interesting...full refridgeration unit guts $45

[__TRONIK__]

http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2003121323385372&item=1-1302&catname=electric

1/12hp compressor - too small? 44lbs, gonna be a monster shipping charge I imagine. Still......

[itshondo]

Check Home depot- I think I saw mini fridges there for &50 -$60 new.

[__TRONIK__]

mini fridges tend to be tec-powered - this seems to eb a full compressor based fridge - perhaps the basis for a prommy type setup. The mini fridges w/ tecs are rather pointless w/ low wattages and bad psu's, a real mini firdge is good for the mini-fridge chillers many people have made. Chances are even if this has the same type of innards that a prommy needs, the compressor @ 1/12hp is nowhere near adequate. I hear 1/4 - 1/3 hp os optimal.

[Eradicator]

Well i ordered this same unit back in October. Shipping for me was 20 bucks to Texas. I brazed a becooling jagged edge water block onto the system as the evaporator and charged it with r134a and replaced the oil since I was not able to find any info on what type of oil/gas the unit had in it originally. The great thing about this is that it was all small enough to fit in my case perfectly, and the condensor comes with a fan (I wish I had a digital camera to post pics.) The unit is still working great today, with my 1700+ running at 2700mhz @ 1.925vcore i idle at 7C and prime at 18C dont really know how accurate these temps are since they are from my 8rda+ MBM5.0 readouts. I would imagine with a more powerfull compressor, guages, and a vacume pump. I would get better temps, but for the money/time spent on this project I couldnt ask for more. I just recieved my second unit from surpluscenter, which I will be making a direct die for a buddy of mine. I'll check and see if he has a digital camera. :)

[blackjackel]

try measuring temps with a REAL temp sensor, i bet you will find out that you are running well below 0.

[__TRONIK__]

wow! so this sucker works? sign me up! er...uh...how does one braze? I assume soldering on a WB will not do the trick due to the pressure? I'd love a step by step with some pics, this will be my first attempt at extreme cooling, only done water so far, and am about to jump into tec for the vid card. Did you need any extra stuff besides the block? Exactly how large i the unit? I am modding a full tower case that I think will be big enough, but I want to make sure I do not make any mods that will preclude fitting this thing. Thanks for all the info! glad to hear someone was successful with it

[__TRONIK__]

just ordered one! it begins..........

I guess I will have to find a new home for my barton - it is a wonderful chip, 2.45ghz @ 1.85 vcore, but it is locked and the board is maxed out at 223fsb vith a vdd of 1.9-2.0
I guess it's a mobile barton for me.

[Eradicator]

Well what I did was brazed on a new return line, but when it came to connecting the return line to the the block and the cap tube to the block i used silver solder, cause i didnt want to heat the block up too much causing the original silver solder between the top and the bottom of the block to get messed up. I do have to give credit where credit is due though, ptcg's web site will be a real big help for you, it helped me alot, he has pretty much a step through step by step of how he tore the unit apart and even how he made his own evaporator and how he made his own charge valve. His website is listed under his profile. If I can help in any way just let me know, good luck. Soldering will serve you fine, as long as its done right, I recommend using a solder that has silver in it, makes the joint a little stronger.

[Eradicator]

Oh yah, forgot to mention silver solder requires more than propane, you'll atleast need to get some mapp gas cause the propane probably will not get it hot enough?

[a12bc3]

Sup TRONIK :D

Hope you know who this is...Chaos

That looks like a good lil unit your getting there. I might start to ponder about thinking to look at one myself.

[lclark2074]

to day i saw 2.0 wine coler that was compressor driven i didnot see what sise the compressor is tho.

