Water Cooling Chiller Mod

[RhinoUK]

Ive been thinking of something for a while to get lower water temps without spending a fortune on a dedicated chiller system. The reason is to get more CPU performance at stable temp, lower CPU and water temps and add GPU cooling. At the moment i have a Thermaltake Tai Chi watercooled case with CPU cooling only which has enabled me to get my i5 2500k to a stable 4.7MHz, i can get 5.2 but the temps were touching 100 so the challenge is set at 5 to 5.2 at temps under 90 degrees celcius while also cooling an overclocked GTX 680.
I am going to break it down into stages and get the stable CPU first and then add the GPU if possible.
Ive done some benchmarks of my system so far so i can compare the improvement if i get one. Currently the CPU has an idle temp of 25°C rising to 90°C after 16 mins of full load and remaining stable upto 24 hours at 4.7MHz and the water temp goes from 18.2°C to 31.9°C over same time period and remains circa 31°C. The ambient temp of the room is 18°C which rises to circa 22°C around the pc with the heat from the PC and eventually the room over an hour or two. In summer it can be hotter but i throttled the CPU back to 4.5MHz to lower temps.
My plan is to add a chiller unit to the water loop to drop the water temp in the theory it will drop the CPU temp, ive considered all sorts of units even a fridge lol but i need something practical, small and cheap. My chiller unit is to be a single wine bottle chiller that retails for about £50 and chills to 8Ive been thinking of something for a while to get lower water temps without spending a fortune on a dedicated chiller system. The reason is to get more CPU performance at stable temp, lower CPU and water temps and add GPU cooling. At the moment i have a Thermaltake Tai Chi watercooled case with CPU cooling only which has enabled me to get my i5 2500k to a stable 4.7MHz, i can get 5.2 but the temps were touching 100 so the challenge is set at 5 to 5.2 at temps under 90 degrees celcius while also cooling an overclocked GTX 680.
I am going to break it down into stages and get the stable CPU first and then add the GPU if possible.
Ive done some benchmarks of my system so far so i can compare the improvement if i get one. Currently the CPU has an idle temp of 25°C rising to 90°C after 16 mins of full load and remaining stable upto 24 hours at 4.7MHz and the water temp goes from 18.2°C to 31.9°C over same time period and remains circa 31°C. The ambient temp of the room is 18°C which rises to circa 22°C around the pc with the heat from the PC and eventually the room over an hour or two. In summer it can be hotter but thats nothing to worry about because up north we dont get much of a summer but on the odd day or two ive throttled the CPU back to 4.5MHz to lower temps.
My plan is to add a chiller unit to the water loop to drop the water temp in the theory it will drop the CPU temp, ive considered all sorts of units even a fridge lol but i need something practical, small and cheap. My chiller unit is to be a single wine bottle chiller that retails for about £50 and chills to 8Ive been thinking of something for a while to get lower water temps without spending a fortune on a dedicated chiller system. The reason is to get more CPU performance at stable temp, lower CPU and water temps and add GPU cooling and to see if it works. At the moment i have a Thermaltake Tai Chi watercooled case with CPU cooling only which has enabled me to get my i5 2500k to a stable 4.7MHz, i can get 5.2 but the temps were touching 100 so the challenge is set at 5 to 5.2 at temps under 90 degrees celcius while also cooling an overclocked GTX 680.
I am going to break it down into stages and get the stable CPU first and then add the GPU if possible.
Ive done some benchmarks of my system so far so i can compare the improvement if i get one. Currently the CPU has an idle temp of 25°C rising to 90°C after 16 mins of full load and remaining stable upto 24 hours at 4.7MHz and the water temp goes from 18.2°C to 31.9°C over same time period and remains circa 31°C. The ambient temp of the room is 18°C which rises to circa 22°C around the pc with the heat from the PC and eventually the room over an hour or two. In summer it can be hotter but thats nothing to worry about because up north we dont get much of a summer but on the odd day or two ive throttled the CPU back to 4.5MHz to lower temps.
My plan is to add a chiller unit to the water loop to drop the water temp in the theory it will drop the CPU temp, ive considered all sorts of units even a fridge lol but i need something practical, small and cheap. My chiller unit is to be a single wine bottle chiller that retails for about £50 and chills to 8°C and i am going to make a coil from microbore pipe £5 to fit inside the wine cooler. I will connect the water cooling pipe work after the radiator to the coil and seal the cooler to keep in the chill. I dont know what to expect really and how it will all look but hopefully it might be a 10°C reduction in water temp and 5°C on CPU temp at 4.7MHz. If it works and goes well there are double chillers available which would improve on the cooling as well. Ill keep the thread updated with some pics and info as i go along and if anyone has any advice or has done something like this please advise.

[Macadee]

Won't last as not designed for constant heat load, save your £50 toward some better custom watercooling components instead.

[GoNz0]

far to much to read there, if your adding a chiller you need to fully insulate all the pipework and water blocks as condensation will take out the pc within an hour. this included around the cpu and gpu contact point, between the blocks and circuit boards.

