Pc water chiller and radiator

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TimothyJ

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Would it make sense to use a rafiator and a water cooler to get a overclocked system to colder tempatures without condesation or would that be overkill to use both
 

InfoSponge16

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Condensation might be an issue for everyday usage depending on how cold the chiller is.

There are many people who do something similar.

I saw a YouTube video where someone made an external radiator built into a wall. It was a really nice setup. But the room his PC was in was right next to the garage.

His temps were really good with his setup.

So would it make sense? That depends on you.

If you come up with some interesting idea, maybe you could do a build thread to show off your setup.
 

rubix_1011

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I assume you mean 'chiller' correct? Actually, having a radiator moving ambient air through a cooling loop that is also using a chiller would be counter productive assuming the chiller is cooling below ambient room temperature (I would hope it is, or else it is a lousy chiller).

Doing so actually raises the delta-T of the coolant in the cooling loop by moving the warmer ambient air through the radiator - you are effectively adding another 'heat' source to the cooling loop. 4ryan6 found a lot of these solutions in his peltier/TEC build log found below:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/282844-29-peltier-water-cooling

https://www.overclock.net/forum/62-peltiers-tec/1633988-chilled-water-cooling-vs-3-0-build-log.html
 

Karadjgne

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Fishtank chillers do not work well in small volume loops. For best consistency, they require a large volume of water, like a decent sized fishtank where the level of warm intake doesn't affect the overall temp much. Chillers are designed for light maintenance of temps, not constant on/off or heavy usage. So unless you are OK with parking your pc next to a 10gallon reservoir fishtank you'll be out of luck.
 

DavidM012

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You could get a 125l bucket with a lid and drop a pump in it I use a bucket of water these days, as I built my loop with a separate block, pvc tubing and a motorcycle transmission cooler that is roughly equivalent to a 120mm pc radiator and my overclock can reach 4.9ghz @ ddr3 2400, where air cooling would only reach 4.7ghz.

My next buy is probably going to be a larger bucket, I have run the loop for a couple of years without any issues except in high summer when it's 35c outside it's difficult to ventilate the ambient heat build up.

The drawback to having a bucket of water near your pc is the risk of spills but if you can find room for a bucket with a lid on the floor it should be reasonably safe with a lid and also to ensure that the outflow tube is well secured to the pump.
 

Karadjgne

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Well that's the thing with a fishtank chiller, you actually don't need rads at all, the chiller maintains a set liquid temp, basically doing the job of the radiators. All you'd need on the case is minimal airflow to remove radiated heat from the ram and the few heatsinks not on the cpu/gpu.
 

DavidM012

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but it would be tricky to modulate the temp. to avoid condensation. It might possibly be done if you could wire an electronic circuit with temp sensors but you wouldn't find anything off the shelf to do that, or else you take the route of insulating your board, you can get kit to do that but it starts getting expensive where a plastic bucket you can use a radiator and a fan and the bigger the bucket the more energy it will take to raise the temp so it stores a certain amount of heat.

I would've liked at one point to have a chiller that kept the water at 25c no matter what but there must be reason why nobody has engineered a mass market soln. for it and that reason is it is probably more cooling than necessary and not cheap and also impractical to put together.

A large bucket will very likely be more than enough and it's cheap and a cpu block, pvc tubing, aquarium pump, radiator and a fan avoids many of the problems that off the shelf coolers might have.

It doesn't fit into your chassis but each part is replaceable and modifiable so it should be cheaper to maintain in the long term.

A fishtank chiller would have to cope with 180watts approx. in the example of an overclocked fx4350 which would be mitigated somewhat by a large volume of water but would probably be also outside it's rated workload capacity.

Unless you can work out all the thermodynamics and math and find durable equipment it might be prone to fail. All that requires knowledge that isn't all that easy to figure.

A large bucket, approximately speaking with 1l per watt of heat should only rise 1c per hour so would also do an amount of temp. regulating without any of the hassle or power consumption.

The fishtank chillers I can see on amazon for £70 say they draw 70w of power which maybe is related to the amount of cooling they can do but is less than the heat output of the cpu, whether they can run at maximum capacity 24/7 is doubtful. You could get several together but then, there's no way to regulate the temp. and also you'd have to pay hundreds and they are only meant to cool 20litres so it all looks rather inadequate than excessive, and a lot to pay to experiment.
 

Karadjgne

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A 10gal fishtank can easily deal with anything any cpu can dish out. Liquids have a huge ability to absorb heat energy, for instance my nzxt x61 has idle coolant temp of 30°C. Even heavy gaming for an hour only raises that to 33-34°C. Running p95 for pan hour puts it at 39°C. A chiller would easily keep 10 gallons at a constant 30°C, the liquid surface dissipating that energy. It's the chiller itself that comes with temp probe and dial, you set the temp on the chiller and done.

The reason there isn't a mass market solution is nobody wants a fishtank for a cooler. It's problematical to maintain the coolant, as any regular full loop will tell you, algae and other contaminants requiring periodic cleaning. Just as you can use mineral oil, the looks and shock value are worth it, until you need to perform maintenance, then it's a real oversized pain in the ***. And costly.
 

DavidM012

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Yeah I was using a 10l bucket rather than 10 gal but it isn't enough so more water is what I was thinking to get me through the hottest days of summer you're right it wouldn't go below ambient even with the fishtank chiller so condensation wouldn't be an issue it would be if you chilled the coolant below ambient with the peltier rig.

But I thought that the additional water alone would be enough as you could guesstimate that a fan and rad. would take a few 0c out of the loop as much as a fishtank chiller so either/or the fan and rad. might be slightly cheaper.

Maintenance wise I haven't found it problematic only there's nothing in the water to keep microbes out so maybe legionalla could be a risk as well, maybe a few purification tabs wouldn't be out of order, but usually I switch off the pump and can drain the loop and take the water block apart when it needs cleaning.

