a Different approach to peltier/water cooling

[SuperViking]

I have a very interesting idea that i've looked high and low to find out if anyone had previously thought of it, or if it might not work. I don't know if it will, and i'm wondering if someone could confirm/deny it works, or show that somone has done it, or even do it and get back to me! anyhow, here's my idea:

1) attach 1 or 2 peltiers to a metallic reservoir water tank.
2) plug in one hose end to the reservoir to the intake of the water pump.
3) attach the output hose of the pump to the input of the copper water block attached to the top of the cpu.
4) attach the output of the copper water block to the input of the reservoir tank.
5) let her rip!

[William]

it would cool the water, although cooling the cpu with a pelt is better. But if you had them all working, watch out!

[SuperViking]

right, i know that putting the peltier directly onto the cpu may cool it a little bit better, but the hopes of my design is to get all the water circulating to be around 40 degrees or so, and that cold, cold water streaming through a nice copper water block on top of the cpu i think would cool it quite nicely. The point of this was to avoid the whole peltier directly on top of the cpu element, this way you can avoid the whole preparation of a peltier unit (sealing, insulating), plus with the water being so cold from the peltier(s) its a constant supply of cold, cold water into the water block, as opposed to the whole radiator/fan solution which is bulky and not nearly as cold

[ZX-Tex]

SuperViking, that is an interesting idea! I think it could work, and cut down on the prep problems.

I would insulate the hoses, or keep them short, or use thicker hose material. You could still have condensation problems at the motherboard if the CPU block gets cool enough. You would also probably want to put some antifreeze in the water just in case.

If you try it I would like to hear about how well it works.

[SuperViking]

thanks for the tip on the insulation of hosing, etc, i'm currently a veteran of tweaking/overclocking, but not since the good ol' K6-2's that wouldn't require water/peltier cooling, so i've read all i can read about peltier and water cooling because i want to get it right when i set up my rig...the specs

1.2 GHz T-Bird 266 MHz FSB
Epox 8K7A Mobo
512 MB DDR RAM 266 MHz
ATI Radeon 64 DDR VIVO
13.6 Gig Maxtor HD 5400 rpm (will be upgraded soon)
i have the GlobalWin CAK-38 on top of my CPU

[Oright]

Great idea, a lot of other people have suggested it too, but never had the **llz to try it
Love to hear how it turns out......

[Thelemac]

Hmm...I think ken257 has a setup like this...I know that there are others. Most refer to it as a chiller block. You could do a search on that and find all of the info that this great forum as experieenced. :)

[William]

it would require quite a pelt to chill like that plus another water setup to cool the hotside. I think it would be best to attach the pelt to a water block and chill the water that way.

[scap]

I am acctully planning on doing this
i am just really playing around but ave bought all the stuff already. i am going to make a clear resivor and have a huge heat snik on the inside of in in a chanel so that any water leavein this setup will have to go through it plus it will add surface area. i am also going to try to air cool the other side. that is where this gets kinda ify so i dunno if that will work well or not. i will also put a rad in my case however this is main for a back up plan if this stuff doesn't worked as hoped. hopefull i can get the water cold enough that when it goes through the rad if will cool my case. that is my idea very similar to yours with some veryiation. anyways good luck with your and i will tell you guys how it goes.
It might be a while thoguh since school just started again!!

[William]

if you put a rad in, you are going to really raise your water temps and lower the efficiency of that pelt. You PROBABLY won't see a huge drop in case temps but see a pretty good rise in CPU temps.

[Patchmaster]

Please keep in mind that no matter what kind of system you build, the goal is to move heat from the processor to somewhere else. IOW, the heat has to go SOMEWHERE. Unless you want to do something like the guy who sunk a giant reservoir in his back yard, that SOMEWHERE is going to be the air in your computer room.

You can build a 500W peltier water chiller with a 1200GPH pump going into the radiator off a Caterpillar tractor with a cyclone wind machine blowing through the radiator, the heat is still going into the air in the computer room. Just remember, the whole point is to move the heat from the CPU to the air in the computer room as efficiently as possible.