[DDY]

Your current plan is impracticable. Single bottle chillers are far too weak at cooling for any practical use, they barely work for the intended purpose as it is, a rip off at £50 if you ask me. These chillers use a Thermoelectric Cooler (TEC) aka Peltier, you're better of having one of these sit directly between your CPU and waterblock to save the inefficiency of piping chilled water around, for this you'll need quite a beefy TEC for CPU cooling, as above the one in the bottle chiller is far too weak, not only that, you'll need a very beefy PSU to power a TEC too.

Having anything in your system which is below ambient temp, e.g. chilled water or a TEC will cause condensation, you don't need me to tell you about water and electronics. You need to consider thermal insulation and also waterproofing if you decide to stick a TEC on your CPU, FYI this will make a mess of your motherboard, imagine silicone grease everywhere.

As mentioned, you're better off buying better WC gear.

PS: Some paragraph spacing would be nice.

[jim]

People have done it with an office water cooler, the best one I've seen the guy placed the watercooler in another room and ran the tubes through the wall. It's pretty dedicated stuff though.

Here's an example: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1702975&page=2

[RhinoUK]

Ok a bit to think about and some issues to overcome, the link was a good read. Thanks for the feedback.

[DanceswithUnix]

Was thinking about something like this a few days ago.

Perhaps a second CPU block could be plumbed in and a TEC cooler strapped to that?

[RhinoUK]

The reason for the wine cooler is that we sell them at the company i work for but we buy them in and sell under our brand, ive been doing some digging and we have had single and double coolers on 24 hour live test since 2009 without a single failure, i was told by the technical manager. Ive now got my hands on one and i can see the problem with condensation. I am now thinking of stripping it down to leave the TEC and putting the cooling coil direct onto it rather than in the housing and then insulating that. It probably wont look pretty but i can worry about looks later.
Although the unit is small and may not give suffcient chilling i am going to explore the options on insulation and see if i can come up with a working sample to see if it does reduce temps. I may do the trials on an old Athlon setup ive got just in case!

[DanceswithUnix]

This sort of chiller was supposed to be trialled a few years ago for in car climate control. I think the idea is that stop/start or electric powered cars can't rely on an engine to drive a compressor, and a TEC was more efficient than driving a compressor electrically in an era where everyone wants more fuel economy.

If the technology can cool the interior of a car, the potential should be there!

Many years ago I even considered just putting an entire motherboard into a beer fridge instead of a PC case

Let us know how you get on, this is sort of an itch I never got to scratch.

[DDY]

The reason for the wine cooler is that we sell them at the company i work for but we buy them in and sell under our brand, ive been doing some digging and we have had single and double coolers on 24 hour live test since 2009 without a single failure, i was told by the technical manager. Ive now got my hands on one and i can see the problem with condensation. I am now thinking of stripping it down to leave the TEC and putting the cooling coil direct onto it rather than in the housing and then insulating that. It probably wont look pretty but i can worry about looks later.
Although the unit is small and may not give suffcient chilling i am going to explore the options on insulation and see if i can come up with a working sample to see if it does reduce temps. I may do the trials on an old Athlon setup ive got just in case!

You can make a rough estimate on cooling performance if you know how much power the chiller draws from the mains.

[RhinoUK]

Its on a 12V supply from a mains transformer so it will be low but ill find out what it is. Ive started stripping the unit down and the insulation used around the chiller bit looks like expanded foam the type you get for DIY applications and its only about a half to three quarter inch thick. Messy but could be used to insulate the CPU cooler if i knocked something up as a cover and filled that so only the CPU contact surface of the cooler was not insulated. It wouldnt look that bad and the same could be used to insulate the chiller end as well. I am sure i could find something to lag the pipes as well but not sure about the radiator and condensation. I am sure this thing is gonna do something to lower water temp but how practicle it will be and look will be debatable.

I think my cooling system is pretty good already to handle the extreme temps of the overclocked CPU, the water temp only increased 13.7 degrees and perhaps with some tweaking to voltages and Bios settings i could get a cooler CPU temp but ive got a bug now to see if this thing will work.

[RhinoUK]

60 watt or 0.06 Kilowatt power consumption

[Butuz]

60 watt or 0.06 Kilowatt power consumption

Should just about be capable of cooling your motherboard blocks then.

Butuz

[DDY]

60 watt or 0.06 Kilowatt power consumption

Assuming all that power is going to the TEC, best case scenario would give you about 35W worth of cooling, which isn't much. You can find TEC coolers up to 150W for less than £5 delivered from ebay!

I think your best approach would be obtain a TEC, by taking apart the wine cooler or buying one on ebay, and attaching the TEC directly to a waterblock, but not directly to the CPU. i.e. have the TEC sandwiched between a regular air heatsink and a waterblock - the waterblock will be part of your WC loop. This will be far more efficient in cooling than running a pipe though the wine cooler.