[__TRONIK__]

well with not winning that prommie...... I was a little p.o'd bout that btw, not losing, but the fact that the winner had barely over 20 posts, many less than a sentence, such as "I'm going to kwin", and that he got about a week to respond after he did. Seem like nice people though, I'm not bolting the board, I just think thge board should have enforced the "useful post" clause and also made the selection method tied to a random public number generator, like the mob used to do for the numbers racket. I.E., assign everyone digit from 1-9 and have winner be whose number matched the final digit of the dow jones closing volume. <------ganster movie nerd*

nice to see u chaos ;-)

Eradicator, thanks for all the help so far, I will leave you alone until I get the thing, and then I will probably pepper you with questions! I love that you had the wherewithal to try this on your own, I would have gladly been the space monkey, but it was so much easier a gamble knowing that you had been successful.

And as to the soldering - need more than a propane torch? Ouch! I just have this crap-a-lap little radio shack soldering iron!wonder if jb weld would do it? that stuff would hold protons to electrons I believe, though perhaps the point is that it retain thermal conductivity? It wasn't mentioned, but I assume I am right about needing a copper top, and possibly to remove the gasket? I can't imagine those things loving life sub zero!

eradictaor, rough estimate how big the evap is? basic dimensions, width length height (of the necessary bits)

thanks for all the help guys! it'd be great to help realize a low cost prommy dream for myself and others...I was already taking tons of pics of my case modding, I'll be adding lots of refridge modding pics as well and can hopefully cite you guys for a big writeup somewhere.

[blackjackel]

oh, by the way i forgot to say something,

I have no intention to thread crap, but this has already been posted before:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=198025&highlight=chiller+for+you+guys

just to let you guys know

[miggzeh]

for direct die 1/8hp is yer minimum.

i think 1/2 is good for a chiller.

[__TRONIK__]

anecdotal thoug it is, eradicator seems to have different evidence. I would bet that the refridgerent it is charged with carries more weight than the horsepower rating. And at this price - drop in a higher rated compressor if that's your bag. I have seen a bunch at around 1/4-1/3 for around $100.

[cstarritt]

did you change the oil and charge the system yourself? how?

also, looking at the specs for that compressor, 115vac 3.2amps seems a bit much for a 1/12hp motor, misprint mabee?

[Eradicator]

Well guys, they state on the sit that its a 1/12hp, it is small, but i from what I have seen, the size doesnt always determine the HP rating of the compressors. I recenlty accquired a 1/8th and a 1/5th hp compressors and the 1/8th is alot bigger than the 1/5th? Anyways, the original compressor has very little information on it, me nor several other people have yet to find any information on them. Therefor i couldnt tell you what oil or refrigerant was originally in the compressor but the oil is nothing like the ester oil I am using i with the r134a. Im pretty sure it has r12 in it, since the unit seems that it might of been in use a while ago, but dont quato me on that. I recieved my second and third units the other day( one is gonna be for a buddy of mine) the other is just a little experiment for me to try with the 1/5th and possibly propane.

[Eradicator]

cstarritt, as far as charging the sytem goes, I used a r134a retrofit service port adapter and found a compression needle valve from the hardware store, the port adapter threaded right on to it, and i used a section of 1/4" threaded pipe threaded on the other end and solder to the charge lline. Not quiet as good as a schrader valve, but he it worked. I found out now that you can screw the retrofit port directly onto a shrader valve, and that works great. At the time I didnt have an evac pump either, I pretty much just took a chance with the project, but hey its been up and running since early october, no trouble yet. The unit I just recveived I have turned the compressor into an evac pump, so i plan on experimenting with r290 with this little project. Man it would be so much easier to explain all this If i had a digital camera!

[cstarritt]

glad you didnt use r290 without an evac pump ;)

[lclark2074]

Originally posted by cstarritt
glad you didnt use r290 without an evac pump ;)
i agree you nead to take special care for it so there no kaboom.

