Exploring Below Ambient Water Cooling

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ok so it will not be inline only trying to cool the water that ends up in the cooler so have you checked to see if there are any warm spots in the cooler now where the warm water will gather naturally. to give you some idea of where to place the pickup line for the chiller inside the cooler, not to mention that this will change with the addition of the new flows added by the chiller unit itself. it may take some time to get it right but I am shore that you are up for it..
 
I actually read the backwards one first 😛

I may be a little sensitive tonight as I'm shattered from climbing today straight after my nightshift but I'm on the defense here Ry, I wasn't having a go at your loop mate :)
My current figures though,
Ambient: 20.94'c
Water: 21.56'c
Cpu: 30'c @3.6GHz
only fans running are the four on the (Rx on low)
I'm glad you've managed to put the chiller box idea into simple terms for folks, I couldn't think of another way to say the same thing hehe
The chiller doesn't have to take the heat out, thats the rads job, the chiller just provides cooler water to beging with,
maybe we should contact the English Dept at some universities to better explain our plans hehe,
I'm tired lol, so very tired 😛 off to work now,
Moto
 


Gollee Sarge, I anticipated actually having to think about that!

Yup, Yup, have to think about it!

Might have to do some, spearminting too, Uhh Yup! :lol:

************************************************************************************************

Seriously; I'll be more concerned when I actually get the aquarium chiller, you see it's not at the top of the priority list anymore since my wife just gave me a 2700K, :) for beginning the building of the screen porch on the back of our home, she has wanted a screened in porch for a long time.

If I had known she was going to give me a 2700K, I would have started the porch in January!

So an aquarium chiller, just got knocked to the bottom of the want list!

Understand?

Don't make me say it again! :lol:
 


Didn't think you were having a go at my loop Moto!

You're too much of a stand up guy for that, at least that's my opinion of you!

Just figured it was time for some clarification to the general THGF users, and used it as an opportunity to clear up some misconceptions! Ry
 
I'd like to have the time to work on my projects, but I'm finding that between kids, summer baseball and a career, most of the stuff I want to do is taking a back seat. Getting new stickies and info written up and posted is closer to a reality than hardware tinkering. I'm on Windows and Linux servers all day for work, so when I go home, I truly like to unplug.

I'm anxiously awaiting to see how this water chiller project turns out.

What's after the chiller? Phase? :)
 
The chiller is going to have to wait until Xmas now, it's just in the idea phase, and what's after that????????????

I'm sure I'll come up with something crazy to do, right now my time is consumed in screen porch building and it is flat hot, it was 97F at 11:00AM here today!
 


i think that only the first one would be capable of keeping up because correct me if i am wrong but to be able to continuously keep the temps at the lower end of their capabilities they have to USE more power then they are "dissipating". for instance the second one is only using 180 watts supposedly and after you take away the power the fans, pump, lights, and other power users the compressor only has so much ability to cool stuff down. you might get into the same situation that refrigerators have but to a lot lesser extent. This is just an outside looking in opinion though with little research into the matter but with medium knowledge of heat pumps.
 


see im confused on what he is actually running. is he running a cpu loop with the ice chest and no radiator or with radiator. if he has a radiator then i take back what i said but i didnt think he did. just 150 watt hotter water into the ice chest.
 
Go to the first page of this thread, You'll see how his loop is built, theres plenty of raddage, an external radbox with two radiators in as well,
The premise is that the 'normal' loop takes the heat out, the ice jugs allow for lower temps by cooling the mass volume,
So all Ryan would/will be doing by running the loop through a chiller is negating the need to replenish icejugs, its a tweak on his current setup in my eyes, finetuning if you will
*Edit, Although I'm sleep posting again, I can't actually locate a Cpu rad there hehe, maybe I'm wrong and he's just using the ice to cool the Cpu at the moment 🙂
Moto
 


yes thats what i thought, he has the rads to cool the gpus not the cpu and if that is the case then im not sure about the chillers being able to cool actively being heated water.
 
I use the exact same CPU cooling method that Ryan does. I also W/C my OC'd 480s SLI with 20 ~22C water and the max temps I have seen under load (MSI Kombuster ie) was 50C.

I suspect that his intention is just for his CPU at this time, thou depending on how well this chiller he is going to buy works he might add his GPUs for the heck of it. :sol:
 
There is no radiator in the CPU loop, there is no need for one.

The pictures should be 100% clear as to the setup.

I'm running 2 independent loops the CPU loop running straight from the cooler or ice chest.

The GPU loop running from the RadBox as a closed loop.

Since the cooler/ice chest allows maintained below ambient water temperatures by the addition of ice and has a thermal mass of 10 gallons of water, it completely takes the place of the radiator, so no radiator is used or needed.

I did use a radiator in the loop to test in the beginning and the radiator had a reverse effect, it was heating the chilled water to ambient room temperature level not aiding the cooling further at all, so it was removed from the loop.

