SFF air-conditioning unit?

[RevGAM]

I'm toying with the idea of having an external rad [or AIO] inside an insulated box with a small AC to cool it since summers are over 90F and long here, and I don't have AC.

 

Are there any modders out there with suggestions?

[OhYou_]

you will have massive inefficiencies transfering heat through so many mediums.

Like water block into water into radiator into air into evaporator into refrigerant into condenser into air.

way too  many steps. The most ideal method is phase change directly to the cpu block. but this can be a bit too ideal very rapidly and cause moisture. 

The next best thing is chilling the liquid. 
Even the most perfect phase change cooling solution will expense a lot of energy. It is best to toss most of it outdoors. 

 

you are ultimately better off air conditioning the room entirely since due to efficiency in heat pumps being weird, it will cost almost the same in both energy bills and buy/install price. 

 

 

actually an idea I just had that you might like is to mod a window unit. 
take it apart and put a apropriately sized rad directly in front of the evaporator so it gets hit with the full force of the a/c and the rest is exhausted out into the room.
It will use the a/c unit's fan, no need for additional rad fans. just a couple of quick connects and you can drop it in for the summer and hook up the pc into it. seems like a good setup to me.  

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, OhYou_ said:

you will have massive inefficiencies transfering heat through so many mediums.

Like water block into water into radiator into air into evaporator into refrigerant into condenser into air.

way too  many steps. The most ideal method is phase change directly to the cpu block. but this can be a bit too ideal very rapidly and cause moisture. 

The next best thing is chilling the liquid. 
Even the most perfect phase change cooling solution will expense a lot of energy. It is best to toss most of it outdoors. 

 

you are ultimately better off air conditioning the room entirely since due to efficiency in heat pumps being weird, it will cost almost the same in both energy bills and buy/install price. 

 

Also condensation if temps get too low.

[RevGAM]

5 minutes ago, OhYou_ said:

you will have massive inefficiencies transfering heat through so many mediums.

Like water block into water into radiator into air into evaporator into refrigerant into condenser into air.

way too  many steps. The most ideal method is phase change directly to the cpu block. but this can be a bit too ideal very rapidly and cause moisture. 

The next best thing is chilling the liquid. 
Even the most perfect phase change cooling solution will expense a lot of energy. It is best to toss most of it outdoors. 

 

you are ultimately better off air conditioning the room entirely since due to efficiency in heat pumps being weird, it will cost almost the same in both energy bills and buy/install price. 

 

Unfortunately, my computer is in the living room, along with my son's, which is connected to the kitchen, dining area, entrance hall and hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms. Cooling a box will be much cheaper than cooling that much area.

 

So, is it possible to achieve without too much inefficiency?

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, RevGAM said:

Unfortunately, my computer is in the living room, along with my son's, which is connected to the kitchen, dining area, entrance hall and hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms. Cooling a box will be much cheaper than cooling that much area.

 

So, it's it possible to achieve without too much inefficiency?

Yes but also 90f is well within operating ambient temperature of computer hardware. So if your system has trouble cooling then it's your cooling being the issue.

[OhYou_]

5 minutes ago, RevGAM said:

So, is it possible to achieve without too much inefficiency?

no but check my edit, sounds like its useless for the room but it is still somethin and if its gonna run all day cooling a pc or two it may as well cool the room too.

[RevGAM]

7 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Yes but also 90f is well within operating ambient temperature of computer hardware. So if your system has trouble cooling then it's your cooling being the issue.

I said in the 90s, not 90.  

[RevGAM]

4 minutes ago, OhYou_ said:

no but check my edit, sounds like its useless for the room but it is still somethin and if its gonna run all day cooling a pc or two it may as well cool the room too.

That's  an enticing and far more practical idea than what I had in mind. Thanks!

[manikyath]

just aircondition the room at that point...

 

a shitty small AC is almost the same cost as a shitty AC that'll keep you comfortable as well.

[RevGAM]

Thanks, everyone! I really appreciate the input!

[Somerandomtechyboi]

37 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Now, I'm not a silence nut so I don't mind my thicc fans being noisy as long as the computer stays relatively cool. At 100% usage you could fry eggs on top of my case but the CPU and cards aren't throttling by 1% thanks to the fans.

Im curious as to how your case temps get that hot, is it fine for the case to get hot? Cause that makes me suspicious if the airflow is being hampered or not

 

 

1 hour ago, RevGAM said:

I'm toying with the idea of having an external rad [or AIO] inside an insulated box with a small AC to cool it since summers are over 90F and long here, and I don't have AC.

 

Are there any modders out there with suggestions?

Yea just buy an ac for your room

If you wanna save on power then a desk fan will still keep you somewhat comfortable

 

What spec pc?

