water res. idea

D

DREW10

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 4, 2004
Messages
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I had an idea for a water cooling setup.......it would be a normal water cooling setup with a res., but the res. would be made out of aluminum and 1/2 thick, and the right size to fit in the bottom of a small refrigerator...the kind that some people put in thier rooms for drinks and stuff(http://www.beveragefactory.com/refrigerators/wine/wc192ss.shtml)....and the frig would cool the water....you could hace a radiator before the frig but that might be overkill.....

have i explained it alright??...has anybody ever done this before???

DREW
 
it could be done , what i would be worried though is that the fridge would be running all the time, they are designed to turn on when they reach a certain temperature and turn off when it gets lower , by adding heat into it from the cpu it might be enough to make it run all the time so it might not last a very long time , then again it might be ok too.

adding a radiator to the loop might help but it could hurt if the water in the loop is colder than the ambient air (the rad would actualy heat up the water to ambient air temperature in that case). i would try it without a rad first but with a large reservoir so it takes some time for the water to actualy heat up and see how it performs after a few hours.
 
What you could do is mod the fridge so that the radiator is inside the fridge with fans blowing cold air through it. That would be a heck of a mod, and a waste of a fridge almost lol.
 
how much heat does a CPU put into the water......could it be enough to transfer that much heat into the frig making it turn on ALL the time??....im not an expert but i dont think its enough to make the turn on all the time :confused:

DREW
 
i don't know realy if its enough , i only mentioned it so that if you actualy try it you keep it in mind just in case. i'm no expert either :D
 
yes it is more then enough. There have been many people before you who have tried using min fridges, and many who have failed, it doesn't take a signifigant delta to trip the condensor on the fridge on. If you were to pursue this idea though it'd be worth exploring the possibility of 'bypassing' the fridges sensor. Either electronically, or by locating the temp. sensor that is responsible for turning the condensor on. By cooling this sensor (somehow) you probably wouldnt have to worry about your fridge burning out, but on the flip side the fridge wont be an effective cooling device cuz itll be off more often. If you were really [H]ard you could try to wire a timer to the condensor switch (or a relay that turns the condensor on when you turn your PC on), then you'd have a powerful cooling idea that you wouldnt have to worry about burning out. :eek:
 
what if I put the temp. probe in the water, so it would cool the water to the selected temp.

DREW
 
its worth investigating. To be honest though I really have absolutely NO idea how the consendor knows when to turn on and shut off, i'm just assuming theres a temp. sensor somewhere in the fridge, I could be wrong.
 
I have a mini fridge which I considered using for some sort of cooling apparatus. Here is one idea I had:

Make a reservior and submerge the entire cooling element inside it. It would act as a waterchiller. In order for this to work and not just freeze the water, you would need either a sufficiently high concentration of antifreeze and/or a temp sensor to trip the compressor at a certain water temp. You would also probably need to insulate the componants being cooled from condensation. I'm not sure about the durability/longevity of the compressor and other componants in a mini fridge so additional cooling may be needed for them to run full time.

The cooling element in my fridge is a U shaped plate with coolant channels running through it. In the frisge, it hanges from the top of the fridge forming a basket which is the freezer portion of this fridge and it always has a thick layer of frost on it. Most mini fridges I've seen are built in a similar fashion. If you want, I can take a pic of it for you.
 
DREW10 said:
I had an idea for a water cooling setup.......it would be a normal water cooling setup with a res., but the res. would be made out of aluminum and 1/2 thick, and the right size to fit in the bottom of a small refrigerator...the kind that some people put in thier rooms for drinks and stuff(http://www.beveragefactory.com/refrigerators/wine/wc192ss.shtml)....and the frig would cool the water....you could hace a radiator before the frig but that might be overkill.....

have i explained it alright??...has anybody ever done this before???

DREW
Click to expand...

I would not use aluminum in my loop. Mixing aluminum in with copper blocks is definitely a no no. Super fast corrosion will result. Even if you are running a 10% mixture of anti freeze in it, it will still corrode, just takes longer. Make your res out of something like pvc or acryclic or something, or even copper if you are handy working metal. You could buy a roll of copper tube at a home center, it would be nice and flat. Dont know about the od of the coil, you would have to just check it out.
 
