Some pretty crazy ideas

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Firebat

Gawd
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Nov 9, 2005
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So, im going to get a water cooling system this coming summer. It will be my first ;)

I've been having some pretty crazy ideas about this, and i just thought i would post to share them, and to work out flaws with people who have real experience in the watercooling department.

So I have a mini freezer around that is not in use. Hmm....Im thinking about putting the water reservoir inside the mini freezer. If i get a big enough reservior at low enough temputures (0/-10c), i think it could be the key to getting some really low temps. Extreamly cold liquid already going into the pump may result in fantastic results.


Sorry if this post may seem noobish, i've read through many articles on water cooling but i don't have any hands on experience. Would it be an issue if i used Anti-freeze?
 
It has been said many times but it cant hurt to say it again. The compressor on mini-fridges are not designed to deal with the constant heat output of a computer system. The compressor would burn out from running constantly, not to mention the advantages probably would be less than stellar.
 
He didnt say he was going to use the minifreezer to handle all the heat output. He simply wanted to use it to chill the liquid somewhat. I assume he is still planning on using a radiator.
 
I've heard this discussion many times before (I even considered it once when I was first getting into watercooling).

Even with a radiator attached, all you're going to be able to do is get the water to room temperature (ideally, obviously you're really aiming for close to room temperature). Take a 70 degree glass of water and put it in your 'frige. What happens? It gets cooled to about 40 degrees. A dorm refrigerator is not meant to maintain a 40 degree temperature of an item that is constantly re-heated to room temperature.

Here's an expiriment for you: get a dorm refrigerator, take off the door, plug it in, now try to cool a glass of water. See how well it cools that glass. See how long the refrigerator lasts running 24/7.

Another problem is that we're talking about less than a gallon of water flowing through the loop. The water in the resevior is exchanged several times a minute. It's not going to be in the 'frige long enough to be cooled anyway. As soon as it hits the 'frige it's pumped back into the loop where it is again heated on the core.

Even if you had the world's greatest 'frige that could actually handle constant cooling of the res, it's not going to make any serious impact because there wont be enough time for it to do so.

Now, petier cooling the res, that seems to work from what I've read. Running the loop through dry ice also seems to work. The regrigerator idea... it works on paper unless you really understand how they work and the dynamics of a cooling loop.
 
Or you could get a water dispenser with a cooler, it will be much more effective and people have done it several times. (Don't get the pelt cooled water dispensers. And see if you can get one with a beefy enough pump)
 
ok but what if he mounted the RAD in the frig with 120mm fans....in theory would'nt the rad attract the cold being the rad is aluminum and there fore cool better.
 
The only know way to do this is to build a cold box (ice cooler works great). Run the line in from one side and run copper tubing in a big round loop (say about 20-30 loops) and then it exits out the other side. See if you can get the copper line already with aluminum fins on it otherwise put some on with silver solder. Next you fill the cooler with water and use peltier plates to keep the water cool. So you are essentially transferring the heated computer H20 into the water in the cooler by heat conductance and also keeping the cooler cold. Another way is to just dump ice in your cooler as it is cheaper and last long enough to last a few hours. Dry ice also works good too.
 
Is there anything preventing me from building a Massive res that can hold gallons upon gallons? That way the liquid will have some time to sit inside the refrigerator before it is reused. With two little holes on ethier side of the refrigerator no heat will be escaping, and the only thing it will be cooling off in the refrigerator is the liquid.
 
the point is that a mini fridge cannot deal with a constant load of a couple hundred watts like you want to do. it dosent matter how big your reservoir is it is still going to dissipate that heat inside the fridge. like someone said earlier just build a peltier chiller and be done.
 
Ive got and idea , How about you take a garden hose from your pump to a car radiator submerged in a pond behind your house and use that to cool your system (not joking).


-TopGun
 
I once built a race car with cooled fuel lines*. We didn't try to rig a microfrige in the backsteat, we didn't build an air conditioner to surround the fuel line, we got an igloo cooler, looped the fuel line inside the cooler a couple times, then ran the line to the carbs. When we got to the track we filled to cooler with ice, worked like a champ.

*Yes, it's a fairly common race trick to cool fuel. Cooled fuel results in a denser air/fuel mix ratio.
 
We used to do that on our race bikes (GP and SuperBike).
The ice was just warm water by the time I'd see it again...the primary reason was to keep all the (illegal) additives from evaporating at the grid/Start line.
 
Borgschulze said:
Why would anyone want to voltmod at 9550?
Click to expand...

Nice memory ;)

Because it was good practice for the future. ;) It was a free test. Plus, it was way outdated so if i burnt it out, it would be of no real consequence to me.

But it doesn't seem logical to spend so much money on watercooling a 9800pro, where as the money can be better spent on a new graphics card.
 
Firebat said:
Nice memory ;)

Because it was good practice for the future. ;) It was a free test. Plus, it was way outdated so if i burnt it out, it would be of no real consequence to me.

But it doesn't seem logical to spend so much money on watercooling a 9800pro, where as the money can be better spent on a new graphics card.
Click to expand...
A single waterblock is pretty cheap, especially when you already have a cooling loop.

I will be cooling my video card with a Maze 4 soon, it's about 50% more money than a VF700-Cu, so it would be pretty cheap to cool the video card :)

Think of it this way, when the next generation video cards are released... you would be saying.. "What's the point of watercooling an x1900XTX?" same can be said with current CPUs...

Watercooling is getting more and more mainstream, just like back in the day, only the hardcore people would watercool a Geforce 3 Titanium card... as like now... only the hardcore people use Phase Change...

In a few years computers will ship from OEMs with stock heatpipe coolers (Aside from the Dual Core Opteron CPUs), and maybe even Phase Change units.

As for voltmods, most voltmods are done on the high end cards (of their generation), that's why so many people thought your 9550 voltmodding was rediculous.
 
Firebat said:
Why would any one have water cooling on a 9800pro?
Click to expand...

It's NOT ME! It's someone else's PC I pulled off of the gallery at www.water-cooling.com !The GPU in my crap PC my mom bought from a back-alley store has an 8500 LE and an Athlon XP 1700+ (which I managed to OC to 1.63GHz but had to back down to 1.6GHz to get it to be stable).
 
sprocket said:
We used to do that on our race bikes (GP and SuperBike).
The ice was just warm water by the time I'd see it again...the primary reason was to keep all the (illegal) additives from evaporating at the grid/Start line.
Click to expand...

Shhhhh... we don't talk about those things.

You know, if you'd used the 10 feet of fuel line idea it also serves an extra purpose: about a gallon of extra fuel. If bike racing is anything like auto circle track, sometimes there's limits to how large a fuel cell you're allowed... the extra fuel line gave you that extra gallon or so to push another lap without a stop.

How'd the icebox mount to the side of a bike? Never heard of it on bike circuits (although I never worked bikes).
 
Isn't part of the problem condensation as well?

If you do manage to cool your water to below room temperature, when it travels back to the computer, you run the risk of condensation forming on the tubes or even the water block.

All of this of course depends on the humidity of your area and your room as well as the dew point for that particular day/time.

I have to admit to being intrigued by the idea. It may be a "crazy idea" but I'm sure the first people who said they wanted to cool their computer with water instead of air were called crazy too!
 
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