my HUGE radiator and fans under the house

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 6:00 am

thought I'd share this with everyone, it's my radiator and fans. Pump is submerged in the black bucket behind, its a ViaAqua 4900 that is struggling with the size of the loop (20meters of 19mm poly tube) with a danger den maze 4 cpu and a dd maze 4 north bridge block. I've a Swiftech Storm block waiting here quietly (dd maze gpu block too, and a hard disk water block I’ve been crafting up), not going to use them until I get a new, more powerful pump. So far no blocks are mounted, too scared to until I get my flow sensor/fail safe box built and working.

Still in the process of being built is a relay box so I can turn on the pump and fans independently from a control box integrated with the pc that monitors flow, temps and humidity. I'm scared there is a risk of condensation forming on the pipes. This way the controller can cycle one or both fans to keep coolant near inside's ambient.

Vulcan · Post by **Vulcan** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 10:43 am

link1896 wrote:thought I'd share this with everyone, it's my radiator and fans. Pump is submerged in the black bucket behind, its a ViaAqua 4900 that is struggling with the size of the loop (20meters of 19mm poly tube) with a danger den maze 4 cpu and a dd maze 4 north bridge block. I've a Swiftech Storm block waiting here quietly (dd maze gpu block too, and a hard disk water block I’ve been crafting up), not going to use them until I get a new, more powerful pump. So far no blocks are mounted, too scared to until I get my flow sensor/fail safe box built and working.

Still in the process of being built is a relay box so I can turn on the pump and fans independently from a control box integrated with the pc that monitors flow, temps and humidity. I'm scared there is a risk of condensation forming on the pipes. This way the controller can cycle one or both fans to keep coolant near inside's ambient.

That is insane!

cotdt · Post by **cotdt** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 12:33 pm

Insane indeed!!!

nici · Post by **nici** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 2:17 pm

Pure Genius!!

Oh, Welcome to SPCR

BrianE · Post by **BrianE** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 2:21 pm

Holy cow! Cheater - moving everything into another room!

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 2:35 pm

If you mounted the radiator horizontal, you might not need those noisy-looking fans at all. No sense disturbing the mice......

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 5:06 pm

thanks for the kind words guys

Bluefront I will try mounting the radiator horizontally some time in the future, atm I have so much to do still just to get it working. I'm going for a working solution first, then optimization.

I will keep you posted guys when I get to the next stage.

Regards,
link1896

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 6:34 am

Well, I'm new here..but here's a thought:

wouldn't a box fan be better? Maybe running on a switched outlet, or maybe an automotive radiator fan unit running on 12v, something that will get a breeze going over more of the radiator surface?

Incredible idea though, too bad I'm in an upstairs apartment.

Deathlife · Post by **Deathlife** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:12 am

That's just phreaking crazy! I wish I could do that though...

You could also bring the HDs downstairs to have a true 0dB system...

BrianE · Post by **BrianE** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:54 pm

Deathlife wrote:You could also bring the HDs downstairs to have a true 0dB system...

A nice idea, but without putting the whole computer/motherboard down there too, there is a maximum length you can have IDE connectors.... I'm not sure SATA has this limitation, but would imagine it has a length limit of some kind. I think if you exceed it you can have data corruption or something.

Eler · Post by **Eler** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 9:25 am

psiu wrote: Incredible idea though, too bad I'm in an upstairs apartment.

You could try this. The article it'sin spanish, but by the pictures I think you can figure out the water system. (BTW, the radiator was only 25€)

- Eler.

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 9:18 pm

Howdy guys,

I'm slowly progressing with the project.

I've now got the flow sensor in the loop, but after getting air in the loop at the blocks, loop flow is down to 2 LPM. Its quite hard to bleed such a big radiator with the restriction of the storm water block in the loop. Amazing though what water wetter does to the water, bubbles are now 25% the size. Before when I had the loop bleeded, but no flow sensor to give me numbers, adding water wetter increased flow rate.

Time to move up from the 4900 Via Aqua, which under this load is drawing more then the name plate's 85w, blocked loop wattage is 150 watts, 2lpm flow is 120watts. Onga spa pump I think. and the 85w via aqua already manages to test the hose clamps abilities!!!

Fan noises have been solved, have trialed a fan speed controller. Control box will control fan speed too now. oh this is fun.

Currently prototyping the control box on a breadboard that displays flow, inlet temp, outlet temp and air temp under the house near the radiator, humidity inside the pc box, and talks to the speed controllers for the fans via rs232

Will post pics when I have some more to show.

Mark

perplex · Post by **perplex** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 3:07 pm

that is madness! so are those pipes leading to your computer about 2 miles away for silence?

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 2:19 am

radiator is now below the bucket water level, bleeding the radiator is now painless.

Flow is up to 6lpm.

There is 20meters of 19mm poly tube. Poly tube is 8 bucks for a 20 meter roll. Hardly costly to put the radiator/pump/fans far away.

Link1896

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 2:20 am

thats 20m total, so the pump/fans/radiator are 10 meters away from pc

daba · Post by **daba** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 6:56 pm

How are the temperatures on that? Worth it?

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 4:36 am

i'm currently building a custom case, so no blocks are mounted yet.

The system controller is pretty much done, a case this weekend, and i'll have it all together with pics.

Phantom 500 on the way too.

link1896

perplex · Post by **perplex** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 5:40 am

what kind of cfm do those fans have?

