Tempreture controlled waterchiller?

[Woodsie]

Hi all,

For the last three months, I have been using a watercooled system with an plastic toolbox for a resivior (holds about 10 litres). It works well enough. I`m able to get my T-Bird 1.4 to 1.65 (...and very happy I am with it too!)

And it`s very quiet indeed... The noisiest part being the hard drive & the rad fan... All well and good you'd think...

But, I'd like to modify the setup so that I could reduce the size of the res and get rid of the radiator and fan.

Now then, I've seen the posts about water chillers and they seem to leave condensation all across the pipes etc. But I still fancy the idea as peltier cooling the core seems a bit beyond me just yet...

So has anyone done, or got an idea for a tempreture controlled water chiller?

I'm thinking of changing the res to a smaller copper based box with a peltier attached to it to cool the water before it goes round the system again. I'd prefer to use a couple of quite low wattage pelts than one larger one, if you can get away with very minimally cooling those...

The pelts I assume would be voltage controlled to adjust cooling rate... Other than that, my head hurts..!

I'd like to be able to have water at about ambient temps, so to stop the condensation occuring...

I'm certainly not looking to mount this internally, but it's got to be quieter than the set up I have now, or else it's not worth it...


Your thoughts please...


Cheers!

[Butcher]

A chiller won't be more efficient than a rad and therefore won't be quieter. You'd need some major peltier wattage to cool a tbird with a chiller for starts, that means major air sinks which means major airflow - not good for quiet. For a quiet setup have a decent rad and run the fans at 5V or 7V. You want to fit the largest fans you can and run them slow - I run a single 172mm fan and it's pretty quiet at 100cfm, less noisy than my disks.

As for reducing the res size, just buy a smaller one.

[Brad]

it can be done, but the condenser needs to be cooled still, which needs one or two 120mm fans.

just get a bigger heater core style rad, and run 2x silent 120's on it

[futRtrubL]

Pelt chilling the res wont get rid of noise as pelts don't get rid of heat they just move it, the place they move it to still needs to be cooled in the normal way(even more heat than before as the pelt consumes power too). Water and air chillers are notoriously ineffective too.
You really don't need a res. as long as your pump can be run inline, otherwise it be shunk to any size big enough to fit the pump.
About making it quieter, do what Brad says above.

Edward

[Brad]

or just fill up a large resivour, it will take forever to heatup, which can be facilitated by running a large heatercore, like the leviathon at liquidcool.org with 2x silent 120's

[#Rotor]

this might be right up you ally then.... it's a voltage controller, with built in Temperature protection.... now normally the thermistor would go onto the block that cools down the Mosfets.... the comparitor then senses the temperature and if for some unplanned reason the temperature goes higher that a preset value (little pot) the TEC's will get shut down, now if you where to relocate that thermistor to your reservoir, you would now be able to maintain a preset temperature just as easily...... :)

http://3rotor.dns2go.com/images/r&d/TEC-driver/Page01/DCP05097.JPG

[Brad]

but if the tec's get shut down, what happens to the cpu? does a shut down protection thing come in?

btw, welcome to the forums #rotor, I'm sure we'll all love you being here

[#Rotor]

Thanks :) as usual, I'm always late at finding the nice Forums....

nope it won't shut the computer down, only the power to the Tec's get switched off........ I know, it sounds like an very dangerous thing to do, but because the shutdown time will only last for a couple of seconds, until the Mosfets cool down to below the threshold.... now this power oscillation will cause the cpu temp to go up and down, obviously........... I use this then, along with MBM's protection facility to trigger the alarms...... Do also keep in mind.... this is the last line of defense.... as the mosfets get cooled by the same water that goes through the block on the TEC, MBM will go squealen, long before this device actually get's activated, but hay you can't have enough protection.... and these little mosfets are damn expensive anyhow :) they need to be protected too....

[JimS]

This is a picture of my copper chilltank with pelts. attached. I use two 5V pelts which run off my system PSU with no problem. This setup keeps my CPU around ambient or below. There is also a water chiller in this setup, will post some pics. when I get a chance. Current temp. in my computer room is 24C and my CPU is 19C.




Chilltank picture (http://pages.cthome.net/jstic/chilltank4.html)









Chilltank interior (http://pages.cthome.net/jstic/chilltank1.html)



I currently use a second water loop and block to cool the hotside of the pelts instead of the air cooling shown in the picture.

[#Rotor]

now that looks like it will perform very well,

[cmfic]

http://3rotor.dns2go.com/store/harddrive_blocks/index.html
They work great, very little noise etc. Mail me cmfic@direcway.com
Thanks,
John

[|PuNiSh3R|]

Woodsie, I read your whole post but I didn't read the rest of this post.

I can tell you right away it won't work.

Pelts are VERY unefficient and won't do this job at all. I've gone through a lot of designs that I was going to use to do pelt water chilling.. none would of worked. I was going to use a 172w pelt.. it wouldn't of been able to keep up with the heat load of the water.

Pelts are a huge waste of money.. first in the electrical field... then in the amount of heat they displace..

You are way better just building or buying a phase change water chiller.. highly efficient on the electric and if you use a big enough condensor on it you won't need much fan power to keep it cool.

[JimS]

You mean something like THIS? (http://pages.cthome.net/jstic/chilltank%20pics.html)

It has no controller, but it sounds like what you are trying to build as far as a reservoir. The only mistake I made with this tank was trying to cool the hotside of the pelts with air, once I switched over to water(sorry, no pics yet), it made a difference of about 3-5C. My pelts are small, 50W each. With larger pelts you could decrease temps even more.

[JimS]

If you set them up properly, pelts can do a pretty decent job. For about $150 I can keep my CPU anwhere from about 10C and up. I don't bother with below ambient though, not worth all the hassle of insulating. I use four 5V pelts, my electric bill went up about $4 a month when I started using them.

If I had the knowledge and time, I would probably do a phase change upgrade. Pelts are really pretty simple to work with and do not require much in the way of experience. Mostly just commone sense.

[|PuNiSh3R|]

Eh.. I got out of pelts.. to much electrical use for me.. I am building a phase change unit right now which I plan to sell.. Going to put like 2 or 3 of them up for sale if they work good.. Vapo Chill size.. Except mine are water chillers.. We'll see come tomorrow.. how it works..

I'll put up pics ASAP! You will all like..

JimS.. if you want a phase change system I suggest you take a look at what I have to offer.. not sure of a price yet.. but probably around 400.00 or so.. Not sure yet..

I could offer you the knowledge + some of the parts you need.. like evaporator coil/resevior.. things that I made up myself.. I'll give ya more info if you want.. Plus some pics soon.

[JimS]

Cool, I am always interested in learning something new.

[|PuNiSh3R|]

I'll have pics of my system tomorrow.