[scap]

good thoughts will i think i will expreiment after i get it all set up

[The Overclocker]

if you use pelteirs to cool the resivor the you will probably need a seccond water cooling setup to cool the peltiers

[SuperViking]

okay, well i obviously didn't explain everything completely...

there are two different ways to go about my design while avoiding big problems...

first scenario, setup the design i discussed earlier, and attach one or two very efficient hsf units onto the hot sides of the pelts...

OR

run some extra tubing out of the reservoir tanks and run copper blocks onto the peltiers, therefore the pelts would be cooling themselves!!

either way i think that one or two peltiers would cool a reservoir tank quite nicely

[rodvon]

Instead of useing a reservoir I would take a nice size block of copper and bee hive the hell out of it say at lest 2 time as long as a cpu block and at lest 2 to 3 times the thickness. I make it a multi layer bee hive and use pelts to chill it. You would want to insulation the cooled side. The bigger you make it the better, also the longer you can keep the water in it the better to.

[DoGMaN]

I've built a system very similar to the one you are speaking of, and so far, it doesn't work. My setup uses 2 X 122W pelts running on a HUGE heatsink to cool the water. with no load the pelts do an easy job of cooling the water to 5 deg C (ambient is 25 Deg C). As soon as you introduce the cpu into the system the water temp jumps upto about 28 deg C. A change of 23 Deg. I've tried everything, better insulation. more power, better cooling on the hot side, all to no avail. I do have one idea left, but I'm not sure how viable it will be. I've installed a 10' copper coil into a larger resevior (about 1 gallon) I am going to cool the water in the resevior, and use the coil like a standard radiator I'm hoping this will allow the water in the resevior to stay cool enough to chill the water flowing across the cpu. I'll post a link to some pics as soon as I get them on the web.

[Patchmaster]

run some extra tubing out of the reservoir tanks and run copper blocks onto the peltiers, therefore the pelts would be cooling themselves!! There is this principle in physics called conservation of energy. All systems in the known universe adhere to this principle. The pelts are consuming X watts of electricity and using that to pull heat from one side of the pelt and push it out the other side. According to the conservation of energy principle, the amount of energy coming out the hot side as heat will be equal to the heat generated by those X watts PLUS the heat that was removed from the cold side. If you water cool the pelts with the same water you're using them to cool, the water will have to re-absorb the heat it gave up to the cold side of the pelt plus the heat from that X watts. Give it about ten minutes and it will be time for tea.

Like I said earlier, the name of the game is moving heat from the CPU to some other place. For about 99.99% of us, the only practical "other place" is the air in the computer room.

[William]

Originally posted by SuperViking
okay, well i obviously didn't explain everything completely...

there are two different ways to go about my design while avoiding big problems...

first scenario, setup the design i discussed earlier, and attach one or two very efficient hsf units onto the hot sides of the pelts...

OR

run some extra tubing out of the reservoir tanks and run copper blocks onto the peltiers, therefore the pelts would be cooling themselves!!

either way i think that one or two peltiers would cool a reservoir tank quite nicely


pelts put out a lot more heat than they cool, so that won't work plus you would have the heat of the CPU to deal with too. As far as heatsink units, there is no way you are going to be able to cool a 156W or 172W pelt with a hsf.

[Badger]

Actually i think you could air cool a 156W or 172W pelt OK, you would need a HUGH heatsink, maybe something from a transformer or power amp but as long as the HS (and fan) is big enough it should work.
The only reason you can't do it on a cpu is the size/weight limit caused by the layout around the socket and the problem with dumping all that heat in your case.
As a previouse poster said, ultimatly virtually all systems are air cooled, some just use water to carry the heat to a bigger heat sink (the radiator).

[VashTheStampede]

Here's the type of heatsink you need to air-cool a 172 watt pelt.

http://netgimp.netfirms.com/thermaltaketurbine.jpg

Now with 95 CFM!

