What do you think?

[Zoran]

Hi,

I understand, that many of you will say this is stupid and not cost effective but...

I'm going to build a TEC cooled system. It doesnt matter what HW I have @ the moment as I'm building the cooling for whatever I buy after It's ready and tested to be safe for 24/7 (by the way thats only 3,428571 hours a day). Everything in this system is custom designed and made by me except the waterpump and the TECs.

OK, I want to put a 500W TEC on the CPU, liquid cool it with a very short loop without a radiator using a custom made closed waterchiller machined out of a solid block of copper using two 62x62mm 275W (360W) TECs for cooling and they will be cooled in another loop connected to a rather huge radiaror (I'm looking for THE one yet). Both loops will be using a 2000 litre/h aquarium pump as I can get them cheap and they are not loud at all. The actual flow won't be 2000 lph of course as they have a small pressure and the piping and the copper blocks' flow resistance will degrade it.

I personally think that I could have fairly stable temps of around:
50C - coolant on the 550W (720W) hot side
0C - 10C in the chilled loop
~ -40C on the cold plate
=> -25ish core temp (depending on future CPU!)

I definitely have to keep the hottest loop below 50C! The size of the radiator is what will decide whether I will use (a) fan(s) or none at all. Keep in mind I will have to dissipate A LOT of heat!! As the pumps are near silent I could get an almost silent config if I don't use a single fan )

Comments?
Suggestions?
Anyone done something like this before?
Coolant for sub ambient loop?
What Radiator? (I was thinking about getting one from a sportscar with a big engine 3-5l, up to the size of a side of a full tower case)

Z

 

[DFI Daishi]

only try it if you can find a way to put the rad outside of the house. pelts are really inefficient and will heat up the room that the computer is in HUGELY. it will litterally dump as much heat heat into the room as a plug-in electric heater.

now.......do you realize how much electricity this thing will use? you say that you want it good for 24/7 opperation, but if you're actually going to run it day and night you're looking at some NASTY hydro bills........i'm thinking like $100/month to power it........

this whole venture is just hugely wastefull........phase change, while not the pinnacle of efficiency, can get you colder with MUCH less power consumption.

if you have the kind of time and money to actually make your proposed setup, i think you would do well to direct that money and gumption at mounting a phase change cooler outside and piping in the CPU cooler: even if it makes more noise, it's not going to bother you inside of the house.

 

[Zoran]

You are absolutely right!

As I said before, it's overdimensed in all ways! The only reason I am doing this is that I'm fed up with upgrading all the time... This way I'll get a cooling I can keep for a respectable period of time. Of course it won't run @ full performance all the time! In fact benchmarking, gaming and from time to time something that will require some extra cpu clocks will be the only times this will run @ full as it WILL be a powerhungry bastard! But even @ half the performance it should be able to get anything available (today and tomorrow) subzero - that's my target.

If everything goes well It'll get a logic that will automatically adjust the power to requested cooling perf. Say you set you want load temps of 0C and it'll keep 'em there.

You're right about the temps. It's fairly easy to calculate: 500W + ~130W (CPU+TEC) + 2x 275W (Chiller) + 2x (70W + 90W [GPU+TEC]) = ~1500W of heat dissipation. Thats a mid range heater Running this in a mid-sized room will give you ~3C rise of ambient temps per hour.

Power is an issue as well as only the powersupply for the TECs will consume ~1600W + the PC ~300W + 2x 38W for the pumps that's somewhat short of 2kW thats a fast boiling kettle (1l of water in less than a minute)

Then when a new platform comes around, all I'll have to do is to make a new retention mechanism and carry on using as I do not think there will be anything able to overwhelm this any time soon...

I don't want phase change for more than two reasons: I can't cool graphix and it's a bit more noisy and I don't think it can get me to run much colder than this with as much effort.

Z