Well it seems that using the fountains original water line to pass the computers water through is a no go. I turned the drinking fountain on at my place of employment( It's similar to the one I'd be using ) and after about 10 seconds the compressor kicked on, but after about 30 seconds the coil in it ran out of prechilled water and the water that came out was only slightly cooler than tap water. This is while the compressor continued to run. This suggests that the transfer of heat across the two soldered copper coils is not fast enough to handle the load. It seems that a drinking fountain is designed to not worry about the speed of the heat transfer because for the most part it has plenty of time between individual drinks to prechill water. Looking at the two separate coils there is not a lot of direct conact between the two. It appears to be soldered only at the beginning and the end, just enough to keep them reasonbly together
This leaves the res idea as the only option it seems to me. It seems that the compressor coil gets very cold ( frost forms on it ) when I screwed with the thermostat enough to get it to run long enough. I would think that with water surrounding the coils in a res configuration that the tranfer of heat would be much better.
I have a submursable pump just laying around and was wondering if putting it in the bottom of the res just to keep the water moving would help transfer heat out of the rad and into the compressor coil. Seems logical anyway.
Any comments good or bad would be welcomed
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