Using fridge for water cooling?
 

Anyone have any experience with using a small fridge (say a dorm fridge) in a water cooling setup? I did a search and pulled up some information, mostly coming from Alives saying it didn't work to well. Alives, if you read this can you elaborate on your experience? Anyone with experience with this, please share.

I am planning on placing a water reservoir in the fridge I have. The reservoir will be connected to a copper coil located in the freezer section. Both of these will connect to copper tubing that has been epoxied into the holes drilled into the side wall of the dorm fridge. Outside, will be my mag drive 250 that I got for a whole $13 and change. The water block will be a custom Cu cross drilled water block. All tubing is .5" ID nylon reinforced vinyl tubing (not sure if it is vinyl, but it is reinforced.) How does this setup sound?

For now, the cooling system will be used on my lowly Tbird 650 on a Iwill KK266, but hopefully once graduation passes and I start working, I can get one of those AXIA 1GHz chips and get 1.5+ GHz.

Thanks for all input. Now it is time for some sleep and then work more on my thesis. What a way to spend my spring break...

Another question, its probably in the FAQ, but I am tired and do not want to check it...

How many posts are needed before I graduate the hot stank status?

I dunno maybe 30 or so.

The main issue with a Fridge is its meant to keep things cool, not actively chill them. Stuff in a fridge isnt supposed to emit alot of heat for long periods of time, so the compressor/condensing coil are all made to handle maintaining coolness in the fridge, and not actively trying to constantly lower the temp.

if you exceed what the compressor/raidator can take you will rish frying the compressor or causing it to over heat and shut down.

Besides for that there isnt too much of an issue with using a mini fridge.

no, theres a huge issue. these fridges are designed to have maybe some OJ, a pizza and some beer. They arent designed to have hot water in them all the time. There isnt even a radiator on the back. I did mine w/o even using a peltier and the fridge couldnt even keep it cool...temps started going up...and the fridge wouldnt ever turn off...got really hot. It would be cool if it would work like that but its just not gonna happen.


fridges dont "make things cold" they move heat from anything inside of them to the outside. But they do not move that much heat. Since all they have to do is cool off some occasional item that you just bought...they barely do much cooling.

hmm, yeah I agree with alives about the dorm fridge.

but what you may consider using is an AC unit from an automobile or a normal window AC unit. these puppys are designed to activly cool. of course you'd have to get one from a junkyard without any antifreeze in it. this is because you'd want to replace the cold-side radiator with a block so that you can localize the cold side to one point on-top of the CPU. then you can fill it yourself with propane or get it filled at a garage with freon. should work fairly well in the long run to.

Thanks all for the input. Seeing that I already bought the used fridge and modified it for my needs, I'll continue with my original idea. From what you guys are saying, it probably will not work :confused: , but might as well still try. I am still along the line of thought that my setup is still using a radiator like more common setups, just that it is located within the freezer section of the fridge. The same goes for the utility box that is acting as a reservoir. So it seems that the difference between my planned setup is not that much different from a common radiator fan setup. Instead of being housed inside my computer case, it is in a dorm fridge. If necessary, I can always add fan to the freezer section too.

It would seem that my planned setup should be fine for a Tbird 650 overclocked to who knows what. It may struggle if I do get my AXIA Tbird "C" 1GHz, but that is a concern to deal with if I do get the chip.

Thanks again, and if you have any other ideas, tips, or concerns (other than further reducing the power supply here in California,) let me know.

The main concern is, the fridge is designed to chill air inside, not really solid elements.
What you must consider is chilling power per cubic centimeter of air. Say, a 70W chilling power applied to 1 liter of air wont make the same result with 1000 liters.
Now put a hot surface in that chilled air. The contact area will be cooled down either by 70W/l or 0.07W/l to put it simply. Of course you see, the smaller the volume the better.
What i mean is , you should try to reduce the air volume inside the fridge. Maybe ducting fresh air straight out of the compressor onto hot surfaces is the key.

the key is to heed my warning beyotch. your dorm fridge CANNOT get rid of the heat fast enough. Hope you learned your lesson. People write this crap in here so others dont make the same mistake.

Wow chill out Beyatch

its just dumb to waste all that money on a lost cause taht was lost to start out with. I used beyotch cuz i thought bitch would be **'d out.

I am planning on placing a water reservoir in the fridge I have. The reservoir will be connected to a copper coil located in the freezer section. Both of these will connect to copper tubing that has been epoxied into the holes drilled into the side wall of the dorm fridge. Outside, will be my mag drive 250 that I got for a whole $13 and change. The water block will be a custom Cu cross drilled water block. All tubing is .5" ID nylon reinforced vinyl tubing (not sure if it is vinyl, but it is reinforced.) How does this setup sound?

I would run the frion from the frig right thru comper tubing in your water tank pail what ever
i would think a 5 gel pail in the frig would work ok and have lots of balk to store cool if you use a coolent other than water you mite get it below 32 f
but watch out most coolents for cars get stiff wane thay get cold and thay are mad to work at 160for more new cars run 220 f i hear
any way with the motor hot

hey! yeah! go for it! it'll blow us all away!