Homemade Cooler Idea.

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TalonMan

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 16, 2007
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I have this idea bouncing around in my head about making a homemade cooling unit for a water-cooled system. My system will be sitting on a monster oak desk, in an unfinished basement. I want to make a insulated 8 to 10" wide cylinder about 3 or 4' long, and mount it to my wall. I would fit as much copper pipe as would reasonably fit, secured to the inside walls in a spiral pattern. Copper would be selected it's good thurmal-conductiveness(?). I would want as much heat as possible, to transfer through the pipe and meet the cold. I would fill the 4' long 10" wide cylinder with ice water, for the PC's warmed liquid to travel through. I have a water pipe located real close to my computer, that I could install a perminant spiget, to be located directly above my cooling unit. I would just pop open the lid, turn on the water for ease of filling. I also have a drain in the floor 6' away from the wall. A small section of retractable hose, could get me there real easy. Not as much trouble with filling and draining such a unit, as one might initially think for my situaction. I think I could pick up a small ice maker too, and hook it up real easy in my basement.

The question is would this be a better cooler than your standard store baught water cooling unit? If so, I don't think I would mind the maint. I never move my PC around, and would enjoy showing it to my friends, and taking tempature readings and all....

I have never built a rig before from scratch, and have never even seen a water cooled rig in person. I just know I will be building a water cooled rig soon, and thought I might have some fun with the cooler. I would do a good job, and install temp sensors on both the in and out. I am thinking I would need to match the copper pipe size, to as close to the hose size that is run in the PC, so I wouldn't have a bottleneck in the flow....

Probably will use the TJ09 case, and put them pre-cutt water holes in the back to good use...

Good or bad idea? Any thoughts feel free...
 
Wouldn't it just work shitty once the wall heated up?
It'd be fun to have a Geo-Thermally cooled computer ;)
 
Eh, it would probably work... But why? You won't gain anything other than a "cool factor" by having slightly sub ambient temperatures, and you'll waste a lot of water!
 
a drawing would help, i think your talking about getting a large cylinder to hold ice water (obviously with some kind of quick remove end cap), then running a spiral worm pipe thru the ice water, which would have the computer water passes thru it....? the outside of the larger pipe would be insulated?

for not having built a water system before your off to a good start, but theres a few things you didnt think of yet.

when the water heats up, the insulation will keep all of the heat in the large pipe, if you forget to turn off your computer and leave for a few hours (though it would take quite a while to heat that volume of water) your water would heat up until either: the CPU shuts down on its own because of heat (prochot signal);

the water heats up until the enclosure cant stand the pressure and releases at the point of least resistance, ie a fitting, and leaks all your water allover your computer;

or you are a very good pipe fitter and seal it up so well that it eventually splits down the side like a pipe bomb and levels your house...however unrealistic that might be.

what happens when the water in the 4' tube heats up and requires more ice. you would have to drain it and top it off every few hours which can be a pain.

now we come to the energy efficiency part, how much does it cost to pump the water from the well/street hookup, cost to freeze the ice and then dump it in the water, loosing a good percent of the ice's cooling to thru ambient air- versus a plain old radiator and fan, or a phase system for that matter. an ice freezer is a phase system in itself, and eliminating the energy losses by hooking that directly to your CPU would save a bit of money, let alone time. this part is up to you to decide if its worth it, but its good to think about.

on a side note, water temps do not vary more then 1-2 degrees C between the intake and output of a loop so i would say temp sensors are somewhat unnecessary.

now that being said, your idea is somewhat like what ive been playing around with....
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/ghost6303/my PC/P6050030.jpg

i got a 5 gallon bucket as a resevoir that i top off with ice. i dont have a separate loop for cold water with the warm passing thru it like you do, but same theory. one thing i like about your idea is that passing warm water thru cold water decreases the risk of condensation (which i get alot of depending on how many blocks of ice i put in there at once.) heres some of the best temps ive gotten with this setup, substantially better then normal water loops....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/ghost6303/my PC/11Cbenchidle.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/ghost6303/my PC/11Cbenchload.jpg

this isnt my main computer anymore, just one i play around with when i got nothing better to do. if i were to keep it on 24/7 i would have to add about 2 gallons of ice cooled to -20F per day to cool it. which just isnt practical.

to answer your questions.....

how i would go about building this is- get your 4'x10" copper pipe, caulk/solder an end cap perminantly to one end, il say your using 1/2" tubing, if your using something else, substitute 1/2" for whatever size it is.

get about 8-10 legnths of 3 1/2 foot long 1/2" copper pipe and run them legnthwise (not spiral) up and down thru the large tube. connect the long copper pipes with 180 degree elbows and solder it all together so you have something that looks like http://www.aquastealth.com/ProductImages/transcool.jpg minus the fins. then all you have to do is either drill thru the large tube and run a 90 degree elbow from the ends of the pipe you made thru it so you can connect your tubing. then stand it up so that you can dump ice/water in the top.

you could use something like flexible LP gas line in the largest size you can find and do a spiral worm thru the tube, but that might be too much of a flow restriction.
 
ive never seen a water cooled rig that didnt spring a leak at some point, is it truly worth all the effort and refills?

to say nothing of those home brewed ideas you guys have, if you guys are that serious about tweaking a cooling system why not look at some peltiers?

