Considering a chilled loop, thoughts?

R

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Limp Gawd
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Jun 19, 2004
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I'm looking at buying a 7970 and possibly adding another later in crossfire, but my board is a micro ATX (ASUS Maximus IV GENE-Z). I love the board, but the 2nd pcix slot only leaves room for a double slot card. Also my room can get pretty hot in the summer without AC and don't want to stress the AC unit too much. So what I've been considering is building a refrigerator into the wall so that the heat vents into the attic space and then running a water cooling loop into the fridge using a 3 x 120 radiator & fan setup to cool the water. Also likely keeping the pump/rez in the fridge for extra cooling (also may help to improve the longevity of the pump keeping it cool.)

My biggest concern is that the mini fridge wouldn't be able to keep up with that much heat and also that I may have to find a way to vent the extra heat from the attic crawl space since it is insulated from the outside. Would most pumps be able to handle this kind of setup, or would I have to go to a beefier or industrial grade pump in order to get proper flow to the loop?

The fridge would likely only be 4-5 ft max from the computer and that includes a little extra for flexibility.

Also how much would I have to worry about condensation running this 24/7? I figured if I keep enough heat in the system and also at least some air movement in the case it should be minimal to none.
 
No, it's been proven time and time again that a refrigerator is not the right system for 24/7 heat removal
 
Nevermind, did some more searching and found the answer

http://www.overclock.net/t/105345/info-fridge-as-pc-cooler

Damn, need to figure out something else that will work. guess I could always put the radiator outside in some sort of enclosure so that the rain doesn't get on the fans and also so it stays out of the sun. Wouldn't be hard for me to set that up either as my desk is right by an outside wall.
 
That would of course however increase my overall length of tubing at least a few feet. If I ran it over right next to my window I could build an enclosure that while shielded from the sun, it would also catch prevailing winds off the lake improving my cooling even further.

Total run ~12 ft total. Anyone know a good place to look for info on pump head as used in a water cooling setup? All the places I've found so far are either irrigation or pond maintenance sites and obviously the pumps/tubing they are using are in a totally different league
 
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if you want to do it cheaply as possible use a window unit AC and a icebox like you'd go camping with, take apart the AC, but dont cut any of the copper lines. mod the icebox so you can close it and also make holes at the top-ish and bottom-ish so you can run the pump through it. MCP655's can generally handle it from what i recall seeing.

you WILL need to use denatured alcohol, not water

bonus points if you can manage to get the condenser outside the house ;)

yes condensation will be a problem, you will have to insulate your tubes(hardware store sells pipe insulation) and you can use clay and weather sealant to seal your cpu socket

You will also need to mod the AC temp sensor so it will run full tilt all the time, putting it it in the condenser will probably accomplish the task
 
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It's not worth it in ran a chiller that's a window unit that modified whit a txv and ship need coil and ran my liquid at -15f and it kept my 955be at 4.5ghz at -5c full load but I was all ways wored about condsetion. So when I built my new 3930 rig I just keep my chiller at 60f its so nice to not have to worry about condsetion and what happens if just one litle pice of inslation is not on there good. But it was fun as hell to set up and run it that cold but I wouldn't do it for 24/7 again.
 
Thinking running the radiator outside would be best, during the summer it would cool much better than being in the room. Also, it would keep the room from getting too hot. and in the winter even though there may be condensation issues, the air would be so dry that it would be negligible. The heat last summer from 2 6970's was intense and that was only late summer too. The AC was able to keep up most of the time, but it is just even more heat that has to be removed from the room (uneconomical). Also, the air didn't always circulate the way it needed to and we had to run a couple of fans just to keep the air consistently cool.
 
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