Question about water cooling

[Project_PC]

If you can only get temps as cool as the water, why can't you use an apparatus to cool the water to a lower temperature (on top of using a radiator)? Other than limitations with the amount of water you have.

 

I feel like I'm missing something quite obvious. Be nice please :).

[Leonard]

1 minute ago, Project_PC said:

If you can only get temps as cool as the water, why can't you use an apparatus to cool the water to a lower temperature? Other than limitations with the amount of water you have.

 

I feel like I'm missing something quite obvious. Be nice please :).

Condensation and it is as cool as the ambient. There is phase change, condensation is also an issue there too.

[kb5zue]

2 minutes ago, Project_PC said:

If you can only get temps as cool as the water, why can't you use an apparatus to cool the water to a lower temperature (on top of using a radiator)? Other than limitations with the amount of water you have.

 

I feel like I'm missing something quite obvious. Be nice please :).

You can use other devices, they call them "fans".

 

[W-L]

4 minutes ago, Project_PC said:

If you can only get temps as cool as the water, why can't you use an apparatus to cool the water to a lower temperature (on top of using a radiator)? Other than limitations with the amount of water you have.

 

I feel like I'm missing something quite obvious. Be nice please :).

As said your going to run into condensation if you go below the ambient temps but there have been builds that use water chillers to help further cool watercooling systems.

[Project_PC]

On 10/31/2017 at 10:24 PM, kb5zue said:

You can use other devices, they call them "fans".

 

I was referring to sub-ambient temperatures

 

On 10/31/2017 at 10:27 PM, W-L said:

As said your going to run into condensation if you go below the ambient temps but there have been builds that use water chillers to help further cool watercooling systems.

What do they use? Phase change?

[kb5zue]

Just now, Project_PC said:

I was referring to sub-ambient temperatures

Instead of mounting the radiator on the inside of the case, leave it on the outside of the case and drop it into a bucket of ice-water or just plain ice cubes.  You would probably need to somehow extend the length of the tubes but what the heck, in my 40 plus years of messing with these machines (first one was a Tandy-Radio Shack Model One Level two, no HDD, black screen, nothing but ms-dos, 5.25 inch floppy disks and 16k of ram), I have seen a LOT of crazy stuff.  Some people even spray painted their machines back then to make them look different.

[W-L]

5 minutes ago, Project_PC said:

What do they use? Phase change?

It's not phase change but fish tank chillers for cold water aquatic animals, it refrigerates the fluid that passes through it. 

 

 

[SwingLifeAway92]

@Project_PC Most sub ambiant builds involve modifying an everyday household ac window unit personally never done it thought about it but seems like a giant pain in the butt. Linus actually did one at some point with an old opteron dual core (wound up killing the cpu).

 

@Project_PChttp://www.overclock.net/t/1511297/window-ac-air-conditioner-to-water-chiller-conversion-log This one didn't wind up working out idr but it shows the basic pain in the butt steps you have to go through for it hince the reason you rarely see sub ambient pcs

[Project_PC]

Thanks for the responses!

 

On 10/31/2017 at 10:33 PM, kb5zue said:

Instead of mounting the radiator on the inside of the case, leave it on the outside of the case and drop it into a bucket of ice-water or just plain ice cubes.  You would probably need to somehow extend the length of the tubes but what the heck, in my 40 plus years of messing with these machines (first one was a Tandy-Radio Shack Model One Level two, no HDD, black screen, nothing but ms-dos, 5.25 inch floppy disks and 16k of ram), I have seen a LOT of crazy stuff.  Some people even spray painted their machines back then to make them look different.

That's really interesting, thanks.

[Zyndo]

35 minutes ago, Project_PC said:

If you can only get temps as cool as the water, why can't you use an apparatus to cool the water to a lower temperature (on top of using a radiator)? Other than limitations with the amount of water you have.

 

I feel like I'm missing something quite obvious. Be nice please :).

Some guys like to drop their radiators in a bucket of ice/water to cool their system during benchmark/overclock runs just for the lolz.... but the reason you couldn't do this, or wouldn't want to do this in a more sustainable way is there is no efficient/practical way to cool your coolant to well below 0 temps long term. Everything is either too expensive, too loud, or too impractical compared to some other form of cooling.

 

That being said I also live in Canada, I'm considering running some hoses through my wall or maybe a window to an outside mounted radiator where the temps can easily get to 40-60C below on a cold day/night in the winter. That in itself comes with its own problems, but its really the only "practical" way of supplying your system with sub 0 "ambient" temps to cool the radiator/coolant with.

[SquintyG33Rs]

40 minutes ago, Project_PC said:

If you can only get temps as cool as the water, why can't you use an apparatus to cool the water to a lower temperature (on top of using a radiator)? Other than limitations with the amount of water you have.

 

I feel like I'm missing something quite obvious. Be nice please :).

you can... there are "chiller" PCs that essentially use compressors like your fridge has to cool the CPU under ambient and even into low negative. but when you get colder condensating water becomes a problem that can short your motherboard so you have to work around that.

 

the easy method you could do (not really practical) is just dunking the radiator from your waterloop into an ice bucket.... it will work

[Psittac]

All of the aquarium chillers I've come across while keeping fish have been "phase change" though I've never had a need to own one.

 

When the temperature of any item is below ambient you get a 100% relative humidity.  Warm air can hold more moisture than cold, when you cool air it is far easier to hit the dew point where the absolute humidity is higher than the air can hold, IE: precipitation.  Central air conditioners are also de-humidifiers because of this.  Also humid air feels warmer than it is.

 

Many years ago in the extreme cooling side of thing's people would use a Peltier cooler which was basically a slab of metal that would use electricity to make one side hot and one side cold, put the cpu on the cold side and the hsf or water block on the hot side.  This will result in lower temps than you would normally get however the cost of electricity and of the device made it impractical. Unless you do it for shit's and gig's it's pointless.

 

I have been working HVAC for 13+ years and have had phase change in the back of my mind, back 15 years ago when I first heard about it people would do thing's like cascade phase change, that's a compressor cooling a compressor cooling a compressor cooling a cpu.  I had no idea how to get access to that stuff as it's not just a window A/C unit so I went no further.  I might start looking into it and dig out my old Pentium 820d and try to freeze that sucker for gig's.

 

One note on phase change, you need to ensure that the compressor is capable of handling the heat load.  I attempted to route my water loop into a mini fridge one time and it just turned into a sauna as it was an open reservoir and the fridge ran non-stop.