Thanks for the input. I am actually avoiding phase change like the plague. A compressor would be way too noisy and the insulated tubing would ruin the who "snazziness" of the pc(I love the ambiance of a watercooled pc). Im simply trying to setup a "quiet" watercooling system and push it to the edge.
The idea originally was to use a coldplate on a radiator and cool the fins of the rad using pelts. While I realise the contact between the two would be less that ideal, it SHOULD cool much better than air blowing through it. This would allow the radiator to be placed inside the case without having to worry about getting fresh outside air for maximum watercooling. It would also remove the variable of ambiant temperature(ambient would actually bring the temperature up a bit due to the tubing), and give people living in a hot tropical climate a great improvement.
As Ben mentioned however, the contact betwen the coldplate and fins isnt going to be good so its going to be very inefficient. And Kevin's experiement wasnt much of a success either and that used a copper block.
The whole thing bothers me like an itch I cant scratch though. Theoretically, if you split the water into multiple small channels inside one big copper block (say 2 or 3 channels per row for 10 rows for example) very much like a regular heatercore works, then it puts the coolant in a very controlled environment that you can cool much easier than if the water was just rushing through a tube 4 or 5 loops and then out. Optimising the block would really just be about using channels that are as thin as possible without ruining the flow rate of the whole circuit. I really have to dig up my thermodynamics book from back in college:P its been 10 years and dont remember much. I just need to start with a fixed sized block, start with a well sized width for say two channels per row, and figure out how long a X Watt peltier would need to cool the volume of liquid in each channel. Based on flow rate I will be able to see if the liquid has enough time to cool down. At the end of the day Ill be able to figure a decent combination between peltier power, and channel size/number or Ill see the folly of my thoughts:P
In anycase, Im getting ahead of myself. Its a theory and I am probably completely off. Especially if others have tried. Once my new system is up, Ill consider that to be the next focus for what my fiance considers computer obsession:P
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