I modified my refrigerator to cool my PC!!!

ABAQUS888 · Post by **ABAQUS888** » Tue Dec 09, 2003 12:57 pm

You wont believe this, I modified my refrigerator to provide cold water to cool my PC.

In the beginning I am thinking to bury a cooling tank in my back yard, but I found it is too hot in summer even if you have the tank buried under 10 feet, man, so this is what I have done, I punched a hole on my refriderator, then I put the water reservior in the bottom chamber (not the top freezing one), as the pipe runs through the warm room, the water get warm up a little bit, as the water arrives to my PC, aha, the temp is just right, it is around 5C to 10C, is it cute? now my PC is dead silent, because I don't use any radiator (b4 I used two truck radiators, and those radiator make my PC looks like a main battle tank!), so no fans! zero fans!

The only draw back is my dog does not like the reservior in the refrigerator, he drank all the water in the reservior when I was not in home once, which almost caused a fire! my PC is smoking!

now I have a lock on my reservior, hehe, what can u do now?

How do you guys think? huh?

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Tue Dec 09, 2003 1:45 pm

Sound like you will have to work real hard to come to our LAN-party

Can you post some nice pictures?

the_smell · Post by **the_smell** » Tue Dec 09, 2003 1:52 pm

Good stuff, can't say I'm worried; couldn't you just put the radiator in another room?

Did you dig a 10 foot hole?

This maybe a silly question showing my complete ingnorance in water cooling

, but how do you get around the problem of condensation?

Your dog is quite obviously one of those strange creatures who like a screaming fan system 'cause noise = POWER!!!' grrrrr...

I must have a lie down now and take my medication

ABAQUS888 · Post by **ABAQUS888** » Tue Dec 09, 2003 2:11 pm

The beauty of this method is that you can get cold water that is much lower than a radiator can provide, radiator can only provide room temp water at the most, and every home has a fridger, so you don't need buy any extra equiment, it is even cheaper than buy a radiator. this way also save a lot energy compare with the TEC, my fidger only need work a little bit harder to cool my PC, I even do not have to change my firdger temp settings. those TEC system will cost your a lot of energy bills! TEC will also cause condensation problem, I control my cooling temp around 5c to 10c. further more, this set up is very stable, much easier to control compare with TEC and air cooling.

Gooserider · Post by **Gooserider** » Tue Dec 09, 2003 9:06 pm

Condensation can be an issue anyplace that sub-ambient cooling is used, however in a dry environment it might not be an issue, especially if the cooling isn't real radical (this sounds like it isn't...) Remember condensation reqires that the temperature be lower than the local dewpoint, which is a function of both temperature and ambient humidity. If the air is dry to begin with, the dewpoint might be well below the temp reached by the cooling system.

More to the point, are a few potential problems...

1. That the dog survived drinking the res dry suggests ABAQUS888 isn't using any kind of anticorrosives or biocides. This bodes ill for possible long term corrosion and or biological buildup problems (algae clogs) I'm glad the dog survived, but it suggests future issues.

2. I have seen reports from other fridge coolers (the idea is very much not a new one) most say that if using the computer heavily for more than a few hours at a time, the coolant does tend to warm up to unacceptable levels eventually, and then takes quite a while to drop back down to fridge temps.

The problem appeared to be more a question of heat dissipation than overload, the rest of the fridge stayed cold enough, the water just wasn't able to shed the heat fast enough from a large tank. Solutions revolved around increasing dissipation, and included moving the evaporator coil into the tank, putting cooling loops around / through the freezer, or otherwise improving the connection between the evaporator and the coolant. However this led to a potential problem of freezups if the computer was shut off for to long, requiring either addition of antifreeze or running the computer 24/7 with some kind of background task (folding?)

3. I suspect this approach may not be as popular with the SPCR crowd as it would be with the radical OC crowd, after all fridges DO make some level of noise, although less than most fans. ABAQUS888 didn't say whether he had the computer in the same room as the fridge or not, but I would tend to class fridge cooling as a 'noise relocation' technique rather than a true silencing technique like Bladerunner's buried tank...

However except for the concerns I mentioned above, I would say the most important issue is that it works for ABAQUS888. If he's happy, it isn't our place to criticize excessively.

Gooserider

aphonos · Post by **aphonos** » Tue Dec 09, 2003 9:11 pm

Please, please STOP double-posting!!!!

That means not posting the same thread in more than one forum. Cf. Posting Guidelines #9 Pick the "best" spot and post it there.

The "mirror" to this thread can be found here: I modified my refrigerator to cool my PC!!!.

And since it already has more replies, from here on out please use the other thread.

Admins - combine the threads?

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 8:37 am

Thank you, this double thread thing is driving me insane. Im seeing doubles everywhere.