[__TRONIK__]

Not that I am geting cold feet or anything (pardon pun) but would temps actually be lower using a 226watt tec on the cpu? I'll bet the costs will end up being similar. I love the idea of supercooling but in practical terms I just wan the best bang, IE the highest overclock, and for the damned thing to work!

eradicator - do you have any idea if this can be charged with r404? that seems to be the way to go refridgerant-wise
Oh yeah, I got a danger den maze3 w/ copper top for teh cpu block :P

[cstarritt]

tec cooling would be more expensive than what he did with that $50 unit and perform about the same. even if you allready have a kick ass water cooling setup your still looking at a TEC waterblock, insulation, and a powersupply. if you build the powersupply yourself it can be less expensive, but otherwise this is probobly your most expensive component. you can also use a couple ATX supplys, but you have to hope that they wont fail, cause if they do you can kiss your CPU goodbye.

now as far as performance, i cant really tell you what temps he got with this unit, but id say that its better than tec cooling is. if he had tweaked it, it would be even lower. if you read the forums at phase-change.com there are people that have built extremly effective units for close to $100. it all depends on how much shopping/dumpster-diving you want to do. a TEC waterblock your not gonna find at an appliance junkyard, but a good compressor you might. a home-built unit with a nice compressor, the right refrigerent, and a custom purpose-built evaporator can get you down to -30/-40º C load.

the big advantage the TEC has however is ease of use. all you have to do is slap it on your cpu and insulate it correctly. unless you plan on building a power supply its not much more difficult than setting up a regular water-cooling rig. with a phase-change rig your looking at much, much more time involved, and some fabrication on your side. if you factor in the time you spent as an opportunity cost, than the TEC would be less expensive. but for alot of this crowd building it is half the fun.

[__TRONIK__]

good points. Further reading has brought me to agree, at least so far as for the CPU. I think that with some mods I might be able to make a quite servicable contraption outta the thing if I can get teh WB to go on as an evap. I am going to tec the gpu though, now looking at the swifty and danger den premade pelt options. I think I will be swapping the 80watters they provide for a 110watt I just got off ebay. It would work the same at 12v, probably about 85 watts, but if I can give it 15v and 10A I get 110watts.

I read in another forum that for 226watters that need 25volts, that you could solder together the 12v leads form two atx psu's to deliver 25v. I assume it is possible to do the same with a 12v and a 3.3v to give 15.3v? I hear that tec's are not very picky about exact voltages, it is the power supplies that may not like th hybrid methinks. They should be quite within spec though, and are high quality enough units that I do not fear them any more than I fear the myriad of other stuff that could go horribly wrong in my case at any given time.

Many firends of mine still think its madness to watercool, and can't imagine a moment's respite from worrying. At this point I cannot imagine worrying about it. I tell them it is as likely that their cpu fan will fail and fry their processor as an h2o catasrophe occuring. With distilled wa-wa that is....

thx for the advice cstarrit, still going ahead full steam, even if 226w tec performance would be jsut a tad better (which it may not be) , it jsut does not have the jaw-drop element of a direct die phase change. If this does not work, then I get another interesting choice. Set it up as a water chiller and lose teh all-in-one-case aspect, or I could go tec'ing at that point. Time (and $) will tell.

[cstarritt]

if you solder the +12v leads from two psu's together you will still have 12v, the difference is now you can drive the combined wattage of the two psu's +12v rails. so if you have a 226watt 12v pelt that draws something like 25 amps, than two atx psu's with 15amp +12v rails wired in paralel will in theory do the trick.

[__TRONIK__]

hmmm perhaps the poster was mistaken? I'll have to look into this - see if the gurus in the psu forum can say for sure. I don't think any 226watt tec takes 12v btw, i think they all take something like 25v. I know that was an example though. Your suggestion might come into play anyway though for my example. The tec I am getting wants 10amps at 15 volts to run full power. The power supply choices I have for it are these:

a fortron with 10A on the 12v and 20A/22A on the 3.3v/5v respectively

a powmax 400watt with 25A on the 12v (and 28A/2.5A respectively).

if i cannot wire a 3.3 and a 12v to get 15v, then the choice would seem obvious - the powmax and its hefty 25A. But I would have to say that I trust Fortron waaaay more than powmax. At its stock 12v, teh fortron would be right up near its amp limit - but would it be possible to combine the 3.3v and 12v of the fortron and get a healthy 30A, without the supply primarily, er, preferentially sapping the 12v's amps? Is it even possible to combine the 12v and 3.3v lines on a single psu without it objecting?

