peltier water cooling combo....BUT WAIT! its not like the others!

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darkecho

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Messages
106
Hey all, i was just trying ti figure out some ways to cool the water in a water cooling system better and i though, what if you pelted the res??! well then we started thinking, the pelt is small with small surface area and so it wouldnt affect fast moving water that much, OK so you pelt a heatsink and dip it in the water! or better yet, you make a res that is filled with fins, the fins are all connected to a copper base that extrudes out of the sealed res and THEN you attach the pelt to the copper. ok that sounds like a lot of work, then i was like "HELL,... why not pelt the radiator?!

any reasons why this wouldnt work? pelt the radiator and have the cool side drawing out more heat while the fans do their job, of course the pelt also has a fan blowing onits hot side.. sounds like it would add a little more cooling but just how much and would it be worth the cost of a couple of pelts? any other ideas... what if you had 2 radiators? like before and after the Res...nah that would be too much work for a pump.... how easy is it to cool off water and what is the best, quickest, method to do so? i still like my idea of the heatsinks fins inside the water, connected to the pelt, and then another heatsink on the other side of the pelt with a fan...
it would be stacked accordingly:

heatsink (inside of res)
pelt (coolside)
pelt(hotside)
heatsink (outside of res)
fan
 
You just described a peltier water chiller. It has been done before, and it does work, although it isn't the most efficient way to cool the water.

An article with a similar idea can be found here:
http://www.overclockers.co.nz/ocnz/review.php?id=02cool0water000peltier0heatsink0103

Your pelting the radiator idea sounds interesting. I can't see why it wouldn't work, at least to some degree. The problem is that peltiers still pump out a lot of heat and use up a lot of power. Also, if your water goes below room temperature, you would have to insulate the hoses and such.
 
Well it's actually fairly similar to my "Ice Jet" project concept that managed to get a lot of criticism here -all valid thoughts. Most people felt that the TEC elements would do a lot better if they were directly mounted on the heat-producing items.

Here's a shot of the original contept I had:
case003.gif


Read more about my ideas here:
http://www.unofficial3d.com/atx/case.html
 
The main advantage of a Peltier is that it can chill th CPU to sub-zero temperatures. So you definitely want the Peltier directly on your CPU. Use your normal water cooling set-up to remove the heat from this Peltier.
Now, the temperature the Peltier reaches (for a given amount of heat removed from the CPU) is directly related to your hot side temperature, aka the better you chill your Peltier the lower your CPU temp will go. So chilled water to cool your CPU Peltier makes sense. But you run in a practical problem with using a Peltier to chill the water.
Lets say you're removing 100 watts from your CPU, that puts out roughly 300 watts on your Peltier hot side. To chill your water again with a Peltier, that Peltier has to radiate of 900 watts (and be supplied with that energy). That's 3000 BTU/h, about the capcity of a small room A/C (which you might need now anyway since your computer room is suddenly rather toasty). So you'd need a secondary cooling cycle for your second Pelt, with a large radiator and appropriate pumps.
 
ok so i am geting a very good idea here.... since the peltier is better as far as sucking heat out of the proccessor, you will then have the water cooling cool the peltier. then you have a more efficient peltier because it is now water cooled and basically stealing the heat away from the processor (and sort of storing it temporarily) while the water takes it away.

the reason i say peltier is beter is only in my ideal setup, because the peltier can chill the cpu to subzero temps, if you were to chill your water to sub zero, you would be condensating all over the place..... so without having to insulate everything, the peltier would be the best way to directly apply your sub zero temps... ok so then the water caries off the peltiers heat and to the radiator..... now here is my idea....

the water should be cooled as much as possible (and left with a little margin) to make sure it doesnt condensate. but here inlies the orignal question (and a possible solution?) HOW DO U COOL THE WATER!?

so we need to cool the water just enough to get it close to sub ambient but NOT sub ambient, and with a little headroom incase we go to a LAN where it is a little bit colder lol..... ok so how do we cool the water? well theres still the peltier heatsink in the res idea, that doesnt seem very logical though, it seems to me that it would be much easier and efficient to cool the metal fins of the radiator directly, HOW? well thats what i need your guys' help with! im thinking peltier, but then again, the surface area doesnt really touch a lot of the radiator as the fins do not provide it with a solid spot to get max surface area.... maybe getting a radiator with a copper core or somthing, there must be a way! maybe pour liquid copper into the fin area?! i dont know, i think the idea of a peltier cooled radiator would be awesome... now im guessing that a fan would be the best way to cool the peltier as if you water cooled the peltier TOO then you would probably be loosing any benefit since the peltier generates a lot of heat and you may break even as far as temperature of the radiator plus the heat put BACK into the system by the second peltier (the one cooling the radiator) so HOW do u cool the radiator without adding more heat to the water? a fan cooled peltier? ok im done, someone please help
 
If all you want is avoid condensation on your water cooling line by running the water close to ambient, just use a large radiator with an appopriate fan and pump. No second stage cooling required.
If you realy want to chill your radiator with a second peltier, get a small "silent" dorm fridge, those are often cooled with a peltier. Put your radiator into it with a nice fan to circulate your cold air over it and voila, chilled water. In a well insulated system like a fridge you don't need to worry about direct contact between your radiator and the Peltier, and in any case you'd probably want to use a waterblock to transfer the heat to the second Peltier in conduction mode, much better heat transfer.
 