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 6:03 am

The 20m tubes alone have about 12,000 square centimeters of surface area. I question the need for the radiator at all--although of course it can't hurt.

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Tue Sep 27, 2005 6:59 am

at zero static pressure, 500cfm EACH!!!

Post by **MikeC** » Tue Sep 27, 2005 7:27 am

Given the scale of the cooling system you've developed, it seems pertinent to ask:

What the heck are ya trying to cool??

Dirty-Harry · Post by **Dirty-Harry** » Tue Sep 27, 2005 9:04 am

MikeC wrote:Given the scale of the cooling system you've developed, it seems pertinent to ask:

What the heck are ya trying to cool??

DITTO!!!

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 11:44 pm

three computers and a hifi.

water cooled amplifiers, in all about 1kw of heat

two p4 3ghz and a p4 1.5ghz

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 2:57 pm

wow, that's a stroke of pure genius, i like it!

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 3:22 pm

reminds me of a guy who put a big tank (diameter about the same size as the width of your radiator) underground along with the pump, and it served as his pump/reservoir/radiator due to the natural insulation of the dirt/soil. he got consistently low temperatures all year round and he actually had problems with condensation inside his computer

possibly you can try something similar? if there's some diggable soil somewhere you can try burying it, that way you can do without the fans and not have to worry about inconsistent temps. but really at this level of insanity, anything's fine

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 4:55 am

System is alive

Its very quiet, can still hear hard disk seeks, 15k rpm seagates were never going to be easy to quieten.

Under 100% load temps are very low, coolant at 8 degrees c (outside ambient), Gigabytes easy tune reports 12-14 deg c on cpu, before this was over 40 deg c.

Will have pics soon.

perplex · Post by **perplex** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 5:39 am

yeh, if you had a huge copper tank buried in a cool soil area in the ground you wouldnt'd need turbines. i think you need some copper pipes too ?

BlueTide · Post by **BlueTide** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 9:06 am

link1896 wrote:There is 20meters of 19mm poly tube. Poly tube is 8 bucks for a 20 meter roll. Hardly costly to put the radiator/pump/fans far away.

This is with all the respect.... You're the man!

Now, on more serious note. Your setup gives me an idea or two once I have a house of my own and am rich enough to have a fibre-channel disk arrays for the workstation. Which you might try too to get the hard drives far away?

But again, damn I'm jealous...

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:20 am

here are some more pics

the case I built, a cut down 19" rack mount case. Now with mdf panels (raw atm, will finish soon, contemplating covering them with suade leather) and wheels

a picture of the solid state relays in my fan and pump control box. Never took any more pics of the controller while I was constructing it, sorry.

The control box under the house is connected to the main control box via rs232. Heart of the controller is a pic microprocessor. Has two temp sensors attached to it's ADC inputs to send back temps of the ambient temp under the house and the water temp in the bucket.

pic of one of the flow sensors I have. 25 USD each, square wave pulse output. 7hz pulse for one liter per minute.

main control box is another pic microprocessor. Sits in the top chamber of my case, behind the psu in the picture (no pics sorry). Also have an external hand controller to turn the system on and off. Hand controller has a 16x2 character lcd in it, planning on displaying all parameters on the lcd. Flow rate, under house ambient, water in bucket temp, coolant temp at exit from pc, internal case temp and internal case humidity. Fear is of condensation due to coolant being below case's internal dew point.

there are 4 120mm sunon fans on the back panel of the case just in case for summer, at the moment with an 18degree room temp my case's internal temp is 21 deg c with no fans running. Fans are speed controllable via variac, fans are 240vac types.

water blocks are a Swiftech Storm on the cpu, dangerden maze4 on the northbridge and a dangerden maze on the gpu.

Also created my own hard disk cooling clamp. Kind of hard to see in the pic, 6mm copper plate on each side with two passes of copper tube. The copper tube is machined on one side so it is a c shape. Soldered to the plates, water actually contacts the 6mm plates, didn't want a high thermal resistance through solder between the plates and the water tube.

Hard disk clamp holds 4 disks with about 1inch spacing between each disk.
Currently the hard disk assembly is sitting on top of a padded postal bag to decouple it from the case. Can JUST hear the hard drives spinning, 2 15krpm seagate scsis and two IDEs. So far i've not got the phantom 500's fan to come on

Under 100% load, cpu is at 13-14 degrees, 11 degrees at <10% load. Unsure of coolant temp atm, I've not got all sensors up and working yet. Under house ambient is at 10 degrees

Hard disks stay at 18 degrees no matter what usage they get.

So glad I spent all the time on this project, I can now relax at my pc and concentrate when working. Think i've thrown 100 hous at this project, and am over then moon with the results

Only some small issue to solve. The mouse cable, I never allowed for the usb adapter, so the excess length has thrown the mb on an angle. Just haven't had a chance yet to get to the shop and get a mouse cable extender. Other issue is the 19mm pvc tube coming from the wall has an evil kink in it, need to get some of that awesome spiraling 19mm tubing. (you know, the stuff used with some air compressor accessories)

now on to watercooling a 1.7ghz p4 for HTPC duties. Not scared with this one, older parts that can be sacrificed without tears. Will water cool the psu, thinking of a compact flash 2bg card with a CF to ide converter and networked to remote pc.

hope this project inspires others in the quest for silence.

regards,
link1896

my HUGE radiator and fans under the house

my HUGE radiator and fans under the house

Re: my HUGE radiator and fans under the house

wow...

Re: wow...

What the heck are ya trying to cool??