Air chiller

[Flow]

Conventional air-cooling with heatsink/fan will cool the CPU to ambient + x° C.
One way to improve on this is buying a better heatsink and/or (a 7K) fan.
But there’s another side to this: lowering the ambient temperature.
Air-conditioned rooms are one option, albeit not the most convenient one.
But what if you restrict ambient air to the case?
I mean, what if you would seal and insulate your case and chill the air inside it to or below ambient?
One thing than has caught my interest for a while now is the cheap 12V electric ice chest coolers (for use in cars, campers and the like)
I have no idea how these things work, but I imagine there’s some kind of TEC air-chiller inside.
Sure it’s likely that these things are not powerful enough to do the job but then again they come at less than 50$.
So I’m not talking here about expensive refrigerated cases or vapochill cases but about simple low-cost air chilling.
You can use multiple (noisy) fans to keep case temps as close to ambient as possible, but maybe it’s possible to do the same (or even better) by using a simple air-chilling device.
Anyone tried something like this?

[Intraveinous]

Problem with having the case below ambient is condensation. Moisture from the air condenses on cooler surfaces. You can see this in the water tank for the toilet "sweating" in the summertime, or if you turn on the air conditioning on defrost in your car on a warm muggy night. Unless you did something like wrap the case in neoprene or something, you'd probably have condensation on the outside of the case, if not the inside as well.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong
John

[DeltaSierra]

Originally posted by Would71
As I mentioned in another thread, I am considering the merits of building a "mini cold room" for my PCs.. perhaps a wooden box big enough to hold three or four mid towers. Line it with insulation and what not. Run duct work to a blower and either some pelts or a portable A/C unit. I'd also include either a dehumidifier or some other form of dessicant to remove moisture from the air inside, just in case.

Now that's an interesting idea. I'll be curious to watch you do that and to see how it works out for you.

[Flow]

Intraveinous, you're right about condensation. but like I said you should insulate the case, so wrapping it up in neoprene is an option. dehumidifiers are an other option. Maybe both.

Deltasierra, you're right to. But I think we have a verry similar idea. the only difference is that my "mini cold room" would be restricted to one case only (or rather "be one case only").

The main point is purely theoretical: are the pelts found in low-cost camping material powerful enough to pull it off?
If so, this could be a nice way to go. Think about it. Hardly any maintenance, no fidling with water, low cost, low noise,...
And last but not least: your videocard and chipset benefit from the cool air aswell.

Thanks for sharing your thought with me ;)
going to sleep now....

[The Overclocker]

i found a web site where someone made a air chiller by strapping a huge alpha slot1 cooler to a TEC and a globalwin on the cold side, this blew cold air onto the cpu hsf which was another global win fop32, it would have been much better it he put the peltier on the cpu and strapped the huge slot 1 alpha to the hot side though