Well it sounds like you may need some good education on refrigeration theory. For example, there really is no need to cool the liquid coolant down to ambient temperatures. So long as you can remove a good amount of the heat carried within you're good. Your average air conditioner works the same way; it is only working to remove heat from the system.

Actually your idea is fairly close to one of the original PC modders that some of us remember from way back (in "PC years"). Steve Foster is to many here like the Godfather of extreme cooling modders. I maintain an archive of his old website here:

http://www.unofficial3d.com/atx/stevefoster.html
 
ok so the best way to acheive a good system without the problems of condensation is just to get a more powerful flowing pump and to get a larger radiator/fan.....ok maybe i will go down this road as i have already purchased an EXOS and havent ever touched a water cooling system in my life :)
couple of questions though...

the diameter of the piping i know the more water pumping through the better but just how much does it affect the temps? is it substantial? how much better is 1/2 ID than the Exos tubing??? i think i am going to just do a simple water system for now, leave peltiers for later, after seeing how much grease and foam you need.... also, how much gallons per hour is good, what is excellant, and what should i avoid? whats a good cheap pump that will get me some great cooling....????
 
you could line a wall of the water reserve with TECs and heatsinks on top of them to make the water extremely cold,but then you'd have a lot of extra heat to deal with on the heatsinks,unless you place them on the last stage of the air movement out of your case.

just a thought, it would probably ice up the whole side of the reserve so you'd probably want to use a soft plastic :)
 
Just for refrence my friend had something simalar setup awhile back w/ something called an iceprobe. It worked ok but it has to be a large res and the water has to move very slowly. chillers work better though because they are external and u don't have to remove the heat from the case. Now if u combined the idea and used an external large res simalar to a innovatec Tank-o-matic with a copper base and fins the ran up through the length of the tube u would prolly have something.... now how u would make the fins and the base that the pelt attaches to is something that we never tried to tackle
 
The thing with wc setups is that a decent one will only let the water go a few deg above ambient. Using a pelt to drop a degree or 2 water temp will not get you much besides more potential of cooling failure compared to more standard above ambient watercooling.
 
ive been thinking recently of modding a watercooler (the kind that you buy at walmart for $50)
using the cooler for cooling the coolant and having a pump circulate that coolant through
all 3 waterblocks.


anybody try this before?
 
Most chillers use freeon and if im not mistaken it has to be underpressure to work properlly. This is just my own understanding if im wrong please correct me. I have had the same idea and thought of constructing a high pressure block.... come to think of it isn't that basicly the same principle as a vapo?
 
lentic said:
Most chillers use freeon and if im not mistaken it has to be underpressure to work properlly. This is just my own understanding if im wrong please correct me. I have had the same idea and thought of constructing a high pressure block.... come to think of it isn't that basicly the same principle as a vapo?
Click to expand...


Sort of, except there is a phase change involved (liquid to gas). However, I think he was talking about using the watercooler to chill the coolant in his WC system. That probably won't work, as the small watercooler is probably not meant to handle such a high heatload.
 
Hi, I am a bit new here, but am from OC forums originally. Let me save you a lot of experimenting, and headaches. :)
I have tried Dorm Fridges, Freezers, Dual blocks to cool inline,The whole friggin shebang.
What works;
A Dehumid, with the rear rad from said unit dropped in the rez.
A Chiller with probe,( which I use now), With a digital controller.
Anything else, is trial and error, and Money NOT well spent. Any questions, give a yell, more than happy to advise.

[email protected]
 
Ya I use a small chiller that is supposed to be used for aquariums that is slightly modded from the factory w/ a digital controler works great
 
Im going to be very boring here but slightly realistic...

So insted of buying a water cooling system + at least 1 TEC.

Buy a Vapochill LS and get it on...

You are going to pay about the same and get warranty as well as support and ease of installing.
 
My idea is just to stick one of those 360W peltiers on cpu and use on of the old phase change systems to cool it. You know the ones with a head that spews the coolant directly onto cpu core, only use it to directly cool the pelt. I'm thinking that could give me some -75C core temps, and be fairly longsuffering as well.

I'm not greedy I just want an FX running at 3.4ghz or better all day long.

Unfortunately I lack the thousands of dollars to do a proof of concept.

Or even a thousand dollars.
 
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