Water chiller building advice

Q

Quicksilver

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 13, 2003
Messages
139
Ok, so I've been planing out my WC setup, and I have settled on the idea of chilling the water somewhere in the loop. Does anyone have any suggestions or links to aid in this task?
 
The best way to do it is with an ingeniously-named "water chiller", made for cooling aquariums with fish that require water colder than ambient. Any search for them will get you a decent variety of examples, I think a few computer cooling sites have them in stock. As a bonus, they attach with the same barbs that we've been using since the start.

Get ready for serious sticker shock, they start at at least $300 ($400?). Also, it's like running a mini-fridge, but normal food refrigerators don't run constantly, so it'll be like running dozens of mini-fridges. Yay electric bill.

It's cheaper to run a room-temp system with a larger radiator and a peltier(s) that requires it's own power supply, and get's your chip colder than the chiller will. You only have to worry about condensation around the chip with a pelt, whereas with a chiller system, the whole circuit has to be insulated (no uv dye usage there).

I do apologize for arguing against it, I hated the people who told me my 6-foot bong-cooler setup would suck so I made it anyway, but it did suck. If you have the money, give it a try, and show us pics! At the very least, you can use the chiller to reclaim otherwise-undrinkable warm iced tea that's been sitting in the car under a hot sun all day.
 
SledgeMakeGood said:
I do apologize for arguing against it, I hated the people who told me my 6-foot bong-cooler setup would suck so I made it anyway, but it did suck.
Click to expand...

dude that's funny, but i've done the same thing with other projects.

for ghetto chilling, dump ice in the res
 
originaly posted by cgrant26:

I'm running a chilled water setup. I have a radiator mounted inside a window A/C unit. My water temp hovers around 17*C and the AC unit keeps the air nice and dry.


This seems like a great idea, I wonder how he did it....
 
The 2 problems to using a waterchiller on a WCing set up is..
1. Price
2. Condensation

There are many ways you can prevent condensation but they're pretty annoying. You have to buy a special paste that actually goes under the processor.

I personaly would reccomend a peltier. They cost less, and do use their own powersource (from what I know) but they run better. The only problem is controlling them. One side can hit -5 Celcius while the other gets extremely hot. If not controlled properly something bad could happen because of that hot side >_>

BTW: Swiftech recently added thermoelectric cooling (which includes peltier use) to their product lineup (I think it was recent...). I think they're still on backorder though (Hopefully it isn't like the 6002, which may never come back...).

http://www.swiftnets.com/products/S320-12KIT.asp
http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mcw50-T.asp
http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mcw5002-AT.asp
http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mcw5002-64T.asp
http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mcw5002-PT.asp
http://www.swiftnets.com/products/MCWCHILL-452.asp
 
Peltiers are really good ideas when you want to go far without spending more than, say, $500 on the long term. They can give you near-vapor-phase levels at better prices, and since they go hand in hand with watercooling setups, you can be more creative than with a vapor-phase (anybody managed to combine uv dye with freon yet?).

For most of us, "straight" water cooling will allow you to reach the limits of your hardware long before you reach the heat limit. Peltiers, water chillers, vapor-phase, and anything else that goes below ambient temperature will just allow you to run even faster because semiconductors work better at colder temperatures where the conductor material is denser and the heat byproduct is removed more quickly, at the cost of cooling system complexity, price, and electricity bills.
 
If you don't like dealing with those annoying condensation issues with a water chiller or Phase change system peltier's won't save you. They have the same condensation issues, the issues are just confined to the socket area where the pelt is as opposed to the whole coolant system. Considering the need for an additional power supply that supplies 15 or move volts, ie. not your atx power supply and the attendant condensation, as well as added heat to your system, I'm not a fan of peltiers. I know that combined with good insulation and water cooling, you can get good results far below ambient temps, but its just not worth the expense, hassle and risks to me.
 
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