Rad in bucket with ice or bucket alone ?

[||Console||]

What would be better a bucket with ice + water in it or take my fans off my rad and put the rad in the bucket with the ice in it ?

[Knacko]

Straight into the bucket would give better results, but the difference would likely be < 1°. Watch out for condensation.

[||Console||]

room temp will be -2 -4 ish so i sould be ok with condensiation

[speed bump]

Straight into the bucket will be much better than just with the rad. Difference will be something along the lines of about 5°c.(atleast with the bip3 I tested).

[wannaoc]

Condensation will start on the blocks and tubing if the water is chilled. That is what makes this impractical, the time and effort put in isn't worth the little change in temp.

[||Console||]

liek i said above the window in the room will be open and its -16 out side ( and the rad right now is sitting in the window ) so the room will prob be ~ -2 so i dont think i would get any condensation . This is for a benching session not for 24/7 usage .

[Alien1099]

Go breathe on a cold piece of glass or a mirror. That is your breath. You breathe out a LOT of water vapor. You are always going to have water vapor in the air in any room you are in.

If you're going to do the sub zero temperature type stuff take the necessary steps that phase change people do to safeguard your system.

Otherwise if you fry your computer you might be thinking to yourself was it really all worth it?

Hold my beer and watch this!

[Diggrr]

You'll probably get the best temps drawing and using the bucket water directly instead of dunking your radiator.
There's one less temperature transfer interface that way, and it's a PITA puting it all back right again.
There's also the circulation of water through the rad to consider, you don't want to add 30 additional watts to the water by using a secondary circulation pump.

If the temps are minus whatever outside and in, there's little likelyhood that there's enough water in the air to cause condensation (since you said the room would be way cold too), but I wouldn't turn my back on it anyway....just in case.
If it benches nicely, you don't want to send a nice rig to the magic smoke Gods, eh?


One last thought. If you're able to pump plain water, it is not below freezing, thus the water system would still be of a higher temp than the air in the room (at minus 2 as stated), so no condensation can form no matter the humidity.

[Moto7451]

If the room is going to be that cold you could have problems with ice forming in your bucket. That ice could pose a problem for flow ;).

[QuietIce]

If the room's going to be that cold just run the fans over the rad like normal. At an ambient of 0°C or less you're going to get good temps - no bucket needed. If the rig is going to spend a few hours in the room you might want to check your anti-freeze percent ... ;)

[||Console||]

I have antifreeze in it but i always thought that moving water doesnt freeze ?

[Neuromancer]

...
Hold my beer and watch this!

LMAO Famous last words :)


If your air temp is below freezing, I would not think putting the rad in Ice will make it cooler...

Moving cold water over the RAD would be more beneficial the an ice bucket because you would be getting better medium dispersion I would think....

[Spawne32]

I have antifreeze in it but i always thought that moving water doesnt freeze ?

:eh?:

[Captain Helghas]

I have antifreeze in it but i always thought that moving water doesnt freeze ?
That is false. Moving water freezes. The benefit awarded by moving water is that the local equilibrium temperature is homogenous which can slow the fusion process, but not halt it all together. If the local equilibrium temperature of the water is below the freezing point of your fluid, it will in fact freeze. Try this: Heat up butter in sauce pan until liquid. Turn on the heat and stir like mad. Let me know if it ever solidifies.

[wannaoc]

What will the temp of the core be when the water is cooled to the temps you are talking about? Don't you think some condensation will form around it? If you really don't need that hardware you can just send it to me otherwise do allot of reading about preventing condensation.

[Gautam]

He won't need condensation proofing. I'm too tired to give a full blown explanation of why. Let's make it simple, if you live in Canada or northern U.S., its pretty cold outside. For those of you that do, do you have condensation forming on your face when you step outdoors? Didn't think so.

The point at which condensation occurs is called the dew point, or in cases at which the dew point is below 0C, the frost point. This number is below ambient 99.99999% of the time, that's why when you're using phase change etc in a hot room, you need insulation.

However, when ambient temp itself is that cold, the dew point gets even lower...straight liquid cooling, no matter how cold it gets, can never cool below ambient. It is essentially impossible for condensation to form in a -2 f room when the entire system is contained inside it.

Other than that, I recommend finding the red windshield wiper fluid, its usually about a buck a gallon and is rated to -30 C or so. Use that for your coolant, an AF mix will work but is too viscous for optimal performance. Personally, I use the regular blue WW fluid as my coolant for regular use anyways.

