How small do refrigerators get?

[R1tual]

Looking for a small refrigerator that can fit in a mid tower and work as a water chiller.

There has to be mini refrigerators. I have looked all day long and I cannot find one. So I ask you the community of overclockers.

I just want to look over what is likely available. You see those mini refrigerators that cool a can of beer. Im sure there are one's you can buy minus the actual refrigerator housing (thing you put the beer in).

Anyone ever looked into this? Do I have to stay up to 3AM and wait for a mini beer refrigerator on some infomercial? I DONT want to have to do that.

Any info is appreciated.

[I.M.O.G.]

Few issues:

Refridgerators are not made to handle continuous duty cooling and using its cooling compartment as a WC chiller is pretty inefficient.
Small refridgerators are often cooled by weak TEC's.
Any fridge strong enough would need to be dismantled and its compressor and coils only used in order to fit in any case.
The power required to keep a beer cold enough to drink, is far less than the power to cool a CPU
If the chiller cannot cool the PC heatload by itself, introducing a radiator cooled by room air will also work against the chiller

[R1tual]

Few things to note.

The water will be cooling the actual CPU. Alot of heat is dissipated from the radiator in a normal water cooling system.

A waterchiller would be placed in the whole setup after the radiator and just before the pump. This way the water is cooled by the normal radiator first, then it is put through the water chiller, then sent to the pump to go to the cpu. Then from the CPU to the radiator.

It will be chilling water that is pretty cool already. And not super hot water that just came from the CPU.

Maybe an important question to ask is how hot does the water get in a traditional regular water cooling system. If you goto tetech.com they make custom water chillers. Maybe I can pass them on the relevant information like how hot the water is on intake, how fast does the water have to flow, and how much power does it run on.

If someone can answer that then I can see what tetech.com has to say about it.

As far as a compressed gas refrigerator, im pretty positive a small refrigerator that could fit in a mid tower case is good enough to cool water below ambient. The radiator coils could be put in a reservoir. I just have to find one that is ideal, or someone who can make one.

[I.M.O.G.]

You can't do that.

The radiator will be working against the chiller... In loop water temperature varies very little throughout the loop, and the chiller would make little or no difference, while being a terribly inefficient addition to the loop.

The radiator does remove a lot of heat, but not at any one time - its a continuous process. The water exiting the radiator is less than 1C cooler than the water entering it, and its usually much less than that much different even.

You may find more useful information on this in extreme cooling where it has been discused many times previously.

You are looking in the wrong direction. If someone else posts in this thread, they will tell you something similar about putting a chiller and a radiator in the same loop.

How hot the water gets depends on the cooling loop... The thermal load would be the information you are looking for - how much heat will be going into the loop. The temperature of the water will vary.

Disregarding pump heat output, the faster water flows, the better the heat exchange - basically.
You have a misunderstanding of some basic cooling principles, and I think you are looking in the wrong direction for your cooling needs as a result.

[R1tual]

What if I put a pump in my water chiller or right after?

So it would be PUMP > CPU > RADIATOR > PUMP > WATERCHILLER > PUMP > CPU > RADIATOR > PUMP > WATERCHILLER > PUMP > CPU > RADIATOR > PUMP ......

The Radiator is only going to cool the water from the CPU to a lower level.

Then in tandem the TEC Liquid Cooler would work with the radiator to give it that boost to get below ambient.

The heat will be spread out through the water, so when you say I will need a chiller that needs to cool proportianate to how much heat the CPU is kicking out I dont understand. The Radiator would of already done that.

And the pump kicking out heat? Maybe to the case. Unless it was a submerged pump. Not going to be nearly anything to the CPU.

And I can see cool water being a great help to a water cooling system. Fast moving water might be harder to chill, but not impossible. Look at a Icemaker. Those things can kick out Ice cubes in a matter of seconds. Now if something comparable was constantly slowly cooling a liquid in a reservoir, I can see it dropping the water temp alot.

I read one article on this site from a user named matttheniceguy who used a TEC with heatsink as a water chiller. It seemed like it worked decently. A bit too large for my tastes though. And he was running a less then ideal pump. His temperatures were well below ambient though. Better then any regular water cooling system.

I still think a gas compressed refrigerator coil submerged in a reservoir would be the best though.

[I.M.O.G.]

You are disagreeing with a lot that I have told you without doing enough research on what has already been discussed and attempted in this area.

Depending on the style of pump, a majority of the heat it outputs can be directly dissipated into the water. Faster flow is usually better, but buying a pump which is more than necessary with increased heat output will hurt performance.

I'm no refridgerator specialist, but I even know a thing or two about ice makers. Icemakers don't make ice when you press the buttton - they spit out ice from a reservoir when you push the button. If you use that little ice maker long enough, it will run out until more ice cubes are made and dropped into the reservoir.

Matt's chiller worked well without any load, but he has never posted temps of it with any heat load AFAIK... It is hard to predict just how well it would do on a CPU. Take note that he was not planning on using a radiator either. His project is a very neat one though.

[koss20100]

im with IMOG i didnt take me much searching to find out it jus wont work out ofcourse you can give it a shoot but ALOT of people have thought about using a refridgeartor ive only heard of one guy tht did it .. but even he did it for show :)

Go for it if you want but chances are your gonna posting about how it DIDNT work out ... but if it does then you can make a big statement!

[Prandtl]

If when using a rad AND a chiller in the same loop you, somehow, get below ambient temp, then the rad will heat the water, wont cool it. Just why do you think everyone using chiller insulate the hell out of their hoses???
Anyway, just read what IMOG wrote down, it is all about water temperature variations in the loop.

[magick_man]

i might be wrong but i think he wants to use the rad and cool the water to close to ambient then run it into the fridge to cool it to sub ambient then through the comp and back into the rad.
this might work but it probably wouldnt work too well
unless you got a medium size refrigerator that has a compressor not peltier powered
that might be able to do it.
but you would have to make sure to insulate the hell out of all your hoses and stuff for condensation.
now like i said i might be wrong but i think i am right :/

~Magick_Man~

[I.M.O.G.]

Magick_man, you are right about what he's thinking... My point was that it doesn't work like that. The rad doesn't considerable cool the fluid in a single pass... Water exiting the rad will usually be less than .5C different than the water entering, so it will be nowhere close to ambient.

If the fridge/compressor was good enough to be useful, the rad would not be a detriment. If the rad would be needed, the fridge/compressor would be terribly inefficient and its effect would be negligible at best.

[R1tual]

Ok I got a question then.

Hermetically sealed refrigerator compressor for refrigerators up to 20 cubic feet, 115V/60Hz, type 134A
Height: 6.22" or 158 mm
Width 5.98" or 152 mm
Motor size 65 watt
evaporating temp -13 to 23

If I cool a cpu, gpu, and northbridge directly with this compressor what kind of temperature do you think I could get.

I mainly want to know with someone with a little more experience wether it would bring my temperature below what I could get with water cooling or traditional air cooling. Granted I make an average efficient "phase cooler".

Goal here is to find the smallest compressor possible with the smallest condenser and house this in a standard case without heavily modifying it.

[magick_man]

you might want to go to www.xtremesystems.org for that kind of stuff.
i think if you want to cool the cpu,gpu, nb then you might want to go the water chiller route with that compressor and a powerful compressor and stuff.
i havent seen a phase system with 3 heads
you might be able to do it and cool the cpu, gpu with the right setup.
but just ask some questiong and do some seacrhing on that site and i think you will find the help you need.

~Magick_Man~