I've seen plenty of water rigs that leaked and shorted so water cooling isnt all that much safer than doing a good peltier setup of some sort.

At least with TE cooling you get results for your efforts that would be worth while.

Just my two cents
 
Thanks for the replys.

Ghost ,I like the picture of the aquastealth. I also like your idea of running the coper pipe up and down insted of my spiral pattern. I was just trying to maximise the time the warm liquid stayed in the cooler by lengthing the length of the pipe. The copper pipe fitted with the 180 degree angled elbows sounds much easer.

As far as the container goes to put the copper pipe into, it can be anything that is insulated to keep the cold in. The unit would be on the wall, so if it leaked it could just drip on my floor, and make the run for the drain. It's downhill from the wall to the drain. As far as a leak springing up inside the computer, I cant speek to that. I figure as long as I buy quality fittings for inside the computer, I shouldn't have a problem? Correct?

Do allot of guy's water cooled rigs really leek and short out? Man, that is allot of money to gamble if it is true....

It would also hurt cooler sales I would think.

I am a moderator on a mini-buggy site. The boys running their buggies in the desert have to use straight water with no anti-freeze, or they will overheet. Anti-freeze only stops liquid from freezing, but decreases the radiator's ability to cool. Water cools better than anti-freeze, in fact they make products like wetter water to increase your cooling ability to be added into your radiator..

I wonder how straight water compaires to the products you buy for cooling your computer, in it's ability to cool. I know good old H2O does a good job...

I was intreasted to hear: "on a side note, water temps do not vary more then 1-2 degrees C between the intake and output of a loop so i would say temp sensors are somewhat unnecessary".

I guess the longer you keep the liquid in the cooler, the better the chance to lower the temp more. I don't even see how thoes small store baught units blowing air with a fan through a small radiator even has an effect. They just look too small, and air is the cooler. I have to believe taking a lengthy journey through a few gallons of ice water would do a much better job?

Draining and filling the unit once a day would not bother me.
Having a water cooled system that would leak inside the computer is a deal breaker.

I can only hope the world has developed the technology to make non leak water cooling fittings, made for inside computers.

If the cooler would drip outside the computer, and off the desk, mounted on the wall, and lands on the floor, who cares...?

Not me. :)

As far as peltiers go, i have never heard of them. I found this page:
http://www.overclockers.com/tips800/
But the dude had to build them from scratch. Too much for me..

My dream is to have a high end quad core water cooled OCed, with 2 water cooled 8800 ultras, in a TJ09 case......
I currently have a 24" HD Flat screen. (Gateway FDP2485W)
 
Do allot of guy's water cooled rigs really leek and short out? Man, that is allot of money to gamble if it is true....
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in my 6-8 years of doing this ive had a leak or two. both times was because i was inexperienced and used cheap ass tubing from home depot. ive been using tygon for the past 3 years and havnt had a leak since. just buy some decent, soft, flexible tubing and clamp it on good, you wont have a problem within your computer. tygon is good because it has a thicker wall and you can squeeze it down over the barbs with some worm drive clamps. some people also use masterkleer 7/16" tubing on 1/2" barbs, you usually boil the ends of the tubing in hot water, put them on the barb, and when it cools its almost impossible to get off (meaning water tight) even without hose clamps- tho i would still use some.

leaking from the cooler/radiator your building is purely up to your skill at waterproofing it tho. just run the pump with everything but electronics attached overnight to check for leaks. if you make sure everything is good and tight you should have no problems. and you said your never going to be moving your case so that takes alot of stress out of your connections right there.

The boys running their buggies in the desert have to use straight water with no anti-freeze, or they will overheet. Anti-freeze only stops liquid from freezing, but decreases the radiator's ability to cool. Water cools better than anti-freeze, in fact they make products like wetter water to increase your cooling ability to be added into your radiator..
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this is still true here. those non conductive coolants are just highly purified water with some additives, the additives take a little bit away from the cooling ability. ive tried water wetter before actualy, i didnt see much(any) of an improvement in CPU temp and it left all my stuff with a strange oily/sticky residue so i stopped using it. i change out the water so often in that thing that i just use tap water, your "supposed to" use distilled but i havnt seen any scale buildup, i have a water softener and like 5 filters between it and the well so it should be decently clean. if you have city water or very hard water i would maybe go to walmart and load up your car with some gallons of distilled water, 69 cents a gallon where i am. cant go wrong.


and the reason i dont use pelts is because of the stupid amount of energy they require to operate. if you have a 100w processor, you need a 150w pelt to even be able to remove the heat, even then it would be operating near 100% capacity. a 226w pelt would be better. and i dont want another power supply entirely for that. and what happens when the pelt dies? it becomes a thermal insulator like a big block of ceramic and your CPU melts into a big silicon disc. no thank you. let alone your guaranteed condensation all over the place with sub freezing temps. chilled water isnt nearly as bad, and you can protect alot against condensation with a dehumidifier in the room i found out.
 
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