Building the Ultimate CPU Cooler!

[AlexTheGreatish]

Our sub-zero chiller is pretty awesome for cooling CPUs... but pretty bad at being safe. Today that changes.

 

Learn more about welding (This Old Tony): https://youtu.be/Vfhz9anpaWE

Learn more about GFCI (ElectroBOOM): https://youtu.be/GlM6PE2kKVY

 

 

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[nick name]

So this is a safety video?  That doesn't seem very LTT to me, but I'll watch it anyway.  

[Egg-Roll]

I want to watch Linus weld and drop hot metal on his feet, not a weird 2 minute crash course on how welding works...

 

[Nystemy]

This all went so smoothly, up until the thing started leaking...

 

Though, the solution would have been simple, just redo it with some new pipes while one is at it. It isn't super hard to be fair.
Refrigeration units are actually fairly trivial in an off themselves. (It is two radiators, an expansion valve between the two, some pipes and a compressor. (and a temperature controller))

 

Though, the use of a vampire tap is frankly abhorrent.... Put in a tee fitting and a proper valve, and if one is paranoid, then plug the end with an end cap and some teflon tape....

Vampire taps are only useful when emptying a refrigeration unit, ie decommissioning it. Vampire taps leaks over time, and aren't a drop in universal T fitting....

Also, one could add a PID controller instead, as to make the set temperature a bit more adjustable/accurate.

[AlexTheGreatish]

28 minutes ago, Nystemy said:

Vampire taps are only useful when emptying a refrigeration unit, ie decommissioning it. Vampire taps leaks over time, and aren't a drop in universal T fitting....

After fixing it we epoxied them shut to make sure no leaking was possible.

[SolarNova]

1 hour ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

Our sub-zero chiller is pretty awesome for cooling CPUs... but pretty bad at being safe. Today that changes.

 

~SNIP~

Wooo where to begin.

 

1st of , props for doing this in the 1st place. Glad to see some subzero chiller experimentation.

 

However, there are a lot of things I would have advised you done differently.

 

Obviously u cant predict ur going to spring a refrigerant leak, however once that happened u should have stopped and decided to go a step further with ur initial plans. That leak was an ideal time to change the unit over to something more suitable for liquid cooling.

 

Cant emphasize enough how much of a wasted opportunity i think this was. You should have cut out the Evaporator and replaced with a braised plate heat exchanger. That would have massively improved the thermal transfer efficiency from the refrigerant to the coolant. Also would have been the ideal time to cut out the old copper pipe runs and remade them to suite a clean efficient layout.

I will say however u done good making sure to use r22 to re-gas, im glad u didnt replace the unit with a crappy r134a variant or replace the gas with a lesser performing refrigerant.

R22 may be bad for the environment but its a far superior refrigerant to the now commonly used r134a crap.

 

The case. If ur intention was to learn some welding skills and make vids using those skills, then thats cool, however if not then u could have easily made this using wood and plastic/ acrylic which would have been cheaper and easier and could still end up with a quality looking finish.

 

Insulation !

You mention it but dont show it. You should have gone HAM with insulation, i mean WAY overkill with it. Not for condensation prevention, but cooling efficiency, u dont want to be wasting ANY cooling power to the surrounding air.

 

As for coolant. You should give Mayhems XT-1 a try, its rated down to -50c at the correct mix ratio.

 

So yea, not the best vid, but good to see none the less, very much looking forward to future vids using it.

[sub68]

I like how Brian goes like yeah I have 20 pounds of dangerous r22 refrigerant

[Nystemy]

15 minutes ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

After fixing it we epoxied them shut to make sure no leaking was possible.

That is at least an improvement.

 

I have seen way too many vampire taps used as drop in T fittings out in the wild, usually on "dead"/decommissioned or non working refrigeration units...

Works fine for a few weeks, sometimes months. But long term it leaks.

[Computernaut]

I feel like they would have been better off getting a new (or at least not 15+ year old) air conditioner.

[PhireFase]

Hey I recognize that carpet tape. When I worked with it I never used a heat gun to remove the aluminum, I used a putty knife and could just kind of feel when it was close to permanently deforming. I wasn't doing a lot of large pieces though. 

Finally a cool(or hot) welding video, though the explanation for what welding is seemed incomplete, for lack of a better word. Maybe doing it in a fast as possible would have been better, and I do like the TOT recommendation, but it just is awkward and seems very much like an afterthought.

When Colin(?) was welding the steel frame, the tungsten was giving off a lot of sparks, which could happen for a number of reasons. Most likely the tungsten was either contaminated from previous welds, or the wrong tungsten is being used. Also, if you guys plan on doing a lot with steel, I would invest in a mig welder if you don't already have one. It's less cumbersome than moving the whole tig setup around.

