as described above.

After filling the system, I had some problems with a leaky divider, but now it all runs fine. Using thermal paste instead of a thermal pad reduced the temperature by 5°C, and required custom fittings for the heatsink.

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