Water Chiller Project

[Titan151]

Hi all,

Well a while back I got a TEC chiller and tried to use it for cooling my AMD XP 2500+. I tried several setups and figured out that the chiller wouldn't handle cooling at low temps. So I went back to e-bay and found a Via Aqua chiller with a 1/4 hp comp. I have seen this unit for sale at www.aquastealth.com and it sounds like it can easily cool a proc. I picked one up on E-bay and just hooked it up. As you can see from my pics the initial test is just that. I still need to get some hardware to properly connect everything. I just wanted to see if it would cool. To my surprise, even with little insulation the system cools prety good. At the moment the units temp controller goes down to 41 F. My socket temp is at about 76F/24C. Once I finsish insulating I should get better results. The previously mentioned web site also sells a modified version of this product that is capable of cooling to 0 C. That said my plan is to determine how they get it to reach this temp, then to do the mod my self. It's the least I can do considering so many people have built there own chillers. I may consider doing this later once I learn more about how they work. For now I am busy waisting a large chunk of change. When I got this unit I imediately took it apart and looked for a simple way to mod the temp controller. The web site only charges about $30 more for the modified version of this unit. That said I will assume that the change they are making to the unit is a small one. The internal control of the unit consists of a temperature relay and power supply. There was no adjustment pots or anything that I could turn to simply lower the set level. I also tried puting in my own thermistor and tried to use it in a warmer location. This would have been the quick and dirty aproach to getting the unit to go lower then 41 F. Of course the temp readout would then be off. The thermistor I put in caused the unit to display an error mesage. I guess it is a different type of thermistor that they are using. The stock thermistor is installed inside the main water storage tank. My new plan is to find a new temp relay and install that instead. If I can find one that will go to or below zero I should be good to go. Does anyone have any advice on temp relays or know anything about temp sensors that I could use to solve this problem? I have been around water cooling and pelt cooling for quite some time but am a newb to chillers as you can tell! I put a letter in to aquastealth to see if they would tell me what they did but I am not sure they will be willing to give me that info. Just so you know aquastealth is also becooling. Anyway here are some initial pics of my incomplete test setup. No flames please this is a cooling post. heh...

[|kbn|]

Not sure what to suggest, but heres something thats making me skeptical..
"APPROXIMATE MANUFACTURER BTU HEAT REMOVAL RATING OF 1500 BTU/HR. PULLS A 80 GALLON TANK DOWN 10 DEGREES. THESE ARE ESTIMATED FIGURES AND VARY DEPENDING ON YOUR TANK."
1500 doesnt sound too much, worth a try I suppose... but I think with the cpu it might not be even able to maintain 41f let alone 32f.
I expect it works by switching off once the temp hits the pre-set limit. Try using it without any thermistor, or even move the thermistor so that its always warm/hot, then it should stay on all the time, giving you the lowest temp possible from it.

Also remember the less amount of water you use, the lower it will be able to maintain the temp, that doesnt really matter ofcourse if you insulate all the tubing from the air.

[Titan151]

Yep I just got back from hardware store with some new tubing and some connectors. I always spend hours trying to fit connector "A" into connector "B" and then into hose "C". Useually at the end when I come to the grand conclusion of the part I need i go to grab the bag and it's out. Of course it is the only one that is out. But that is another story.

Yeah, what you say about moving the thermistor is a good idea, but it is installed inside of the tank. I should be able to remove it but don't want to damage the seal of the unit just yet. I used a fan controller thermistor in it's place but the unit gave me an error message. By chance both thermistors had the exact same connector and two wires. I know that normal thermistors have no polarity but not sure about the one in use.

I think if I can get the compressor to run long enough it will provide the cooling I need. I just need to find a way to mod it to stay cooler. I could simply force the unit to stay on all the time but that would likely cut down on the operating life. Then again it would give me max cooling. hmmmmm

The picture below show's a pelt and temp controller. These sell on ebay for about 15 bucks. The temp controller is very similer to the one in the chiller. The difference being this one has no built in display. I might be able to hook this up to the chiller, then leave the original one intstalled for display purposes. Then i will get an extra pelt to use for cooling my many half drank cans of beer!!

