Water Chiller

Has anyone ever used a chiller in their water cooling system? I was browsing ebay looking for a pump to put my water cooling system together and came across water chillers for fish tanks.
Looking at the specs it will cool 10 gallons of water down 6-8 degrees and in most water cooling rigs I would think you would use around a gallon or so and I think cooling it down 15-20 degrees would be possiable. Would cooling the water down below room temp create a condisation problem? Here is the url:
http://www.coolworksinc.com/aquarium chiller.htm

yes.

and it would depend on how much humidity you have too.

One problem is that it would take a lot of hyperactive fish to put out the ~100 Watts of heat, that a highly overclocked processor does.

You'd likely need three of these to keep your water below ambient.

Since87 said:

One problem is that it would take a lot of hyperactive fish to put out the ~100 Watts of heat, that a highly overclocked processor does.

You'd likely need three of these to keep your water below ambient.

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So then any suggestions?

Im also curious what the temps would be with this even due to the heat output of the CPU.
Its possible it might not be able to get it cold enough to worry about condensation. ? Just a thought..

condensation would definelty not be a problem... the chiller is made to cool water, with no heat load upon the water other than room temperature and a few fishies, and under those conditions it can only chill a reasonable volume of water 6-8 degrees. the effect it would have on water being heated by a processor that puts out 50 watts of heat would be water that is still above ambient. i'm fairly certain of this. of course, you are correct to assume cooling the water below ambient room temp (below the dew point to be exact) can cause condensation, this chiller just couldnt make that happen. this is just what since87 was saying... the chiller is not made to handle a heatload, especially not a relatively large one like that of overclocked processors.

im fairly certain also that a smaller volume of water would not get any colder, but would only reach the 6-8 degrees colder faster than a larger volume of water.

my suggestion? dont invest in this for your computer cooling. good luck.

p.s. most importantly here, are we talking 6-8 degrees fahrenheit or celsius? probably fahrenheit right?

Actually that thing is a pelt with a hsf on it. And there are heatloads on aquariums, pumps, filters, lights... not fish, they are cold blooded. That thing would prolly work, but how well is a different question. I've seen guys sandwich a pelt between 2 heatsinks, one on top with a fan and the other submerged in the res. I don't really remember how good the results were. I doubt they were really good or everybody would be doing it.

peace.
unloaded

I guess I will buy one and try it out. I am not really sure if condisation would be a problem in the winter time here as I have a gas furnace and they dry the air out. Summer is the time that would bother me as a by product of central air is it adds moisture to the air. My thought on the matter is you take a heat load, use the water to transfer the heat out of the system and use a chiller to add some coolness back into the water, Even if it would only drop it 5 degrees that would give me the just alittle more room to overclock.

you could stick this in after the rad, so it doesn't have to deal with as mutch heat. But any one could have thought of that.

UnLoadeD said:

And there are heatloads on aquariums, pumps, filters, lights... not fish, they are cold blooded.

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Yeah, didn't think about the pumps and lights. Those are probably the main heatsources.

Some heat is going to conduct through the walls and base of the aquarium too.

Even a fish is some load. It has to consume energy to move, and generate heat in the process.

I'd still suggest these chillers aren't worth using though. You just can't get much cooling out of an aircooled TEC.

hah, nice call on the fish unloaded, cold blooded. im gonna stick by my word though... in the end its not my money of course, so your gonna make the decision. i just dont see the heat introduced into the aquarium from the pump, the light, etc. being comparable at all to the heat an overclocked cpu creates. how much does this chiller cost?

as for using a radiator in the same loop as a chiller, i guess that might help a little as long as you were working with above ambient temps, otherwise the rad would only raise the temp of the water.

on the condensation note again, this will not be a problem. in order for condensation to occur at room temperature the water would have to be VERY cold... being as optimistic as possible lets say this thing drops your water to 13-15 degrees celcius - it is still highly unlikely that ANY condensation will occur, of course that depends partly on other factors like atmospheric pressure and humidity, but it is a fairly safe assumption i believe. so saying it would work this well, you would still most likely be safe from condensation. good luck.

My system can melt (first hand experience here) ten pounds of ice in a five gallon water res in 1/2 hour. Give you some idea of the heat load. This was without the tecs on an xp1600 at 1.73Ghz. Kind of scary. The tecs now get the job done with no condensation.

I found a place on the net selling them with a power supply for $75.00. I have found a different chiller list on ebay for $200 that has a digital readout and a pump that if I rember right does 178gph at 8' rise. I might be wrong on that as I looked at alot of different chillers, most of them starting at $500. My setup will be a pure copper rad with a 6" rat shack 12v fan with a riostat and a fan shround that I made at work and a 1 gallon res. I am building my own water block based on the copper cap by Owen Stevens with a few mods. I am going to solder small copper pins in the center of the cap and make my connections from each end so the water flows across. My beleif is this will cause back preasure and increase the surface area. Could someone tell me the peice of copper I bought was bus bar and I chose to go with 1/4" thick but at 2 1/2 by 3 1/4" it weight 1/2 pound. I rember when I ran a Athalon XP 1.7 you had to be carfull of crushing the core. Is that a issue with a P4a? Bye the way thanks for all the replys and info so far. I am starting to wonder if a chiller will work at all or at least if I need to get a bigger one.

The real tests I have seen on that product show that it is more like 2-3 degrees cooling in a 10 gallon tank. That’s using a single small pump and a small florescent light as a heat load. Adding this to a water cooled system would be like bear hunting with a twig.

When it comes to aquariums, heating and cooling is considered with how large the tank is. The more water you have, the easier it is to keep the temperature stable, but the more power you need to heat/cool it.

As far as aquarium cooling, it usually is not used for fish, but for corals. In order to keep corals, you have to have special lighting. Most use Metal Halides with a few VHO florecents thrown in. The Metal Halides are the closest artificial lighting to emulate sunlight. They are extremely hot and put out a lot of energy. These things can damage your eyes and even cause skin cancer. Add multiple pumps for filtering and others to mimic wave movement and you have real chore in cooling.

There are other products that use pelts that are target to aquarium users, but none of them work well. Instead, serious hobbyist use chillers that us the same compressors you find in the pre-made computer cases. They start out at about 1/5 horse power and $600. Any thing less than that would probably only add noise and numbers to your utility bill.

I am working on adding a 1/5 HP chiller to my water cooling. It can cool a 55 gallon aquarium 20 degrees with a normal heat load. I have tested it cooling the water coming from the rad and only achieved an 8 degree drop. I have plans that will improve that to maybe a little over 10, but that should give you and idea of what that little pelt and fan will do.