Mini Fridge resovoir
 

Allright, so, this is going to be my first watercooled system, so i'm looking for a little advice here. Here's my plan, tell me what's wrong with it:
I'm thinking of building a 1 gallon(aprox) reservoir inside of a mini fridge that I have sitting next to my computer. I'd then have a pump(inline) pumping the fridgerated water to the waterblock, of which I was thinking of going with the spir@al, or maze 3(any preferences? anything else I should consider?) and back again.

Now, obviously this is going to make this system hard to take to lan parties, but I think I can live with that. Maybe I'll get a fork lift to move everything around. ^_^

Am I going to have condensation problems with this system?

I don't know if this changes anything, but the system is a P4 2.0, I eventually want to be able to expand this cooling system to cool my geforce 4 and raid array.

Welcome to ProCooling!


You might consider using something different than a bucket inside that fridge: anything you can do to increase the surface area would allow the water to cool better.

Not sure if a fridge used that way would work well. Others will tell.

Thanks, yea, I wasn't really thinking of just throwing a bucket in my fridge, I have in mind more of a flat maybe 2"(deapth) x 2'(width) x 2'(back) (or however wide and far back the interior of the fridge goes) plexiglass case that sits right below the freezer in the fridge.

ps. how much would the addition of a peltier on my pcu help to lower temps?

A pelt would lower your temps dramatically if it is powerful enough (and powered well), especially if using a GOOD supply of chilled water to cool it. If you do that with a minifridge, though, keep in mind that your fridge won't do too much to chill your water, and might get permanently damaged in the process. You'll want a GOOD radiator outside of the fridge (after the pelt) to get rid of as much heat as possible, then have another GOOD rad inside of the fridge (running passive ... no fans) to chill the water a bit more before it goes back to the pelt. A res in the fridge won't cool the water much at all.

Also, keep in mind that minifridges have weak cooling units, and they can be easily overburdened by a warm cooling system.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend using a minifridge on a hot system. You'd be better off with either a dedicated phase change unit for chilling (look in the phase change forum for info on conversions), or a GOOD radiator with GOOD air flow. The power use by the fridge would almost be wasted in your situation (along with the fridge itself once it blows up).

look at my pelt chiller here

check out this thread here
keeper has a mini fridge with the water going through it.
wj

I still contend that using a 40W or 60W mini-fidge is a BAD idea on a PC, and very disaster prone should the fridge fail, even WITH an external radiator in series. This isn't taking into consideration the use of a pelt. In reality, you'd need a phase change unit like the one on a full size fridge to do the job properly for you. This is just a waste of power. While a 100W fridge MAY do the job, you're still taking a big risk because the thing will be cycling CONSTANTLY, rather than the off/on cycle it usually has.

I have had this Dorm room fridge discussion before on another forum. There is this guy who has been doing this for some time. It is working well for him. He tells me that he leaves his computer turn on all the time to keep the rad from freezing in fridge. My thought is to put the fridge on a outlet timer. Like for your X-mas lights. Those little fridges can be purchased brand new for $75 at Lowes or you could get a used one at a Pawn Shop. His Forum name is KEEPER. I believe it was at Xtreme System Forums.

I also have a 75 gallon salt fish tank. I do water changes every so often. I usually make about 32 gallons of water the day before and pre-mix salt. WELL that water is ice cold before putting it in my tank. I use a powerhead in there to move water also.

ALSO yano those 5 gallon self standing RO drinking tank you see at offices well they have a built in Chiller also. Cold water.

Using cold water will work well as Long as Not to cold!

CONDENSATION

I want to find a way to get cold air into case. I think that with be my answer. Cheaply that is.

By the time yorue done forking cash out for whatever way you decide to go with this. It will have been cheaper to buy a Vapochill :) When i added up all the money i spent on watercooling hardware, case mods, and things like that. I was within $30 of the price of a vapochill which would be magnitudes better cooling. So my vapochill is on its way to me as we speak. Going to drop watercooling ans go with phase change.

A comment about the mini-fridge idea. I think that putting a res inside one would overburden the fridge. Also something else to keep in mind. when thinking about yoru flow rate, how much time is any given amount of water going to be inside the fridge? even in a really cold setting it would take at least a few minutes for it to have any effect on the temp of the water. Just food for thought.

Im down here in Oregon city~ need any help~ shoot me a PM~

Re: Mini Fridge resovoir
 

I know the feeling, take a look on my rig... :cool:

http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/sho...?threadid=5799

resevoir
 

When I read the title of this thread at first I thought maybe you were going to try to use the entire fridge as a res - that would be an interesting project

Some mini fridges cool by having the evaporator coil built into the lining of the fridge - so the coil is not exposed at all. I wonder if anyone has ever tried this - pull off the door and take a look inside, see if some silicone could be used to make the fridge water tight, now you could either just turn the fridge on it's side (not sure if this would work, compressors and any accumulators / receivers normally need to remain upright I think) or cut an access door / hatch / port in the top. now place your eheim or whatever pump in the fridge, run you lines out through your access opening and fill the fridge with water!

You could even replace the door with sheet of lexan and seal it on...that would look spiffy!
Basically though, the total size of the res now measured in gallons might offset the average fridge's inability to cool water that is moving too quickly through a small amount of surface area inside the fridge --- and a good amount of water would be in direct contact with the fridge's cooling surfaces.

The question is, can the fridge keep up with a continuous heat load - an eheim pump I think is 20w of heat - the cpu can vary alot depending on your frequency and voltage, I think when I calculated my athlon xp 1600 at 1.85 volts and 1.66ghz it came out to around 95w
1 watt = 3.413 btu/hr. So in the above scenario you would need approx 400 btu/hr disregarding any other heat losses to break even. However, bring in the capacity of your cooling system and it gets more complicated - 1btu is the amount of energy required to raise 1 pound of water 1 degree F. Keeping in mind that water weighs about 8.3 lbs per gallon lets assume with your mini fridge is 2.5 cu ft or 18.7 gallons -- this is 155 lbs of water. So in theory it seems that our hypothetical system would raise the temp of this res without any cooling by about 2.5 degrees F per hour - now bring in the power of your active cooling and reduce from there. You can see that it would take a long time for your system to heat up - if you don't run 24/7 you probably will do fine with a setup like this, your downtime would give the fridge a chance to cool the water back down.

Experts feel free to tear my theories apart - I'm just a novice and very interested in learning more about calculations like this.

That's a very interesting idea...

"He tells me that he leaves his computer turn on all the time to keep the rad from freezing in fridge" - That's dumb.

He should change to a more suitable liquid coolant so that the freezing isn't a problem.

Hay guys i have a mini fridge and im going to do this http://www.overclockers.com/tips798/ to my rig tomorrow and my mini fridge runs 24/7 on full blast in the on postition and its still stock without the mods im going to do to it and it has never failed on me and not to loud. so if you follow the guide that was listed above. i think that may answer you questions :shrug:
(this is NOT my guide it was writin by Nicholas F. Singh - 1/20/02)