If it doesn't work I can always use it for something. ack this is how the process of waisting money begins!

edit...Scratch that idea. That temp control unit has a 30 C cut off.

[kronchev]

youll have to have it running all the time, otherwise your temps will look like a saw wave:





as you can not really see due to my lack of skill, if you let it run to cool the water all the way down, itll stop running. the cpu will warm the water until it hits the critical point, then the cooler will kick back in, and itll drop. expansion contraction expansion contraction just doesnt ever seem like a good idea during watercooling, but it might just be me. what this also means is you wont be able to hold constant temps without it running all the time, which as you said may decrease the MTBF.

[Titan151]

Thanks for the info. You have a good point. Even if the unit can keep the temp of the water cooler within a temp range of 3 degrees C, the cpu temp will likely fluctuate much more then this. It will have to get substantially warmer to raise the water temps then trigger the chiller. Might not be so good for a 24/7 system. Perhaps having it on all the time is the way to go. This will keep the temps stable and low. I can easily bypass the temp sensor and get it set up to do this. I will try this for a while and see what the results are. I just finished insulating. I had these humungus insulation tubes about 4" OD and cut some big holes in the back fan slots of my case. It made the rig look pretty sick. For a second there I thought I had finally gone to far. Then I remembered that there is no such thing as this. Too bad I have to go out of town for a few weeks so I will have to leave it as is. I will need to insulate the mobo and socket once I get back. Then wire that condensor up to be on 24/7 and see how it goes. If this prooves to be a problem I can always add on a temperature controller like those available on ebay.

[Terophorm]

It all really depends on the cooling power and speed at which this chiller can cool water. Seeing as you have TEC it should fluctuate rapidly because TECs output a lot of heat and aren't the most efficient cooling solutions. If you are really seeking below zero temperatures you might want to just find a junked A/C unit and make a chiller with that it would work better and probably cost a lot less provided you can get the refrigerant and some tools. This device wasn't really meant to be under constant stress it's merely a temperature regular for an aquarium so i doubt it would really serve your needs because with a good water cooling setup you could probably get low 30s. Modding this device would probably entail changing parts and replacing tubes.

[Titan151]

This unit doesn't have a TEC. It uses a 1/2 hp comp to get cold. The picture of the tec unit was shown because I was interested in the temperature controller for the unit. It turns out that the temp controller it uses is limited to a low of something like 40 degrees F, which is about the same as my chiller. Tonight I am going to simply hard wire the comp to stay on all the time. Then, if it works good I am going to find a temp controller that will keep the unit in a narrow operating range. I saw a few on ebay that might do the job. I still need to finish some condensation prevention for the mobo.

Now that I have learned a few things about chillers, I gotta say I wish I has just bought an AC unit which would have been cheeper. Oh well I can always sell it if it doesn't do the job.

[Titan151]

So I got the unit up and running. I bypassed the thermistat in the chiller and set it to full operation. Finished filling and bleading out all of the air. That was a pain in the ass as usual. So at the present moment with all of the insulation on (excluding the pump as I wasn't sure if it would be better to leave off) my temps are at 20 C. I was hoping for more but with the heat capacity of this unit that is what I get. The one thing I notice is that the chiller temp will always be much lower then that of the socket temp. I only have the cpu on board temp sensor at the moment so I would gather that the chiller is at something like -10 or -20. In the past there was a temp diference between the chiller temp and the socket temp of about 30 to 40 C. Is this what other people find as well or is it closer together? I supose the socket temp may not be to accurate, but feeling the tubing it seems close if nothing less.

On a more interesting note, I came extremely close to waxing my vid card and mobo. Luckily, the piece of plexi I placed above the vid card caught all the water and it dripped onto the agp socket then off to the side. I made a stupid mistake while I was filling a line. I allowed some fluid to seep into the insulation which made it's way to the socket then dripped straight down onto the plastic above the vid card. By the time I killed the power there was a good size puddle on the bottom of the case. I wiped everything down then hit up the mobo with the heat gun and so far so good.

I got my hands on a mini fridge so I will be working on that in the near future. It's actually almost twice the size of a standard dorm fridge so it should be fun to play with. I may see if I can squeeze a few more degrees of the existing setup.