And use the bucket by itself, it'll do wonders, no rad, blowing a fan on the bucket helps too. A few years ago I improvised a bong by using a large tupperware container as a res and pointing a house fan on the water to force it to evaporate. I gained a solid 100MHz on my overclock as opposed to running a radiator like normal, but of course, that was very temporary. Still lots of fun.

Oh yeah, the ice will be completely useless at those temps, skip it entirely.

[Knacko]

He won't need condensation proofing. I'm too tired to give a full blown explanation of why. Let's make it simple, if you live in Canada or northern U.S., its pretty cold outside. For those of you that do, do you have condensation forming on your face when you step outdoors? Didn't think so.

The point at which condensation occurs is called the dew point, or in cases at which the dew point is below 0C, the frost point. This number is below ambient 99.99999% of the time, that's why when you're using phase change etc in a hot room, you need insulation.

However, when ambient temp itself is that cold, the dew point gets even lower...straight liquid cooling, no matter how cold it gets, can never cool below ambient. It is essentially impossible for condensation to form in a -2 f room when the entire system is contained inside it.

It is possible to have condensation. If you like temperature and humidity at around 75°F and 35% humidity, you would start to see condensation at 45°F. If you're using a bucket with ice in it, it could be just above freezing. There is a margin in there in which you could have condensation (13°).

http://www.servicecentermetals.com/scmCondensationChart.JPG

[greenmaji]

If your components are warmer then the ambaint (IE the loop) thats not the problem its the other way around.

That would be like worrying about condensation on above ambaint cooling with normal ambaint temps.. hmm like watercooling or air ;)

[Gautam]

Or to drive the point home even harder, just how would you propose running a system at 45f when your ambient temp is 75f?

That table gets posted all too often without people interpreting it correctly. The cells within the table refer to the surface temperature...i.e. in this case the computer...which, as you can plainly see will always be below ambient, and unachievable.

There are extreme cases involving exorbitant dust concentrations that can cause the dew point to break above ambient, but lets not go there.

[Moto7451]

And just to pile drive it in again:

Hot drink cold day = no condensation on glass

Cold drink hot day = condensation on glass.

Now you have about 4 ways to remember it :D.

[Gudwyn]

I have antifreeze in it but i always thought that moving water doesnt freeze ?

http://www.iceclimb.com/images/GEiceland5.jpg

[Knacko]

Or to drive the point home even harder, just how would you propose running a system at 45f when your ambient temp is 75f?

Add ice to the bucket.

[WonderingSoul]

Will the difference in negative temps really affect your OC though?

[Gautam]

Add ice to the bucket.

Fair enough for 75f, but -2f is far less than the freezing point of water. (32f) At those temperature, the ice will simply stay solid.

And in practice, since I've tried using ice, I can tell you that in normal room temperatures, no sane amount of ice can anywhere near keep up with the heat output of a CPU. It melts almost immediately.

[Otter]

I have antifreeze in it but i always thought that moving water doesnt freeze ?

Moving water can definitely freeze. I have a fish pond with a small waterfall that runs all winter. The entire pond doesn't freeze because it's deep enough to be heated by the earth, but when it gets cold enough, plenty of ice forms on the waterfall, which is definitely moving water.

Also make sure the intake tube in your bucket doesn't suck in any cubes.

[Excelsior]

I have antifreeze in it but i always thought that moving water doesnt freeze ?

Where I live (Minnesota, a few hundred feet from the Missippi) the Missippi freezes over on top. >_>

[QuietIce]

Where I live (Minnesota, a few hundred feet from the Missippi) the Missippi freezes over on top. >_> Yea - but aren't there some places up there where you can step over the Mississippi even when it's not frozen ... ;)

[||Console||]

Well thx for every ones input . I didnt end up using a bucket a feww ppl told me ther would be no gain so i didnt bother . but it was freaking cold in my room thast for sure =)

the air going into my rad was below 0 ( my temp probe only works above 0 it beeps when it goes below) and the air cooming out of my rad was from 1 to 4 under load and would drop below 0 when no load . I saw slush in my loop once ( kinda freaked me out ) I added more anti freeze after seeing that and didnt have anothe rproblem with that . I didnt have ne condensation @ any point .

[QuietIce]

Man, if it was staying above 0°C at load you didn't need more anti-freeze, just less idle time ... :D