~Redneck Tech~

[IAMCanadian]

I did some thing to this effect I took my small rad the one that fits a 120 mm fan perfect at becooling. Stuck it in ice water and who boy she worked just fine only problem really was the ice was melting faster than I could make it ^_^ so yea that should work I am thinking bout trying it with a tec sooner or later when funds permit.

As to the huge heat sink yea a custom one that could be like the bottem res/rad addon to a case or something layer a few 120 pelts then bolt it to a copper res to it add one motha of a fan and voila. just a thought.

Originally posted by DoGMaN
I've built a system very similar to the one you are speaking of, and so far, it doesn't work. My setup uses 2 X 122W pelts running on a HUGE heatsink to cool the water. with no load the pelts do an easy job of cooling the water to 5 deg C (ambient is 25 Deg C). As soon as you introduce the cpu into the system the water temp jumps upto about 28 deg C. A change of 23 Deg. I've tried everything, better insulation. more power, better cooling on the hot side, all to no avail. I do have one idea left, but I'm not sure how viable it will be. I've installed a 10' copper coil into a larger resevior (about 1 gallon) I am going to cool the water in the resevior, and use the coil like a standard radiator I'm hoping this will allow the water in the resevior to stay cool enough to chill the water flowing across the cpu. I'll post a link to some pics as soon as I get them on the web.

[jfestrada]

This is my idea of the setup.

[JigPu]

I though about something like this a while ago, but decided against it. (Mainly because I'm broke!!). If you want to see/use my design, go ahead! I'm not going to.

Here's the key:
RED - Hot side of pelt
BLUE - Cold side of pelt
YELLOW - Kinda like a radiator, only more like a really big water block. Metal with hollowed out tubing inside...
BLACK - Heat Sink (the black rectangle is an insulated resivoir)

Here is how (I think it would) it works...

The TEC cools off the water coming from the CPU. (and also a COLD water resivoir)
The water goes back to the CPU

The COLD water resivoir flows into the HOT water resivoir. Helping to cool off the TEC's hot side.
The now warmed water goes off to a resivoir to cool off a little.
The now cooled water flowes into the COLD resivoir, and gets cooled off some more.

(Notice the CPU water comes into the block starting on the warmer side of the COLD resivoir, not warming up at the end. Just slowly getting colder)

Would this work???

JigPu

[William]

looks good Jig pu. You don't need a cold plate on the resevoir, I am not sure how just attaching it to the side would work, but you cna try it. I think running it though some sort of block is the best idea. But like i said, try it and prive me wrong!

[Oright]

I dont think that would work, because the peltier will cool the water just as much as it heats it up.....

Now im no cooling engineer or anything (heh...), so dont be afraid to try this out :D
Look forward to seeing the results if you do it!

[Oright]

Hehe, that was a different idea from another thread....
Sorry...........

Looks good!

[SuperViking]

i haven't even started to build this idea that i started all this crap on, but i did just decide to overclock my 1.2 GHz 266 fsb chip...i'm using the GW-CAK38 and i tell ya...that thing is balls out...i'm using the grease that came packaged with it and i'm not using any other cooling agent on my chip...and i got 1.4 GHz out of it no problem...didn't even have to up the voltage at all. Of course they DID say that the Epox EP-8K7A is an overclockers dream, so i tried it, and they're right about that one. Please keep posting new ideas for this alternative peltier/water cooling, i'm very interested to see. Keep in mind folx, the idea of this is to cut out the bulkiness of a radiator, and to use a peltier.