Oh one more question. How would quanity of water impact a chiller setup. Right now I have the aquarium chiller, a fairly large amount of tubing, the pump, and block. I am curious if I added a reservoir and sealed it (say a small lunch cooler). Would something like this allow for more heat reduction or less? I guess it wouldn't be that hard to give it a try. I have a junky styrofoarm ice chest at work that would work well for this and will give it a try tomorrow just to see. I will post pics tomorrow of the setup.

[Tachyon]

II hope that this is still a current thread. The chiller you are trying to use is an aquarium water chiller. It's BTU rating should be enough to keep your system cool. The frig how ever does not have the BTU necessary to come anywhere close to this. I'd just read an article where people have been trying to convert frigs to use as aquarium water chillers and the average frig only has about 100-200 BTU's of cooling power compared to 500-1000 BTU's in a small to mid range chiller. An entry level server kicks out about 500 BTU's total so I'd think that we're looking at about 400-700 BTU's on an average OC'd gaming system. Also I think if you read the specs on that chiller you'll find that it attempts to keep the water w/i 1.5 degrees F (do it for the fish man ...) So you might get a little sea-sawing in the beginning but I'd think that you'd end up with a set equilibrium after a short time (proportional to the BTU rating of the chiller of course)

p.s. I'm glad to see that others have been as twisted as I on unique/efficient ways of cooling.

[BillA]

the BTU rating is at a specific temperature, the lower the temp - the lower the rating

Titan151
if you wish to control the temp, when you run the compressor flat out you need to cycle a heater against it
this is how lab chillers and environmental chambers are normally setup
(I have Haake and Formn Scientific units built this way)

you won't hurt anything running it 24/7, wear out sooner is all
yes, large deltaTs are the norm

[Titan151]

Thanks for the input,

This is a fairly old thread, I actually have been running this chiller for the past 4-5 months. Originally I was looking for a temp controller then Kronch pointed out that a temp controller would actually be bad for the CPU, so I simply bypassed the built in thermostat and have been running it all out 24/7 for the past 3 months straight. Works great. It keeps my mobile xp 2600 at around 5-10C. I imagine I could get a bit more out of it I did a few mods. The best thing about it is that it is quiet, fairly compact, and rated at 2 amps, so it isn't killing the power bill. As I said somewhere a while back, now that I understand a few things about compressors, I am going to make a more powerful one out of an AC unit. Problem is it got hot here and I have been using it for it's original purpose.

[BillA]

hot in Seattle ?

I'm curious, your setup seems relatively simple, effective, and from what I know, fairly efficient. By going to a more powerful unit, what (other than the lower temp) do you expect to gain given that you are now at 5-10°C ?

I ask because I have done wb bench testing at 0°C and it is a real PITA

[Titan151]

Yes, you are correct. My reason to make an AC chiller is more or less just for fun. I may not use it in my main system but just want to make one to toy with. I have 3 PC's and a bunch of scrap water cooling gear. I figure the chances of me making a chiller that is better then what I have is limited. It may be cooler but won't be as quiet or as compact. I should add, it has not rained in Seattle for almost 40 days (or so not too sure) until today. It was 95 in my appt. for at least the whole previous week as most places here have no AC. The weeks before that it has also been in the 80's. This means my appt. is always around the high 80's to low 90's.

I just picked up a couple of waterblocks for my VGA and NB chipset. Once I add those my temps will likely go up. As long as they stay within a reasonable range (say 20 C) I will probably keep my setup as is. I bought two cheap blocks from Xoxide today. they are for a Gforce card, but I am hoping I can drill through the plastic and mount each as I need to. The flow pattern is not too restrictive (maybe a little) but at $10 each It's no loss if they don't work. Here is a link to the site where I found them. And I know you pay for what you get so if they don't work I am out $20. Plus the shipping.

I just posted my setup in the chiller gallery. Take a look but go easy when you see my pump placement!!

http://www.xoxide.com/xaqgef4bloc.html

[muffy]

this sytem looks really simple but it's not necessarily that power effecient you say it uses 2 amps a 110 volts thats 220 watts my quad TEC system runs 10 to 20 dgrees for 100 watts of power so it's not that cheap , though my system will be a hundred times more complicated and taken heaps more time