If you arent overclocking or only doing mild ocs (depends on voltage) then running at tjmax is completely fine, for lower voltages i see no problem going abit over tjmax as long as its not constant (maybe the occasional cpu heavy program or something)

 

Chillers are just not practical nowadays for cpu cooling, they tend to be overloaded when using a nuclear reactor like the 13700k/13900k, for the more efficient ryzen cpus they arent totally useless though they jack up your power bills by quite abit. Imo if you wanna daily chiller gain something from it and not nuke your powerbills then youd be chilling your rams, though thats assuming you got some capable rams and a capable imc capable of clocking said rams

[RevGAM]

10 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Im curious as to how your case temps get that hot, is it fine for the case to get hot? Cause that makes me suspicious if the airflow is being hampered or not

 

 

Yea just buy an ac for your room

If you wanna save on power then a desk fan will still keep you somewhat comfortable

 

What spec pc?

If you arent overclocking or only doing mild ocs (depends on voltage) then running at tjmax is completely fine, for lower voltages i see no problem going abit over tjmax as long as its not constant (maybe the occasional cpu heavy program or something)

 

Chillers are just not practical nowadays for cpu cooling, they tend to be overloaded when using a nuclear reactor like the 13700k/13900k, for the more efficient ryzen cpus they arent totally useless though they jack up your power bills by quite abit. Imo if you wanna daily chiller gain something from it and not nuke your powerbills then youd be chilling your rams, though thats assuming you got some capable rams and a capable imc capable of clocking said rams

Thanks for the info! My PC is listed in my profile.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

8 minutes ago, RevGAM said:

Thanks for the info! My PC is listed in my profile.

Think your problem is that crappy case with no airflow, if you can swap that glass garbage with the perforated front of the 5000d airflow then do that and see your temps drop by 10c or something now that theres airflow in the pc

 

It is intel so itll run pretty hot already, you can problably do some undervolting to fix any temp issues but unless you are hitting tjmax and throttling you are just fine

 

Gpu problably fine aswell, again undervolting is an option but you can also opt to overclock if theres temp headroom available, always overclock vram though since thats free performance

[RevGAM]

6 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Think your problem is that crappy case with no airflow, if you can swap that glass garbage with the perforated front of the 5000d airflow then do that and see your temps drop by 10c or something now that theres airflow in the pc

 

It is intel so itll run pretty hot already, you can problably do some undervolting to fix any temp issues but unless you are hitting tjmax and throttling you are just fine

 

Gpu problably fine aswell, again undervolting is an option but you can also opt to overclock if theres temp headroom available, always overclock vram though since thats free performance

I'd like to undervolt the CPU and overclock the VRAM...Just don't know how, yet. Yes, I am aware I can get the 5000D mesh. It's on my list.  Thanks!

[Somerandomtechyboi]

27 minutes ago, Caroline said:

In case you're looking at my uploaded specs I haven't updated that in ages, I have a 760T now, 12 hard drives on it so front fans are pretty useless, the 3 top exhausts are doing all the hard work

Nope

Well that explains why the case is so hot, but why even have front fans if they arent doing anything? Aside from just all the other fan slots being filled and theres no other spot for those front fans

 

35 minutes ago, RevGAM said:

I'd like to undervolt the CPU and overclock the VRAM...Just don't know how, yet. Yes, I am aware I can get the 5000D mesh. It's on my list.  Thanks!

If you can just swap the front panel for the 5000d airflow one then you dont need to case swap, just buy it off the corsair site or something

 

36 minutes ago, RevGAM said:

I'd like to undervolt the CPU and overclock the VRAM...Just don't know how, yet

For gpu tuning use msi afterburner, though i think amd drivers also have an built in oc utility

 

For cpu tuning just go into the bios and just set a negative voltage offset unless you wish to run static freq which is as simple as setting a static freq for all p cores (ex 52 for 5.2g) and setting a static voltage like 1.35v with a medium llc to no llc (full llc is just bad for oc, something to do with transients). for an undervolt setting youd be aiming at 1.2-1.25v under full load so adjust freq accordingly, but if an undervolt is not neccesary due to thermal constraints or stupidly expensive powerbills then you can raise the volts abit and do a better allcore freq

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Just now, Caroline said:

they prevent the HDDs from cooking

Right i forgot hdds can get hot

Though my ancient 80gb sata doesnt get that hot so do some hdds run hotter than others?

[RevGAM]

7 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

If you can just swap the front panel for the 5000d airflow one then you dont need to case swap, just buy it off the corsair site or something

 

For gpu tuning use msi afterburner, though i think amd drivers also have an built in oc utility

 

For cpu tuning just go into the bios and just set a negative voltage offset unless you wish to run static freq which is as simple as setting a static freq for all p cores (ex 52 for 5.2g) and setting a static voltage like 1.35v with a medium llc to no llc (full llc is just bad for oc, something to do with transients). for an undervolt setting youd be aiming at 1.2-1.25v under full load so adjust freq accordingly, but if an undervolt is not neccesary due to thermal constraints or stupidly expensive powerbills then you can raise the volts abit and do a better allcore freq

That is my intention. I've had other things on my mind.

 

Thanks, I'll see if I can't figure that out.