Last is a recommendation for the next tool(read: toy) for Alex; a cold saw. I like them much more than chop saws for cutting material as they are quieter, don't throw sparks, and can cut aluminum(most cutoff wheels are made of aluminum oxide and when cutting aluminum the aluminum actually sticks to the wheel, causing it to not cut as well). The downsides are they are more expensive, take up a little more space, and require coolant. 

[Luscious]

Back in the day there used to be an outfit that sold complete systems in cases that had these built in. The one BIG advantage these have over LN2 is that you can have it running 24/7 which makes them suitable for actual use and not just a Frankenstein test bench setup. The reason these outfits aren't around today though is because they were pushing sub-zero directly on the CPU, using Peltiers etc... and the insulation they used failed or had to be checked/replaced constantly. It was expensive, complicated to maintain and just unreliable.

 

Back in the day I used to have an unlimited supply of R404A as well But the way I did mine was as a water/water heat exchanger using separate dual coolant loops - keeping the water with careful fine tuning at just 3C above ambient in the CPU/GPU blocks. Not only did that avoid condensation but I also didn't need the neoprene insulation on the CPU socket/blocks. Everything "cold" was contained inside the chiller box.

 

You could do a similar thing by submerging the radiator of an AIO, except radiators like those are prone to corrosion and aren't meant to be dunked in water whatsoever.

[AddMe]

You can add some light material (like styrofoam) inside the coolant tank and reduce the volume. Just like reducing the volume of the toilet water tank.  That way, you don't have to pour so much liquid into it and might achieve getting cooling temp faster that way.

[AlexTheGreatish]

5 hours ago, SolarNova said:

Obviously u cant predict ur going to spring a refrigerant leak, however once that happened u should have stopped and decided to go a step further with ur initial plans. That leak was an ideal time to change the unit over to something more suitable for liquid cooling.

 

The case. If ur intention was to learn some welding skills and make vids using those skills, then thats cool, however if not then u could have easily made this using wood and plastic/ acrylic which would have been cheaper and easier and could still end up with a quality looking finish.

-Completely re-engineering the AC unit was well outside the scope of this project, at the point it was fixed it was already way over it's time budget.

 

-The intention of the video was proving out this process for building a case. One that requires this process is in the works.... (well it should have been worked on now but looks like COVID is going to spoil some of those plans)

3 hours ago, Computernaut said:

I feel like they would have been better off getting a new (or at least not 15+ year old) air conditioner.

New AC units use more environmentally friendly refrigerants that are much less effective.

 

1 hour ago, PhireFase said:

Finally a cool(or hot) welding video, though the explanation for what welding is seemed incomplete, for lack of a better word.

When Colin(?) was welding the steel frame, the tungsten was giving off a lot of sparks, which could happen for a number of reasons. Most likely the tungsten was either contaminated from previous welds, or the wrong tungsten is being used. Also, if you guys plan on doing a lot with steel, I would invest in a mig welder if you don't already have one. It's less cumbersome than moving the whole tig setup around.

Last is a recommendation for the next tool(read: toy) for Alex; a cold saw. I like them much more than chop saws for cutting material as they are quieter, don't throw sparks, and can cut aluminum(most cutoff wheels are made of aluminum oxide and when cutting aluminum the aluminum actually sticks to the wheel, causing it to not cut as well). The downsides are they are more expensive, take up a little more space, and require coolant. 

-I'd have loved to go deeper, but might loose a fair bit of the audience.  I figure we have a fair few viewers that have no clue what welding is, and also loads that already know quite a bit.  Hard to split the difference without one getting really bored so that's why I just handed it over to TOT.

 

-Yeah the problem there was just that we were running out of shielding gas.

 

-I'd frigging love to have a cold saw (used to use one daily) but they're suuuppper expensive.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

1 hour ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

-Completely re-engineering the AC unit was well outside the scope of this project, at the point it was fixed it was already way over it's time budget.

 

-The intention of the video was proving out this process for building a case. One that requires this process is in the works.... (well it should have been worked on now but looks like COVID is going to spoil some of those plans)

New AC units use more environmentally friendly refrigerants that are much less effective.

 

-I'd have loved to go deeper, but might loose a fair bit of the audience.  I figure we have a fair few viewers that have no clue what welding is, and also loads that already know quite a bit.  Hard to split the difference without one getting really bored so that's why I just handed it over to TOT.

 

-Yeah the problem there was just that we were running out of shielding gas.

 

-I'd frigging love to have a cold saw (used to use one daily) but they're suuuppper expensive.

