Extreme cooling solutions (Post please)

Pedros · 1 Mar 2008 at 22:14

Hi, I was wondering what sort of extreme's us common folk have gone to, to cool our PC's. I don't want to know about huge companies getting temperatures of -100 with Liquid nitrogen but what us fellow forum-goers have done or are currently doing.

I was wondering about putting an "Ice-Pack" inside my PC case (wrapped in a tea-towel to absorb the condensation)

Is this do-able?

mrthingyx · 1 Mar 2008 at 22:38

Assuming you're not joking, I'll bite.

It's perfectly do-able, but will make near enough no difference to the CPU temperature. If any at all.

Aside from the now-common watercooling (at best, a few degrees aboev ambient), there are things like waterchillers (probably around 5-10oC), TEC units (depends entirely on how brave the user is), the famous Prometia/Vapochill units (-30oC at load), to more exotic methods such as LN2 (either direct application or cooling a transfer fluid) or multi-stage cascade cooling (very cold).

I think the most extreme on this forum is the Vapochill/Prometia userbase and they aren't as common as they used to be...

RaiderX · 2 Mar 2008 at 01:16

im using a vapochill LS, had a Q6600 to 4.5GHz, stable at 4.23GHz, and an E8500 to 5.1GHz, 4.75GHz stable

Lightnix · 2 Mar 2008 at 01:46

It's doable... I just reckon that the tea towel would act as an insulator which effectively renders it useless, unless your idea is to have the case conduct heat to the ice pack or something?

ITR · 2 Mar 2008 at 02:56

Im using custum built single stage phase change... [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].

p.s don't bother with the icepack idea, start off with water cooling 1st then move up as u learn.

eggnoodle · 2 Mar 2008 at 09:09

Assuming you are not joking, is this 'ice pack' you are referring to an actual PC component or are you literally referring to an ice pack used to cool sandwiches? I can't see how a sandwich ice pack would work at all

unless you are planning on replacing the sandwich ice pack every few hours and surely once the towel absorbs more than it can hold would it not just start dripping or leave watermarks inside the pc metalwork? You would have better luck sticking in watercooling or if you want to do something ludicrous wrap your whole pc up airtight in plastic and stick it in your fridge or something** :S

** Will probably destroy pc **

MikeTimbers · 2 Mar 2008 at 09:21

eggnoodle said:
You would have better luck sticking in watercooling or if you want to do something ludicrous wrap your whole pc up airtight in plastic and stick it in your fridge or something** :S

** Will probably destroy pc **

**will certainly destroy fridge**

Pedros · 2 Mar 2008 at 10:28

Yep, I was referring to an 'Ice-pack' that cools sandwiches/drinks etc.

I was looking in the water cooling thread, all 16 pages of it. The systems look amazing but it looks VERY hard to do...

eggnoodle · 2 Mar 2008 at 13:12

MikeTimbers said:
**will certainly destroy fridge**

haha

mrthingyx · 2 Mar 2008 at 13:57

Pedros said:
Yep, I was referring to an 'Ice-pack' that cools sandwiches/drinks etc.

I was looking in the water cooling thread, all 16 pages of it. The systems look amazing but it looks VERY hard to do...

Not really. It's reasonably simple assuming you pick the right kit/components and don't just throw them together.

Just as with everything inside your computer case: if you're careful, do your research and learn as much as you can, it all becomes very simple and all but the very refined questions can be dispensed with.

platinum87 · 2 Mar 2008 at 14:27

i wont go through it, but

huge box (to fit entire pc + other stuff below)
2 different de-humidifiers (best ones you can find)
ducting
liquid nitrogen & expensive cooler to be able to reduce temps to -10 or so
18Mol / pure sulphuric acid
thick mylar layers + other absorbant insulation
other stuff im not going to list because i got bored

if you have knowledge of basic chemistry, and thermodynamics + your pretty good at building stuff to 1mm accuracy and you dont mind spending a lot of money, you could prob get your pc running at 0 to -5 celcius. for most components

MikeTimbers · 2 Mar 2008 at 20:07

^^^^

but not for long. What's going to remove the heat that is the by-product of all that electricity going in?

platinum87 · 2 Mar 2008 at 23:46

MikeTimbers said:
^^^^

but not for long. What's going to remove the heat that is the by-product of all that electricity going in?

im not going to sit down and design it so i can answer that to a nice level, so i will say ducting and fans, and coolers being positioned in different area, ie outside,

WJA96 · 3 Mar 2008 at 00:00

Weescott was running a water-chiller for quite a while. I think he had it set to just about room temperature, so as to avoid condensation.

Alphacool make a commercial unit that you just hook up to your water-cooling. I'm looking at getting the big one and running all my units through it in parallel as it should be significantly cheaper and more environmentally friendly to run than my air conditioning.