1.2 GHz T-Bird 266 FSB OC'ed to 1.4
(i just said that but whatever)
Epox EP-8K7A mobo
(i said that too, again, whatever)
ATI Radeon 64 DDR VIVO
256 MB DDR RAM (266 MHz)
13.6 GB Maxtor HD (5400 rpm :::gag:::)
SB Live! Value
3Com NIC (AT&T cable)


i just bought a crapload of heatsinks and fans, i've gotta customize them a bit though :-) the four heatsinks i ordered for my radeon worked out to be a little more than double the size of the chips, and the heatsink fan i ordered for the radeon chip itself is two "rows" too large because of some barrel capacitors next to the chip so i'm gonna machine those off, and epoxy them to my radeon with nothing other than Arctic Silver thermal adhesive of course. oh, i almost forgot to mention the 23 cfm delta fan that is gonna be screwed into the heatsink atop the radeon chip. also some blue rounded cables (totally worth the money) i'm waiting on some other packages, i'll keep you guys posted because after awhile i'll be buying the parts to implement this new peltier/water design and see how it flies. i'm gonna do this in stages, since i practically broke the bank buying all of this wonderful hardware i'm finally getting funds up to get all of this ocing in place.
:cool:

[fuzzba11]

I posted my idea in another topic...dual peltier with two waterlines, both connected to the same radiator/resivoir, though. Then the water tank is cooled by two peltier dual heatsinks with the hot HSFs outside the case.

[fuzzba11]

From the front, dual PSUs to power the peltiers :D The tank is behind the front fans

[scap]

i do belive all of you need to read the peltier radiator article in the watercooling section of overclockers

[jfestrada]

I read the peltier radiator article, and I think is a good idea to put a radiator on the end of the return hose of the processor to cold down the water before return to the container.

I currently have a 75w peltier, radiator and 2 120 mm Fans, my Celeron 566@850 run just fine and when I add some Ice to the water I can run my celeron at a higher speed.

For that reason I want to cold daown my water with a peltier.

This morning I bought a 4x4x4 pvc junction box and used a thermaltake headsink (damaged), put out the fan cut a hole in the reservoir to fit my heatsink, then put some silicon glue and I'm waiting for tomorrow to check the container for leaks, if everything is OK y will do some testing.

[SuperViking]

Hey, those images are pretty cool looking, but, i don't quite know what some of the blocks are, etc, they are unlabeled so if you could just detail that better perhaps i could understand the setup better, cuz i don't think i understand that at all...the fans are a no brainer, but the rest?...

[DoGMaN]

Morning guys, looks like this idea has been floating around a lot of heads for some time now. Here is my results thus far with my attempt at pelt cooling water. In the short, it does not work. The pelts can not keep up with the demand. They just don't produce enough power to remove the heat from the water. My final test was done with 2X122W and 1x56W the water temp started out at +3.8 Deg C. After only 15 mins of running under load the temp had risen to 27.2 Deg C. The hot side of the pelts were incredibly hot, I didn't measure them right away because I coule not touch the heatsink, but after about 5 mins to cool the heatsink was still 67 Deg C. If you could water cool your pelt setup with a completely separate intercooler you may be able to hold a lower temp for a longer period of time, but with the amount of heat the pelts throw of, you'd need a rad from a car to dissapate the heat.

All my tests were done using a sealed fully insulated resevior and hoses.

I don't want to discourage anyone from trying new things, I just wanted to throw in my input so someone can hopefully make this work. It is a good idea, the theory is sound. In practise it seems to fail so far. :confused:

[docJ]

You have a good idea for a water chiller. If you make your
metal storage tank larger and external to your computer,
you can run your cpu at sub zero temps. I have used this for
a chiller at work, so I have worked out many of the details.
Your TECs can be run at lower power and can be air cooled.
The one I built at work is 5 gallons and has a 76 watt TEC
run at 5 volts. The storage tank must be well insulated. It
takes a couple of days to take the temp down to -5C, but
I can cool 40 watts for hours and still be below 10C. If I
Kicked up the TEC to 12 volts during use. the time would
be longer. If you need more info let me know.

[Flow]

There's one thing I really don't understand in all this: the basic principle is so simple it just has to work, but apparently it doesn't.

First things first:

-You cool the CPU with water
-This *hot* water is cooled down to as close to ambient as possible by a radiator / fan

Thus far it's classic watercooling

-Now you use a peltier to cool the water even further, down to ambient or even under that. It does not matter how the peltier is cooled. Every bit of cooling on top of what the radiator did is a gain compared to the same setup without peltier, right?

