Playing with a cooling idea.

Soldato
Joined
31 Mar 2006
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This is an idea in the really early stages...

I'm sure you are all familiar with the 6-7 litre mini fridges you can purchase from Argos and the likes. The idea is to somehow integrate the cooling unit into a PC case, with the intention of reducing the internal temperature. Conversely, introduce the cooling unit into the initial part of the airflow into the case, ie. cooler air for the case airflow to work with.

The problems I can see are as follows:

1) Noise? Some of the minifridges use a rather manky fan on a heat exchange to cool the fridge. The effect is supposed to be about 10c-20c cooler than ambient temps. During summer tho, this could be a real advantage to air cooled cases.

2) Heat generated by the cooling unit... I know sounds weird, but most of these systems generate some sort of heat, even if it is just from the power transformer.

3) Insufficient drop in temperature to effectively alter the airflow temp bias. Too much air moving over the "cooling element" and not enough "cool" to make a difference.

The other idea was to use to cooling unit to cool a reservoir of air and then push it over the desired components, either by piping it to say the GPU fan so it is immediately working with cooler air, or to the CPU. Either way, more space but just an idea in the early stages.

The ultimate goal is to reduce the temps without having to buy something like a vapochill or water cooling :D
 
Hahaha - yeah, pants...

Figured as much. Just helps sometimes if someone can clarify a thought process - I came up with this one last night at about 4am... sad... :D

Just thought it would be nice to be able to utilise a £19 cooling device in a PC :rolleyes:
 
haha, I seem to remember someone putting their water cooling radiator into a beer fridge with the water lines in 2 sealed holes on the side. Would still make the fridge work overtime, but less so than having the cooling element in free air...
 
samcat said:
Now a proper freezer is a different story....

;)

Sam C

Yeah, thought about a mini freezer or an ice maker, both are about £190 - £300 so then you just get a really decent water cooling system. Aside from that, you get an increase in condensation at a certain drop in temp...
 
Zarniwoop said:
I am not sure it is. They are not supposed to run constantly either (a household refridgerator that is, not something industrial), just maintain a temperature. Obviously one would hold up longer than a mini fridge, but we would need to find out how much load a 100+ watts of constant heat output would put on the mechanism.

Don't get me wrong, I would love it to work!


Mini Fridge idea is pants, they use a poxy heat exchange, really no different to a heatsink with heat pipes...
 
it's possible it might work. Be stuffed if I'd know how to figure the airflow tho :) Be more like a paddle boat than a propeller.

I guess it all comes down to physics, to cool a case constantly is always going to take more energy than say cooling a single small area like a CPU heatsink. Targeting a small area is much more efficient than the shotgun approach.

Mini Fridge idea scrapped :) lol
 
Fully MeddlE, I second that.

Lets keep the negitivity away - didn't your mother ever tell you, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all!".
 
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