Crazy idea?

[drkick]

Has anyone tried/though of buying a mini fridge and set up their system inside it? Would that work? Is that a stupid idea? If yes, tell me why?

 

[Ned_Flanders]

Condensation.

When cooling anything below ambient temp, water vapour in the air liquifies.

Water + Electricity do not mix

I can be done, but you need to insulate (cover up) the PC components


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[error_911]

also, thats generally reffered to as a water-chiller... but its a pain in the arse. you're better off making TEC based water-chiller, save you some cash and provide something a little more performant. and, other than having to worry about sealing up your pc components, remember - you've got to properly seal that hole you just made into the mini-fridge, otherwise that thing is going to overheat and cool like garbage.

<b>and now for something completely different</b>
...<b><A HREF="http://www.bytethiscomputers.sytes.net/site/specs.html" target="_new">system specs</A></b>

 

[phsstpok]

Wrong. You don't need to insulate. You can also seal the fridge.

A refridgerator is a closed air system. Once sealed no new air enters and no new moisture. The fridge remains dry. Of course you need to start with the fridge at room temperature to avoid initial condensation. You can also use a desecant (sp?) to remove the small amount of moisture of the trapped air but there probably is not enough to worry about.

It's all been done. Someone did it with a Celeron system, around 600 Mhz as I recall.

The problem is can it be done with modern CPUs?

Refridgerators rely on heavy insulation to keep the cold in. The compressors don't run fulltime. Don't know if they are built ruggedly enough to continually cool a high wattage computer.

<b>A mind is a terrible thing</b>

 

[Mr5oh]

Sort of similar ideal:

<A HREF="http://totl.net/Eunuch/index.html" target="_new">http://totl.net/Eunuch/index.html</A>

Your biggest problem would be your connections and such, becuase the thing would have to stay sealed to keep it from condensating. Then if you did have to open it to repair something, it would have to warm up first to keep it from condensating again.

My Desktop: <A HREF="http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html" target="_new">http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html</A>

 

[pickxx]

The idea has its problems but nothing you couldn't overcome. Almost all fridges/freezers come with a way to take out the excess water. Thats why we dont have the caves of ice anymore in freezers. They take out the moisture. So if you put it in there a while with the power off and let the fridge remove the moisture....you should have no problem.
Granted you would have to make sure any cords comming out of the fridge were sealed. But i dont see why you couldn't freeze your system.
It would lower the life of it, and could damage your computer if it dangerously spikes in temp without your compresser kicking on....but there is no reason you couldn't do it with some precautions.

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[drkick]

Thank you all for the info.

 

[jammydodger]

You will still need a large heat sink on your CPU as convection around the CPU alone will not be good enough to cool it.

 

[pIII_Man]

condensation shouldnt be a problem, there will be some initial buildup however the frige is magnetically sealed at the door so not much more will get in.

The problem however is that i just dont think that any mini frige will be able to take the stress. Remember how much heat output your system is putting out, processor, gpu, memory chippset it all adds up. All a minifridge is designed to do is maintain a temperature not disipate heat, it works hard enough to keep cool with contents that dont have any thermal output. Im afraid that a system putting out 200 watts of heat would turn the freezer into an oven.

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