I modded my fortron 350watt that runs my mobo/radeon/drives by going in and fiddling with the pots to increase the voltages to my 5v and 12v lines. Couldn't I jsut do the same with the smaller fortron, assuming they are present? I am sure there is some limit to how far you could pump it, but I would assume that every little bit helps - unless I am sapping the amperage of the 12v when I am playing with the pots, basically robbing peter to pay paul. I suppose if I could boost the 12v to 13-14 using pots and it did sap amperage, I could jsut combine the 12v line with the 3.3v from the powmax to reboost the amps.

Obviously psu's are not my strong point - forgive my glaring errors wherever they may be.

Don't you wish you could spin off threads or at least amend the title when the focus takes a tangent?

[__TRONIK__]

aha! an answer I did find. Seems you can wire two or more psu's very easily to run in parallel or in series, one or the other, anyway. IE you can take two 12v's @ 10A together to make 24v @ 10A, or 2 12v's together to make 12v @ 20A. See this link here (http://www.procooling.com/articles/html/on_da_edge_of_psu_technology_-.php)

This doesn't much help my goal I think, as 2x3.3, 2x5, and 2x12 don't equal 15v. and I don't see anything to make me think that you can combine the 12v of one and the 3.3v of another to make 15v. But it is good info for anyone who needs a chaep means of obtaining 25v, and that I can double my amperage if needed.

[__TRONIK__]

check that - I CAN run a 12v w/ a 3.3v for 15.3v - and can use the pots to make adjustments from there for the best efficiency. What still isn't clear is if it's possible to combine the 12v of psu 1 with the 3.3v of psu2 for 15v AND the 10A of psu 2's 12v for 15.3v and 20A. I'll have to email the author to find that out.

aaah the fabled catbird seat....

[cstarritt]

nice find, while i dont plan on carving up any powersuplies, thats a neat way to get 24v.

still, for your 10a 15v pelt, i would suggest running it at 12v as pelts are more efficent when run under their max voltage and for a vid card anything over 80watts is really overkill.

[__TRONIK__]

not necessarily overkill. Alot of times people are in the 20's with pelts, and sometimes they even load higher. I read that this has alot to do with how well insulated your card is. I decided to go with a cosel power supply, like a meanwell but cheaper. 13ish volts and 13 amps. wait a minute....er that could be unlucky. Oh well - it's the same price as two fortrons, should take up less room, should be more reliable, and has a knob for voltage adjusts.

I ordered a maze4-1, it's coming w/ and 80, I'll just keep thata as a backup I think. I liike the swifty, and it's a couple bucks cheaper, but what sold me on the DD is the fact that you can remove the pelt/plate and run it as a typical WB. The swifty has the direct-to-pelt water, which wouldn't be a problem if it's alone in the loop, but if I ever go back to WC for the cpu, it would get very annoying having warmer water spraying around. DD has a sweet holddown for the back side of the card as well, and since the direct die is being made from a maze3, may as well be consistant.

[__TRONIK__]

wooohooo! the fridge will be here friday!

[*spazzed*]

got it running yet? :D

[__TRONIK__]

grr, it didn't have an apt number and wont be here till tomorrow. Ill post some pics of tearing it apart though.
Got the maze3 for it though and the mobile barton is coming in. Only waiting on the copper top for the WB now.

[ogboot]

cmon update update!!!

[__TRONIK__]

it's in, it works, it's cool. You can check out a running build thread with lots of 56k beware pics here (http://www.utsukclan.com/sukportal/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2481&FORUM_ID=7&CAT_ID=3&Topic_Title=Check+out+Chow%27s+Cpu+Freezer+Project %21&Forum_Title=Public+Messages)




I will do so again many times, but tons of thanks go out to Eradicator and PTCG, who have been an incredible help in this mod project. Great guys, too.