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Finally chilled!

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BrianH2O

Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2002
Finally got my chiller working! I have some pics, but no place to host them :(

My water temp is currently set to -9.3 to -2.9 as regulated by the freezer thermastat. The unit is on/off equal amounts of time with a 100% load. But my room seems to heat up. I may try for colder temps in the future.

The CPU temps are -3 to +2 no load, and +3 to +6 loaded.
The NB is also chilled, but could only get the back of the motherboard temps (~12C).

My Radeon died for no reason. Could be the new MB (changed from Asus P4B533-E to Gigabyte SINXP). I am all setup to chill the video card also if ATI gives me a new one?

I control the fan speed with a light dimmer so the sound level is around 35db (educated guess based on hearding 35db fans). When the unit is off, the PC is almost silent!

Now for my Video card!
 
if you want i can host them for you... just email em to me and i can put em up and give you the address:D

EDIT: if you want me to host 'em email em to
email no longer active
not the email i have for this thing cuz i cant checkthat at school wich is where i mgiht be:D
 
Last edited:
Thanks CrashOveride

I will send you an e-mail tonight. I am at work now.
 
Thanks CrashOveride ... did not look at my PM's

Ok here are the pic as hosted by CO

Here is the compressor. It is a 1/2HP Sears special
sCompressor.JPG


This is a pic of the res I made. It is 1/4" lucite then surround by 1.5" of rigid foam insulation. The coils have been moved into the res already
sCoilInRes.JPG

A pic of the whole unit with no cover. I had to cut away a bit of the insulation to fit the top on
sUnitNoCover.JPG

A pic of the front. The unit is actually working here. My water temps range from -10c to -3.5c. The white dial controls the fan speed. The brown contols the freezer thermastat. I orginally covered the front panel with speaker cloth, but it could not provide any air flow. I used aluminum screen mesh instead.
sFront.JPG

All the tubes exit/enter the top of the res. I wanted to minimize the change of leaks. There are 2 exit tubes into a Y, driven by 2 ViaAqua 1300's. One return tube.
sTubesInBack.JPG

last is a pic of the CPU and NB insulated. I used insulating neoprene strips from Home Depot. At least 2 layers. Then used black tape (the shiny covering) to seal to completely.
sCPU%20Ins.JPG


Hope ya like it!
 
Nice job! (much better with pics too)

How do them AV1300's do at those chilly temps?
 
They seem to work very well. I still have a gurging sound right now which I have to take care off.... but it kinda reassuring that the pumps are working.

The water temp right now is -4.2c, the GPU block is - 1.0, the CPU temp is 3c. So I think I am getting pretty good flow.

In room temp water, I got around 130GPH flow with all the tibes, bends and blocks in place.
 
looks great, how low will your liquid go if you have no load on it? Temps just look a little high to me but thats prolly just because of the refrigerant. Nice job!
 
Warlord2

I have had it down to -18c with no load but at those temps I am very afraid of condensation. I am quite happy with a coolant temp of -10c/-3.5c range with CPU in the -3c (no load@-10c)) to +6c (full [email protected]) range.

After I am happy that there is no condensation, I may try for a lower coolant temps (ie -15c to -8.5c). I may also look at reducing the spread from the 6.5c to 4c if I can.

I also do not want the compressor on all the time. At full load, it is currently on 1/2 the time (ie On for 20min off for 20min). Under no load, it's on about a 1/3 of the time.
 
For some reason it died. Not sure why? I took it out of my previous setup which was watercooled on an Asus P4B533-E and installed it with the chiller on the Gigabyte SINXP1394 MB. I have a very early 9700Pro so it may have been incompatable with the new MB. Maybe it just fried itself??

I mean ... no water/anti-freeze on the card, no crack sound while attaching the block, etc etc. Just a normal install and it did not work!

I have contacted ATI and will try an RMA. If they deed it to be my problem, then I will bite the cost.

So the video block is not hooked up at the moment.
 
have you noticed any change in humidity in your room at all? im thinkin of doin a waterchiller project soon, and i want to know the cons to it (i already know the pros)
 
No change in humidity at all. I have a fairly well closed system.

Make sure you install a dimmer light switch on the fan otherwise it will be much too loud for every day use.

Also follow #rotor's guide, it is quite useful. By the way, he used a 17pt/day dehumidifier whereas I used a 33 pt/day. The coils of the 33pt/day will NOT fit into the buckey as he described.

I do think my is too big (i believe it is 1/3 HP) unless you really want to go extreme. But then R134a is not a good coolant for this.
 
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