If you're planning on using the fridge only for dropping temps, not to cool food/drinks, just strip it. You'd have to rig up a timer relay to switch it on and off, but if you're going to go so far as to strip the cooling system from a fridge, a timer relay isn't much extra work.

I'd use a smaller square highly insulated cooler, fill it with water, stick the cooling element in the water, then submerse the PC's radiator in the water. You could also just leave the cooler filled with air, add a fan in there, and make it a bit less freeze-prone. Make sure you have a bypass pressure valve around the cooler and have it connected to a switch to turn the compressor off, just in case the radiator would freeze up.
 
2Busy said:
I would not use aluminum in my loop. Mixing aluminum in with copper blocks is definitely a no no. Super fast corrosion will result. Even if you are running a 10% mixture of anti freeze in it, it will still corrode, just takes longer. Make your res out of something like pvc or acryclic or something, or even copper if you are handy working metal. You could buy a roll of copper tube at a home center, it would be nice and flat. Dont know about the od of the coil, you would have to just check it out.
Click to expand...

This is not entirely true. While the science behind this statement is sound, there are factors that determine how bad aluminum will corrode in a loop using copper.
1) The type of additive
2) Wether or not the aluminum is anodized
3) Water temp

Certain additives will work better than others. I use a 10-15% mix of Zerex antifreeze and over the course of 10 months, the metal in my system has shown almost no signs of corrosion. As a matter of fact, the only evidence of corrosion I've seen is some slight discoloration of the copper surfaces exposed to water.
Anodizing hardens the outer layers of aluminum and greatly reduces susceptability to corrosion. Water temperature can also play a roll in the rate of corrosion. In science, most chemical reactions either create heat or can be accelerated by heat. Heated electrons move faster and can cause jumps to outer atomic orbits. As you may or may not be aware of, electricity is simply the movement of electrons from atom to atom. Excite the electrons with energy, (including heat) and they move around easier. As a matter of fact, most chemical reactions cannot occure unless they have the correct heat energy needed to excite the electrons and enable them to break their bonds. (Nuclear fusion being one example) This is precisely why your not supposed to reuse cooking oil. Once oil is heated, chemical reactions occur which change the atomic structure of the oil. Heat the oil over and over, and eventually it becomes dangerously flamable. The lesson here: The lower you can keep the temperatures in your watercooling loop, the lower the rate of corossion will be. I myself use a window A/C unit as a waterchiller which may help to account for the lack of corrosion in my system.

sorry for the rant, I'm just bored.
 
I had another idea....instead of using a res. i could get about 10-15 feet of 1/2 in. copper tubing and bend it so that it will fit on the bottom of the frig.....the the water will just run through the frig....i figured it would stay in the frig longer the way, and get more cooling

DREW
 
Like above just said I was thinking the same idea but just tapping a small 1/2" copper tube about 5" long and running that into the refrig and out again after the rad to cool it alittle but we'll have to see how that works out. I'm not sure but I don't really care because my minifridge is useless now that I'm outa the dorms.
 
I dont live in a dorm and use my minifridge all the time. Nothing better then a fridge next to your PC, no interuptions from my pathetic life in front of the PC (not that any of you lead pathetic lives, just me :p ).
 
I had another idea.......if i got about 5-7 feet of 1/2 in copper tubing and bent it so that it fits in a compact freezer i could then freeze the tubing in about 4 in of water....so that the heat transferres into the ice and the freezer keeps the ice frozen.......then i could put ice in the rest of the freezer(with a little room to cool drinks :p ) to keep the tempeture regular......
tell me what you think.....

DREW
 
Your problem with any mini fridge is simple: What is the fridge's design capacity and what are you asking it to chill. Are you running a single CPU block on a resonable CPU (lets say something in the 80 W dissipation range) for 4 h at a time, or a P4E and a 6800 GT with over 200 W total heat output running 24/7? If you do the first you might get away with just a 5 gallon bucket full of water in the fridge with 50 ft of copper tube coil in it and a mid size pump. For the second application you better look into something with at least a 1/4 HP compressor motor, and that won't be a dorm size fridge.
Oh, and don't forget that you will run sub-ambient, with all the nice problems regarding condensation.
 
Ill be running the first one but if did what i said ib my previous post would it not work????? What if i used more copper tubing.......
 
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