But the large water tank/bucket is generally less difficult to build than the sub-ambient rigs. So I can get a 125l bucket with a lid for a £10 which is 30 gallons it should be plenty.
 

DavidM012

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I found with air cooling I couldn't get an overclock over 4.7ghz basically the problem is to remove the additional watts generated by the overclock from the loop

in high summer when ambient is 35c I couldn't sustain my overclock at 4.9ghz ddr3 2400 I had to dial it down because it eventually overheated

so by adding a larger reservoir to absorb and store more heat it should be enough to keep on going through the rough days.
 

DavidM012

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The radiator + fan he already owns and could try before buying a chiller. Either will remove some 0c from the loop the question is how much would be necessary to reach the top overclock.

The fx 4350 can get to 4.9 ghz @ ddr3 2400 with an estimated tdp of 180w

So really the question is how much of that 180w can be removed out of the loop. It's only pushing the limits on the warmest days of the year so it should have enough capacity most of the time.
 

Karadjgne

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Well any of the 280mm AIO's or the large twin towers like NH-D15/S can handle 250w+, the AIO's reaching 350w+ and the 360/420mm reaching closer to 400w. So I don't see that as being the issue. What I see is its an FX, which has an inherently low top end, core temp max being 62°C which translates out by the time software actually can register it to being mid 70s thermal margin limit. Combined with a 35°C ambient, Op has little room to move when interior case temps are starting in the low 40's. That's going to be severe on any efficiency for interior cooling. While most ppl in climate controlled rooms on Intel cpu's have roughly 60-70° to play with before the cpu gets choked op has just 30° or so. So whatever cooling solution op is using now needs to be far more efficient, that @180w not withstanding. That could be anything from more radiator surface area, tighter finned rad with stronger sp fans, larger bore piping, better pump, who knows, don't know the present setup.
 

DavidM012

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My current rig isn't optimal and would benefit from a better rad. but one step at a time, I'm only considering buying the bigger bucket. At the moment it's 12mm id pvc tubing and a small aquarium pump that probably flows 3l pm

It could all be better but as there are several areas money could be spent the choice is a judicial one. The bigger bucket is the first cheapest improvement I could make.

It so just on the edge that a small improvement might get to 5ghz or 5.1 maybe.
 

Karadjgne

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Yeah, i was thinking closer to bathtub size, not bucket size. Type of container could matter too, plastic buckets are more of an insulator, using glass or metal will help the contained water dissipate heat throughout its surface area vrs just the top.
 

DavidM012

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I tried a copper jardiniere but it was only 5l capacity but like for like it made no difference against a simple 10l bucket. If I put the radiator under the desk directly in front of a 16" desk fan on the floor that would probably do quite a lot more cooling having spent £40 ish. for one bucket and the fan.
 

DavidM012

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That's why it's all such a dilemma I can't predict what will work and it's £60-80 on ebay. The loop I'm using should work on a lower tdp cpu so I could spend the money on a new board cpu and mem. It isn't really worth spending that much for a 100mhz-200mhz gain in the overclock when the next gen cpu will surpass it.
 

rubix_1011

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When you are circulating coolant at 0.5 or 1.0 GPM (1.9 to 3.8LPM) then you have to account for the actual thermal load being applied to the coolant vs. how quickly the overall volume is cooled. If you are only using a large reservoir and nothing else to equalize the absorbed thermal load, you will reach a point where you are adding more load than can be dissipated naturally. This is why active air cooling is needed using a heat exchanger (radiator).

This is also the same reason why 'computer in a refrigerator' or freezer is also not viable... those devices are insulators and designed to remove heat load and maintain, not constantly displace it.
 

DavidM012

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I've got a radiator in the loop. The original question was, would a fishtank chiller work without condensation and the answer was, yes it won't go below ambient.

However I would try the radiator in the loop before buying the fishtank chiller.

There are many options in this kind of loop I could upgrade the cpu block, the pvc tubing to 15mm id (but since the narrowest point is 10mm and the cpu block it won't improve the flow any?) the radiator, the reservoir, or the fans or the pump.

The reservoir we have got to a bathtub size, 125litres may not be enough but it is 10x more than what I'm using at the moment, and the radiator could go to a 240, 360 or 420mm but as it will probably be aluminium I'd get galvanic corrosion against the cpu block so I'd have to switch that to an aluminium one and maybe lose some efficiency.

a noctua nh-d14 would eliminate a lot of the hassles for the same price as a chiller, like the loop and I still don't know which option would top out the overclock. I dunno if I would also have to lap the heat sink base, but that would be even more hassle, I couldn't get a rather convex arctic freezer pro to sand flat on 36 grit even after a couple of hours it wasn't getting anywhere.

I did lap and polish both the cpu block and cpu but they were both relatively flat to start with.

I wouldn't get a quiet pump that is that is any larger than the aquarium pump I'm using at the moment in the same price range, of £15.

So the cpu block, the tubing, and pump won't be changed it's the rez. and the rad. and the fan with the option of removing the rad for fishtank chiller.

The rez. is the cheapest shot, and I would need it to be larger for the fishtank chiller, and since a new radiator is probly aluminium I don't want one.

If the larger rez. and fan don't work for £40ish I don't think it can all be upgraded for less than £100 so why not buy an all in one at this point there aren't any more savings to be made.

The loop as it is should work pretty well on Ryzen when I upgrade the core system and I am able to overclock to 4.9ghz @ ddr3 2400 most of the time except for the warmest days but it looks like it will probably cost around £100 to get the extra 100-200mhz overclock on the fx 4350 so it's not worth trying anything more than the cheap shot of the larger rez. and fan.
 
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