-So now you could end up with water beneath ambient temps to cool the CPU. Water that leaves the CPU this time will be a bit colder than before so your radiator will loose a bit of it's capacity but the whole system should balance out just a tad lower than the same system without peltier in it.

SO WHAT'S WRONG WHITH ALL THIS????

If you ask me, the big mistake is to put everything in your case!
And so you violate the principle of moving heat away from your system. You rather add some. Granted, you take heat from the CPU and use the radiator to lose a good part of it to the air in the room, but your Peltier (and other components) will heat the air in your case far to much, both decreasing the capacity of your radiator and peltier-cooler itself. In other words: the fan you use to cool the radiator is only able to do just that, but cannot move all the excess heat from peltier and other parts out.

The trick that could save this nifty idea is to keep all parts of the cooling system ( CPU-waterblock, peltier AND radiator) as far from each other as possible (and connect them with insulated hose). So all parts use the huge reservoir of air, which your room actually is, completely separated from each other. This probably means you cannot put them in the same cramped space (i.e. your case).
Just my five cents

cheers

[SuperViking]

that makes perfect sense to me...i'm not too concerned with heat inside my case seeing as i'm gonna get those 230+ cfm 120 mm fans (at least one in and one out) so there will be so much air surging through that case i don't feel it will be a factor if i just dump it inside my case seeing as i'm gonna have at least an effective 180 cfm of air in/out

[Patchmaster]

not too concerned with heat inside my case seeing as i'm gonna get those 230+ cfm 120 mm fans Are you talking about the ones that electronics surplus place (B. G. Micro) has for $8.95? If so, be aware they are NOT 120 mm. They're 171.5mm x 150.4mm x 50.8mm. If that still fits in your case, great, but it's quite a bit bigger than 120 mm. Also, they're very noisy. 54.3 dBA according to the manufacturer. For reference, the Deltas that many people find much too loud are 48 dBA (for the 80 mm model). You might want to think about getting a couple pots to go with the Comair Rotron fans. At least you'd be able to turn down the fans when you didn't need the heavy duty cooling. B.G. Micro has lots of pots available.

[Oright]

Ok Ive got my own design for one of these and I believe that it will kick arse :-D
Once I get the working model finished, Ill post a pic with temps and stuff.

[Lynx]

I thought of this a while back and came to the conclusion that you would need to have an other water cooling rig to cool the hot side of the pelts.

It is simple maths. Athlon 80W + Pelt 150W + 2 radiator pelts 150W each. that adds up to 530W of heat. That is a lot of heat and I would like to se an hsf handle tha!

[SuperViking]

yeah, those are the ones...hmm, 170+ mm eh?...well i don't even know if my entire case is that wide!!...hehe, ah well, either way i already have a couple 120 mm 85 cfm fans so, thats not nearly as much airflow...but i think still sufficient. Anyhow, in the meantime i have modded and OC'ed my Radeon 64 DDR ViVo. the max synchronous speeds i get is 236.25 MHz which i don't think is too bad...has anyone gotten higher? Now the details on what i did. First i ordered the Vice Extreme III video cooler dealie. Now as you know the Radeon RAM chips are quite a bit smaller than the four Heatsinks they provide...however they are almost the EXACT dimensions of the RAM chips if you cut them in half...and take out the middle row (7 rows total, 3 rows per heatsink). Next i took the huge heatsink that is for the GPU itself and cut off two rows from top, and two rows from side, leaving two factory sides. I reattatched the 21 cfm delta fan that comes with it, and used good ol' arctic silver thermal adhesive to attatch all these heatsinks to the RAM chips and GPU. oh, oh, oh, i almost forgot...removing the heatsink/fan that came with it "a joke at best", its easy as hell, just put a small flathead screwdriver under there and twist...it comes off relatively easy, then i used a razor blade to remove the epoxy that it came with, and of course cleaned all chips with isopropyl alcohol before application of the epoxy.

