Phase/water combo-cooling..(not what you think)..Is it possible.

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arentol

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I have a phase change unit and a watercooling system. What I am wondering is if I can merge the two to get better results from the watercooling on my GPU's (with the probable downside of slightly worse results for the CPU).

I have thought of a number of ways of doing this, all involving using the phase change unit to cool the water, and I am wondering if anyone has tried something like this, or heard of someone who has...

1.) Directly cooling water in a reservoir with the phase change head.
Possible issue: would be potentially frozen water (and busted resevoir).
Possible resolution: Anti-freeze instead of water, though that might be a whole other set of issues.

2.) Directly cooling the radiator by attaching the phase change head to it.
Possible issue: Frozen section in the radiator restricting water flow.
Possible solution: Use a large flat piece of copper to spread the cooling more evenly.

3.) Indirectly cooling air that is then blown across the radiator. This would be done by attaching copper tubing in an appropriate patter to the phase unit and then blowing air across the tubing and then across the radiator.
Possible issues: Frozen or condensation damaged fans, unstable, ugly, possibly labor intensive making the tubing.

4.) Connect a CPU water block directly to the phase change and simply run the water through the CPU block with no radiator or resevoir involved?
Possible issues: Frozen connections, Frozen water, Leaking due to expansion of metal fittings, frozen plastic tubing that becomes brittle and breaks.
Possible solution: Massively high quality fittings, anti-freeze, and some kind of expensive cold resistant tubing.


Anyway, I am just curious. Anyone have any ideas or knowledge on this subject?
 
I really like this guy's idea:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=942689

I run a distilled water and antifreeze mix in my watercooling loop. Not because I'm worried about it freezing, but to prevent algae growth and the orange color is pretty schnazzy. If you're shooting for below 32F coolant temps, I'd throw some antifreeze in it and not even worry about it.
 
So it looks like the guy you linked to is basically using method 1, with copper tubing inside a heavy plastic reservoir that the water/anti-freeze runs through to get chilled before going back into the watercooling loop, and he hits -5c idle, and 0c under load... Not bad at all.
 
My idea involving Peltier + Walter Cooling


innovativesolution3mk.jpg
 
What you are talking about is a chiller.... not a new idea, but they do work very well. Just sticking your direct die evap in a res is not the best way to go. You really need to replace the direct die evaporator for one with more surface area and submerge it in your coolant. A good coolant to run is methanol or just plain windshield washer antifreeze. You can buy it rated to -37c which is colder than most chillers will run at and it doesn't get as thick as regular anti freeze.

Here is a pic of the evap/res on a small chiller I have..
evapfrost14dr.jpg
 
Yeah, I didn't figure it was an original idea, but I didn't know what to call the concept to search for information either...

So what about idea 4, having an extra CPU waterblock attached directly to the evaporator? They are the same size basically, so I see no problem there. Does the water not spend enough time in the CPU block to cool down properly if done this way?
 
The water doesn't spend enought time in the block to cool down enough to make it worthwhile. It takes a while for a chiller to pull the liquid temps down in the res. A larger res takes longer to pull down but will hold temps better. An evap with more surface area will pull temps down faster and hold it better under load.

Besides, insulating a direct die evap connected to a water block could be a nightmare.
 
has anyone tried that? (the water block)

I'm hesitant to trust it to be true if it hasnt been tried.
 
nhusby said:
has anyone tried that? (the water block)

I'm hesitant to trust it to be true if it hasnt been tried.
Click to expand...

If you mean using the chilled water in a block, then yes... a lot of people have done it. I used a Swiftech 6000 series block and Maze 4 gpu block with the above chiller. You should avoid any blocks that have plastic tops, they could crack at very cold temps.

If you mean connection a direct die evap to water block, then I really doubt anyone has done that for the reasons I mentioned above.
 
I was refering to attaching a phase change unit to a water block, in order to chill the water.

it would make the perfect loop... just 2 water blocks and a pump.
or 4 waterblocks and a pump (CPU, 2 GPU's, and the chiller block)

does freon conduct heat better than water or something? It doesnt make sence to me if water block's efficiently conduct heat, and the evaporator head efficiently conducts heat. So unless the freon in the evap head conducts heat better than water, I dont see why it wouldnt work.

I'm not trying to just say you are wrong, but I have interest in this sort of setup so I would like to be proved wrong if I am.
 
If you want to chill your water loop then you need to cool the water in the res using some kind of evap with a large surface area like in the pic above. Just sticking a direct die evap on the outside of one water block isn't going to do much of anything. The water is going through the block too fast to pick up much cooling and it would be a very ineficient if it helped at all. If you tried this and started the phase unit and let it run without the pc on, it would eventually cool the entire loop, but due to the inefficient heat trasfer between the evap/block it would just continue to raise temps to not much better than straight water cooling. The key to water chilling is the larger surface area of the evap, that's why just sticking a direct die evap in your res is not a good idea either.

If you think something like this may work, then the best bet is just to try it and see ;) IMO , if something that easily done would work at all then a lot of people would be doing it :)
 
No problem..... it never hurts to ask, usually it's been tried before and it's easy to find out if something works or not without the bother of doing the whole thing yourself.

The easiest way to get into a chiller setup is to start with a regular home window ac unit, something around 5000-8000btu. Remove the case and stick the whole evaporator down in a regular cooler. You can usually bend the tubing enough to get the evap in the cooler without even having to open the system and losing any gas. This does work suprisingly well and has been done many times. I've seen these small window units go for less than $50 at pawn shops and sometimes you can pick one up at a yard sale or from a friend for next to nothing.
 
Anyone tried this:

Get/make a CPU waterblock that has the barbs on the side(s) of the block rather than on the top (may need to be a bit thicker than usual). Obviously getting around various capacitors and such could be a problem, so the choice of Mobo will be important. Anyway, the point is, get the side-barbed CPU block and sandwich it between the CPU and the Phase change cooler.

This way the CPU gets a significant boost from the phase change, though not as great as normal, and the water in the loop (for the GPU's) also gets some of the effect of the phase change unit as wel as the normal radiators cooling effect.
 
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