mixed methods for a cooler CPU

hey i was wondering about ways to get cooler water temps from a liquid cooled setup. im happy with the temps i'm running so far with my OC
(40c idle and arround 60c load for an E6420 at 3.6Ghz) but i was just curious how low i could get it. i had read about getting sub zero temps from dry ice ect.. and was wondering what would happen if i droped a chunk or 2 of dry ice into my res to cool the coolant. as far as i can reason with the cap off the ice would cool the coolant down, and as it melted co2 would be realeased, but with the cap off it would vent fine. the only problems i can think of would be co2 not venting, and freezeing the coolant, (but that would be pretty hard since its not water)

anyone have any experence?
thanks
-sean

condensation most likely

I would be more worried about it melting down a little and your pump sucking up the little chunk of ice and wam their goes the impeller.

You can dunk your radiator in a bucket of ice water, but then you have the condensation issue.

thanks for the replys,
i think i'll try it, you've got a good point about the inpeller issue tho, fourtinally my res/pump has a "wallish" divider between the fulid collection and the pump inlet so it should keep anything from being sucked into.

i wouldent chance it.

I wounder how a rad in a small 10 gal fishtank with just room temp water do? have a small pump in it to circulate the water.

a rad?

radaitor

theres an idea, the larger the tank the more constant the temp would be, but i doubt it would change in that tank, my coolent is about room temp (depends on how long it's been on however) and im at arround 40c most of the time. The kit i bought came with extra valves for adding GPU and drive coolers ect. i was thinking of adding another loop and run the tube threw like a cooler with ice packed arround the tube to cool off the fulid as it passed, however i'd prob need a bigger pump to count for the extra turns i'd need in the cooler to make any sorta difference temp wise. i guess if your going to do that why not just put the radiator in ice and disable the fan....

Okay. You need to cool the water in the fishtank. So add a rad to circulate the water in the fishtank that has a rad in it that has water circulating in the loop. Now you have doubled your cost for the same benefit.

See where I'm trying to visualize? The water in the fishtank will get warmer. Causing your primary rad to transfer less heat to the water, thus your WC loop will get hotter.

IF you did it with a 50 gallon tank of water you wouldn't even need a rad. Problem is, after a long day of gaming etc the water would be warmer. So you shut it down and start it up next evening. The 50 gallons is still warm due to the poor loss of heat. Your temps will suck. Ohh blow an AC unit on the tank. The amount of heat removed from the tank will be less watts in heat than you are adding. etc etc etc.

Get where I'm going? You can't use a system that won't be able to remove the heat you add. You add 300 watts of heat, you need to be able to remove 300 watts or the temps will go up.

Condensation. Take a cold bottle of soda and put it on the table. You see water form on the outside of the bottle? Now add cold water to your loop and imagine the water drops dripping on your CPU etc. Smoke generator!

Look in extreme cooling and what people do to prevent that......

About the only thing to do that'll really make an impact on the performance of a radiator in a standard loop that isn't going to have some diminishing return, or have an effect that worsens over time, is if you live north enough and stick the radiator in a window open to the outside.

But at that point, you still have condensation problems with the rest of the hardware in the loop.

It's better to just move beyond water, than trying to macguyver some way of making it better, because it won't work for an extended period of time.

The one exception to this is a bong cooler instead of a radiator, but those have some big time drawbacks(evaporation so they need filled regularly, can't really put any chemicals in to stop growth because of the evaporation(unless you wanna breath that stuff), size, lack of mobility, noise(could be an issue for some).

Conumdrum said:

Okay. You need to cool the water in the fishtank. So add a rad to circulate the water in the fishtank that has a rad in it that has water circulating in the loop. Now you have doubled your cost for the same benefit......

Click to expand...

No, actually a 10 gallon fish tank would have enough coolant in it to act in place of your radiator. You really only need about 5 gallons to pull this off. Heat would pass from the body of water into the air through the tank fast enough to maintain good temps. Also there would be so much water that your CPU would have a difficult time heating it (high thermal capacity). If you'd like near ambient temps this is a good way to go, though I recommend using a 5 gallon water cooler type jug since it's less unwieldy than a glass/plexiglass fish tank.

I wouldn't put the dry ice or ice cubes in the ras unless you could make sure small chunks wouldn't get eaten by the pump or block the radiator.

Also you can easily insulate your board with neoprene, RTV silicone, and dielectric grease. There is a how to in the extreme cooling section.

Another option would be to make a simple chiller by taking an Air Conditioning unit and bending the cold side (the evaporator) into a largeish reservoir (big enough to fit the thing basically).

Well another problem youll run into is... your coolant would freeze (not instanly because of flow). You would have to use something like denatured alcohol. Drop a chunk in your ras and the res could crack.

if it's winter take it outside or open a door a slight bit and place you pc there. i got my quad core to 17C idle with a Arctic cooling Freezer 7 pro.

but i would do the bucket of ice with the rad.

yea well with all the waterproofing i'd have to do for condensation, i suppose it's not worth it for a few degrees, didnt think about that, glad you said somthing i'd be kicking myself when im out a vid card!

Tagan7 said:

Well another problem youll run into is... your coolant would freeze (not instanly because of flow). You would have to use something like denatured alcohol. Drop a chunk in your ras and the res could crack.

Click to expand...

This depends on how low you go (taking it to 10°C wouldn't cause icing) but yes, this is necessary but it's well worth the temps I'd think.