If they do have extra footage that might be something for ShortCircuit? just a thought @AlexTheGreatish

[dogwitch]

7 hours ago, sub68 said:

I like how Brian goes like yeah I have 20 pounds of dangerous r22 refrigerant

lol that like me and real ant killer. before  they banded it. due t people not reading the manual to use it. kid you not.

[greenhorn]

I have questions on how the electrical part of this project was done:

• I see no power socket mounted to the case, does this cooler just have a fixed power cord?
• Which parts of it are powered with 120V and which ones with a lower voltage (like 12V or 24V)? How is the 120V part isolated and protected from water/moisture?
• Is there any kind of leak detector capable of shutting off the power? There are some simple mechanisms used in household appliances that can be useful.
• Is there any protection that shuts the thing down before the pump runs dry in case of a coolant leak?
• Is the huge terminal block shown by Alex even rated for the type of wire gage used? Maybe the wires are too thin for it to secure them properly.
• How do you protect wire connections from moisture/contact (heat shrink tubing?)
• and finally: Has Brian had any comments or suggested/made changes on the electrical part?

edit: By the way, it was great that you mentioned GFCIs and ElectroBOOM's video on it. Safety is important.

[sub68]

10 hours ago, dogwitch said:

lol that like me and real ant killer. before  they banded it. due t people not reading the manual to use it. kid you not.

well this is why I read the manual for everything I  use no matter what

[AlexTheGreatish]

3 hours ago, greenhorn said:

~snip~

I have questions on how the electrical part of this project was done:

• I see no power socket mounted to the case, does this cooler just have a fixed power cord?
  • Fixed power cord so that the GFCI plug can't be disconnected.
• Which parts of it are powered with 120V and which ones with a lower voltage (like 12V or 24V)? How is the 120V part isolated and protected from water/moisture?
  • Its in a water resistant box that is above everything.  Technically possible to get it wet, but you'd really have to try.
• Is there any kind of leak detector capable of shutting off the power? There are some simple mechanisms used in household appliances that can be useful.
  • No, would you be able to link me to one of these?
• Is there any protection that shuts the thing down before the pump runs dry in case of a coolant leak?
  • No, but you'd need to leak ~4 gallons of water before the pump would run dry so I think you'd notice
• Is the huge terminal block shown by Alex even rated for the type of wire gage used? Maybe the wires are too thin for it to secure them properly.
  • Yep.  For places where there was a mismatch I put higher gauge wire into the terminal and soldered it together.
• How do you protect wire connections from moisture/contact (heat shrink tubing?)
  • Heat shrink on everything that isn't contained in the box
• and finally: Has Brian had any comments or suggested/made changes on the electrical part?
  • Nope, he hasn't seen it since he fixed the AC

[greenhorn]

46 minutes ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

• Is there any kind of leak detector capable of shutting off the power? There are some simple mechanisms used in household appliances that can be useful.
  • No, would you be able to link me to one of these?

Thanks for your detailed answers to my questions

The detectors I was refering to have some kind of reservoir on the bottom of the device that will fill up with water in case of failure. Inside of this reservoir, there is a flotation device (can be a piece of styrofoam for example). When pushed upwards by water, it will close a push-switch. In a dishwasher I was repairing a while ago, pushing that switch caused a magnetic valve at the water inlet to close. For the cooler, you could use a relay to shut off power to most of the parts and maybe to illuminate a warning LED if you want to.
I am not aware of any commercially available plug and play solutions, but it should be easy enough to build.

[Egad]

16 hours ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

 

New AC units use more environmentally friendly refrigerants that are much less effective.

 

 

 

Considering you already dumped the R22 once, that's probably a pretty killer feature for your team.

[dogwitch]

5 hours ago, sub68 said:

well this is why I read the manual for everything I  use no matter what

people that read the  manual are rare bunch.

[sub68]

2 minutes ago, dogwitch said:

people that read the  manual are rare bunch.

so true people go like I anint have time for that but in reality it helps so much

[dogwitch]

5 minutes ago, sub68 said:

so true people go like I anint have time for that but in reality it helps so much

that is true. now if the manual is wrong..... that a whole different story...

cough asus mobo that has to have wifi turn off to install windows...

but its asus after all......

[sub68]

2 minutes ago, dogwitch said:

that is true. now if the manual is wrong..... that a whole different story...

cough asus mobo that has to have wifi turn off to install windows...

but its asus after all......

yeah some times manuals are wrong but if you know how to do it that's a different story

[dogwitch]

Just now, sub68 said:

yeah some times manuals are wrong but if you know how to do it that's a different story

yeah. was working with a 600 buck mobo from them.. and win would not install.

some how their is a bug with that said mobo(x399) that the wifi is turn on be default.... when it has no driver to be on in the first place