The cooler is running 10 gallons of water it takes a long time to heat 10 gallons of water by a CPUs heat, the Aquarium Chiller should easily be able to chill the water in the cooler, replacing the ice.

The Aquarium Chiller is capable of cooling 93 gallons much more than the 10 gallons of water I'm using so it should be able to maintain at least a 50F or 10C water temperature in the cooler, and that's as low as I want to go to avoid condensation building.

**************************************************************************************************

The unknown problems I'm concerned with are how much noise does this thing produce and will it be tolerable in my office and how much dissipated heat will this thing be throwing off in my office as well?

I'm not after cooling my CPU with a trade off of turning my office into a heated tropical paradise, with a jack hammer running in the corner, that would be totally unacceptable!

If those are the consequences of running an Aquarium Chiller I will just continue as is!

Because the ice change out is now a daily routine, it is quiet, and does not heat my room!

I really need to actually see one of these chillers in action to even know if it is a viable alternative.

Ry
 
**The pictures should be 100% clear as to the setup**
I do most of my posting at night lately mate, my Desire Z's screensa a little tough on my old eyes hehe, its all so blurry 😛
and I'll obviously be posting you details on the chiller progress as well as a normal project log, purely because I'm aware of your interest in it and don't want to clog the log with infinite details most folks don't want/need to know :)
Moto
 



my only point was that if the cpu is outputing say 130-150 watts of heat and the chiller only uses 200watts max then you might run into the situation that the cpu is adding more then the chiller can remove and your water temps will rise. its one thing to cool water down to 0 degrees if little to no heat is being added but its another if heat is constantly being added. just a simple energy balance
 


Yes that's my unknown concerns I'm in hopes, (and that's not much to base a 500 dollar purchase on!) that the fact of the chillers total cooling mass capability say 90 gallons can handle the added heat if it only has to chill a mass of 10 gallons?

I could easily increase the size of my cooler if a higher water mass would be more effective but I was hoping the chiller would work with the 10 gallon capacity I'm running now, IDK?

If the chiller could handle the cooling wattage wise, the advantage it brings to the table is with it's auto temperature sensing capabilities, it would continue to run while the computer was off, maintaining the preset temperature range of the cooler.

Where the ice melts and looses it's cooling capability, the chiller would maintain the temperature it was set to maintain, so I'd start the day with the water temperature already at the level I would have it set for.

That's my thoughts at least, whether viable or not IDK?

If it would require using a higher powered chiller, that would be a deal breaker cost wise , it's already a luxury or insanity IMO adding that to my present setup, I'd have to can the idea all together, I'm just not going to exceed 500 bucks, there's too many other things I can do with that money.

So concern wise I'm at wattage/heat trade off, added noise, and added heat to the room, all unknowns? Ry
 


Coming from an Aquaria hobbyist as well (Saltwater Reef tank here) is the aquarium chillers are built to reduce the tanks about 10 degrees from ambient temps for the rated gallons. This is factoring that most people using these rated chillers are using 250W or even 400W Metal Halide bulbs over their tanks with reflectors to focus all the energy into the tank. Knowing this, and knowing that you are using an oversized chiller for you volume of water gives me positive assumptions for your trial. I am really looking forward to hearing the results Ryan.

CJ

As an afterthought, I do realize that most of the energy given off from a MH bulb is light, and not heat, but an additional thought is that MOST of the wattage being put into a chip is also not necessarily transferred to heat as well. I am thinking you may see enough temp controllability to actually add the GPU's into the same water source. Start buying scratchoffs Ryan! I don't want to wait till Christmas!
 


That's really positive, so what about the noise and heat added to my room from the chiller running?
 


i think you will be find as long as the wattage the chiller uses is rather high so that the amount that the compressor uses is more then the cpu can put out.



good point with the lights but like you said only a small portion of the energy is heat. hell im pretty sure 250watts of pure heat would burn you pretty bad but i dont know if these are like LED lights or the other extreme of normal house lights.

with regards to the cpu heat im pretty sure all of it or nearly all of it is in the form of heat. they dont give off light, sound, or chemical energy but might pass on electrical energy back to the motherboard.
 


My experience with Chillers is they are not too overly loud at all. If it bothers you you could always pipe it longer and have it run outside of the room.

CJ
 


Metal Halide lighting is god awful tons of heat. The bulbs get so hot that you are not supposed to handle the light with bare fingers when installing them, in fear that the oils on your fingers could superheat and fracture the bulbs.

On the CPU front, the CPU is passing some of the energy to other components, so X Watts of energy in isn't X watts of heat out. Even heating coil systems that are designed to do nothing but heat are only 80%ish efficient at taking the Wattage input and transfer the energy into heat.
 


but again, does a cpu make sound? produce light? have chemical reactions? does it vibrate or move? i mean there is very little other things that can take energy away from the amount released as heat.

plus water is reflective and even more so clear water and even though you have things to reflect it back, everytime its reflected it looses energy.

im not saying this idea will not work, i think it will do an ok job but i dont think it is as simple as buying any old chiller.
 
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