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Pharmaceutical freezer vs phase exchange

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freak11

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2008
Location
Sillicon Valley
Hi guys,
I had this weird idea of buying a pharmaceutical freezer and putting all the hardware in that pharmaceutical freezer. These can reach a temperature of minus 150 degrees. this way i wouldnt need to worry about condensation or anything else.

What are your thoughts on this????
 
those unit arent designed for some thing that produces as much heat as a computer, it would be the same thing as putting your computer in a refridgerator except it would take longer for it to stop working. stick to a phase change on the cpu only.
 
yes but you are talking about normal freezers or fridges.

I am talking about cryogenic freezers with a temperature of minus 150 degrees.
 
Unless the way it works is fundamentally different from the way a normal freezer works (which I doubt), it's going to break just like a normal freezer would break.

You don't seem to understand the problem. It's not that the computer generates too much heat and a freezer wouldn't cool it enough, it's that the freezer cools and then just sustains. When you put something in the freezer, it cools it (if it's not already cooled), and then just keeps it at that temperature. Your computer, on the other hand, is constantly producing a lot of heat, and the freezer can't keep up with it and burns out.

That's why your freezer burns out if you leave it open. Same problem.
 
Basically it depends on if it can handle the heatload of the system you put in it. I don't know anything about a lab freezer, but I would guess it's just a freezer that is designed to take things to lower temps and hold them at a more regulated temperature. NOT designed to get it to that temperature very quickly. And that is the problem, if it cannot remove that heat quickly, the computer system inside is still going to produce heat more quickly than the freezer can remove.

OK, here is a slightly elaborate analogy that hopefully gets delivered in an understandable way...

Let's say you were trapped in a small room and that room had an opening in the top that was being filled with sand. But you have a vacuum hose in there that can help you suck up the sand and send it outside of the room. Basically, if that vacuum hose is not capable of sucking out as much or more sand than what is being put IN the room, you are eventually going to suffocate when the room fills with sand. It doesn't matter that you have a vacuum that is slowly removing the sand because there is way more sand coming in than it can take out.

This applies in the same basic way to a freezer. If there is a heatsource in the freezer, the freezer's cooling system can transfer that heat to the outside of the freezer. As most freezers go, they could ALL remove that heat eventually, it's just a matter of how fast they are designed/capable of doing so. But the trouble is, if that heatsource is still creating MORE heat, you run in to the problem of more sand(heat) going into the freezer than the freezer's "heat vacuum" can remove.

Does that make sense?

Perhaps if you could find some kind of flash freezer or something that is designed to quickly remove heat, maybe that would stand a better chance. But you have to know the capabilities of the freezer in how many watts of heat it can remove and then know how many watts of heat the computer system will create.
 
ok guys, you convinced me that buying a lab freezer wont work. However, I am still planning to buy a lab freezer because I want to build my own phase exchange or waterchill using the freezers compressor.

btw, what would you recommend? phase exchange or waterchill? I want to cool three GPU'S and one CPU.

The prices at ebay are really good. usually these things are like 10,000 bucks and in ebay you can get them for around 500-1000 dollars.
 
You wouldn't be able to use it unless it is meant for 24/7 running. The compressor would still burn up since it is only designed to run for short periods of time (as in keeping a cold freezer at that temperature) not for keeping something that continually produces heat. jivetrky's analogy comes into play the same way it did with just putting it in the freezer. If you are looking to do phase change then you need to get a window unit a/c (or a compressor that is made to continually run without breaks)
 
Dark Bishop that is incorrect.
A phase system can be built to have multiple evaporator heads.
However since I do not beleive you have the experience Freak to build a phase system, you should consider buying a pre built liquid chiller if you must.
Avoiding insulation creates other problems. A low temp freezer is not meant for any given wattage of load, normally its stagnant load, as in whatever is inside does not produce any load.
 
Dark Bishop that is incorrect.
A phase system can be built to have multiple evaporator heads.
However since I do not beleive you have the experience Freak to build a phase system, you should consider buying a pre built liquid chiller if you must.
Avoiding insulation creates other problems. A low temp freezer is not meant for any given wattage of load, normally its stagnant load, as in whatever is inside does not produce any load.


true but you need to have a much more power drawing system to support three gpu's and a cpu. and i was thinking from the point that he might not be experienced enough to build/use a system like that. i should have elaborated more.
 
Hi,
I still want to experiment with the freezer. I will buy a freezer with a temperature of minus 150. I will put my hardware in it. If the freezer burns will it explode??????????? This is my only concern.
 
Well theres a risk in that yes, you'll overload it, pressures will go way past pressure zones.
Also not to mention capacitors and such on your mobo and psu and all that will often die at those temps.
 
hmmm bad idea then. I read in another forum that someones friend used the freezer was water reservoir. What if i put water with antifreeze in such a freezer and then pump the water from the freezer to the CPU and the GPU's. Would this work or will the compressor of the freezer also die out?
 
Maybe the thread title should be, "what can I do with this pharmaceutical freezer?"

Because otherwise it seems there are better ways to accomplish what you are trying to do.

We can probably find some use for it, if you are dead set on turning it into something.
 
Actually it should be..

Talk me into buying an air conditor and converting that or buying a massive awesome phase change cooler off of NOL instead of spending 2500 on a lab freezer :p
 
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