How would you make a cheap chiller?

[james111]

just as the title says...... one way I could do it is by making my reservoir with one of those camping coolers and adding ice, but I want to make something thats automatic, any ideas?

[8-Ball]

Unless you're prepared to spend a huge amount of money on power supplies and electricity bills, you won't see good results with anything peltier based.

Those camping coolers/icemakers are ONLY designed to cool a couple of beers or whatever, not something which is constantly generating heat.

They usually run with a 50W peltier, which is the maximum heat it will move, and that will be with the cold side at the same temp as the hot side. Your average cpu kicks out around 70W, plus heat from the pump and any other components you plan to cool.

If you really want to have sub ambient water, you either need a bong cooler, or phase change.

Do a search for phase change or bong

8-ball

[8-Ball]

Oh, and welcome to the forums.

8-ball

[Balinju]

Here is our project using evaporative cooling towers (bongs)

Here is rotor's tutorial of how to make a chiller from a dehumidifier

[#Rotor]

Welcome here!

Cheap Chillers. Yes, possible, indeed..... but not advisable.

The mear fact that you are at a stage where you are looking into Chiller possibilities, puts you on a performance level comparable to that of doing Land-speed-record preparations for next season. that is where "CHEAP" equates to knocking off 1 layer of carbon fibre from the rear suction duct. just to save a couple of thousand dollars on a 200K project. this is where cheap becomes dangeorous.

now that I've said that, ignore it... you can get real bigass performance for not all that much.

[airspirit]

Unless you are considering phase change cooling which is by and large big, ugly, and dangerous to the uninitiated (arr, me bones'r meltin' arr ... ), look up direct peltier cooling. This can be reasonably affordable if added to a preexisting watercooling kit. Otherwise, consider going with a prometia system. At $450 at some places, it is perfectly acceptable considering that creating a good watercooling system with pelts will run you upwards of $250 if you go cheap and used. For the performance difference it is worth it.

As for adding a pelt, you just need to consider whether your system can handle the extra heat load, make sure you have a capable independent power supply, and a block that can be rigged to hold one ... plus the insulation and such involved.

Using a chiller involves some insulation if you are going more than a few degs under ambient, a costly part (a good dehumidifier or such that will work costs upwards of $100 typically), and a good deal of modification to make it work.

Ask yourself these q's before you get started: what are your goals, how much are you willing to spend, and how many risks are you willing to take? Once you've answered those, study your options, narrow them down, and study some more. Don't undertake a project until you are confident that you can handle anything thrown at you, or in these circumstances you are setting yourself up for disaster.

[pelle76]

I know a Peltierchiller is not very economic... But I'm going to try build one that chills the water when i'm not Idle but are playing and stuff... (If the rad can't take all the heat)

I'm going to use this to transfer the heat away from the hotside of the peltier...

http://w1.500.telia.com/~u50014558/BigHeatspreader/

Nice huh?? (Pay notice that it is a 120 mm Fan on the last pics.)

Actually I've got three of these babies... Planning on selling one of them... Maybe in exchange for a grafixcard or something (I have only an old GF 256 now )