[kd7aze]

Here's my inexpert take on this.

Water has an incredibly high heat holding potential (hence it's use for cooling). The key here is not to try and cool a large supply of water (as in a resivoire). Instead, use the peltier as more of a heat pump. Keep the loop to the waterblock and peltier small. No resivoire ( I just can't spell that today...). Just a pump, hose to processor waterblock, hose to peltier waterblock, hose to pump. Less water, faster cooling time. For the other side of the peltier, a simple (or not so simple) cooling system would work well. i.e. another watercooler, etc.

My thoughts would be that you would avoid condensation at the key points (next to the MB), and it would get rid of the excess water (read case space) required for a full blown water cooler.

Make sense? Or am I totally cracked?

Kid

[SuperViking]

i think you've got a pretty darn good idea...simply because the peltier would in fact be more effective at cooling a small amt. of flowing water, than a large amt. of slower moving water...so, essentially there would be a water block with a peltier attatched to it and a hsf to cool the hot side, and from that block it would proceed to the block on the cpu...hmmm

[N3D2000]

I'v been reading some reviews on water chillers and peltiers haven't worked all that great. Maybe using a refrigeration element inside of the resevoir. The temps will drop even further and it will be more eficient..... as to putting it in your case..... only if you have a large server case.

[kd7aze]

Originally posted by SuperViking
i think you've got a pretty darn good idea...simply because the peltier would in fact be more effective at cooling a small amt. of flowing water, than a large amt. of slower moving water...so, essentially there would be a water block with a peltier attatched to it and a hsf to cool the hot side, and from that block it would proceed to the block on the cpu...hmmm

That's the basic idea. And this way, you would get the benefits of peliter cooling (colder temps) and not have the condensation problem. If your tubing was small enough, you could have a loop with the peltier outside the computer case completely!

Now I know that more water flowing through the waterblock is better for higher cooling times, but if you have a smaller amount (less for the peltier to cool) flowing faster, wouldn't the effect be nearly the same?

Kid

(my dream so far... have the pelt cooler attached to an evaporative cooling tower... heh heh heh)

[docJ]

I would like to say one thing about water cooling to anyone
who is considering it or currently doing it. The more complicated
the plumbing is, the easier it is to stop up the drain. If the design
gets to complicated, you are most likely to fail because of overkill.
I have worked with and designed TEC cooling systems for over twenty years, and found the simple ones to work the best and
are the easiest to build.

[Lynx]

A person has done this before and it has worked very well. I cannot find the link but what he did was to have two water cooling circuits. One to cool the cpu which is cooled by the pelts and the other to cool the pelts. I am planing a system based on this in which to take to lan parties. (A bit big as it has to be in two cases but who cares).The second loop needs major watercooling so I am planing to fit a bong tower in the second case. That is why I need two cases. Good luck I would be willing to share my plans to anyone as I am a bit short of cash. Good Luck.

[SuperViking]

Well folx, i did it...i modded my case. First off i put a replacement hs/fan on my north bridge (AMD 761 of course) and put the stock one from the north bridge onto the Via southbridge. (don't know why they don't make a mobo with AMD 761 North and South bridges) I have your avg. joe blow $35 mid tower case with a 300W AMD certified p.s. but i managed to fit 3 120mm high output (85 cfm) fans in it. (i'll post pics at a later date, my quickcam is such a piece of sh*t) and my room is all of 71 degrees and guess what? thats the case temp exactly. i had to (unfortunately) lower my clock on my t-bird from 1.4 to 1.2 :-( its simply because of the power consumption of these fans combined with the extra power from the OC...not to mention the fact that i finally got that other 256 meg stick for a total of 512. so i'm gonna get one of those 400 or so Watt power supplies.

AMD T-Bird 1.2GHz @ 1.2GHz (for now)
ATI Radeon 64 DDR ViVo @236/236
SB Live! Value
EpOX 8K7A mobo
512 MB DDR RAM 266 MHz (256 megs Crucial memory)