Extreme TEC chiller experiment with Antec

So, long time no see.
I'm sorry for this interruption in this build log/experiment but my studies and personal situation needed some attention.
And sadly I haven't been able to locate anyone with in Denmark that could and would help me making the waterblocks (had one for a few months until he backed out...)

But the good news is that I have found a solution that I think/hope will work out just as well. Did cost a little extra, but what the heck
So small package (though quite heavy) from aquatuning came this week:


Which contains the rest of the stuff for cooling these TEC's.
Some 6 meters of tubing, a reservoir and some fansplitters for the 54 fans


As for the solution to cool the TEC's I went ahead and bought 20 Alphacool CPU waterblocks










Some nice blocks, though I have seen better surfaces on other blocks out there. But I believe these will do just well when sandwiched around a TEC

Since there is 20 waterblocks that means I would also need some fittings:



Some 50 pcs of 90 degrees fittings and 10 straight ones.

Also with all these CPU blocks and the three big radiators I needed some more pump power so I bought two more D5 pumps (four in total now).


The plan is to get some of the 550W TEC's that is 62*62mm in size (found one from UK that would sell 10 of those to me): http://www.ebay.com/itm/TEC-Thermoe...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

They are a little bigger than the cooling surface area of the CPU coolers, so I will also get some 6mm thick 70*70mm copper plates, so the whole area of the TEC is in contact with the cooling surface.

I am open for suggestions if you believe there is a better TEC out there for this setup (will be running at 12V).

That was all for this time, the TEC's and copper plates will be bought in the upcoming week
And then a Classified 980 or similar when they arrive

Hello there, nice project you have going. Maybe also check these guys out?

http://www.customthermoelectric.com/tecs_imax.html

Okay, so some good news (and a bit of bad news).
The PSU's arrived a little time ago from Antec (thanks again ).
Three lovely Platinum PSU, two 1300W and a 1000W:




Modular and OC link so two PSU's can run together :thumb:


And enough power for the TEC's and stable power for the GFX when OC.



So the TEC's also arrived. Bought from a German seller over eBay (we have some high tax here in DK, so it was affordable to get these compared to china or US).
However they only had 6 pieces left of the 15Amp's TEC's (15 Volt)


However the had four 4 of the 26amps TEC's
Bit more expensive but lets see how well they perform.


They are a little bit bigger than the 15 amps:


And here on the CPU waterblock:




The 26 amps' corner is not covered by the block due to the screws hole in the copper plate. But I hope and think it will work out anyway

Now the bad news is that I will first have time to play with all these things until the weekend.
I did also buy four more of the 15 amps from china. So I will be doing some testing how different setups will cool (TEC and radiator setup).
However they will first arrive in minimum 14 days.

Perhaps just four of the 26 amps is enough for a GTX 980

So putting all of the TEC's together takes a little more time than expected.
First apply a thin layer of Antec's Formula 7 Thermal paste to get the best transfer of heat


And then make a sandwich of CPU coolers around it:




And then connecting them all:


My fingers was quite sore after some 60 fittings
But all done and installed (takes up most of the table):


I decided to start with just the two thick radiator since the TEC wattage have been lowered a bit, and as I expected the pumps had a hard time pumping the water around with two radiators and 10 CPU block.
To night I started out with installing the chilled water on a older GTS 250 card:


A bit overkill I think, but it just a test card
With a little overclock I believe the card is pulling out 130-150W. A little less than the stock GTX 980.
However the TEC setup had no problem in cooling the card. With heaven bench running the temperature of the cold loop began going towards 0 degrees C.
It took a few minutes since it had to cool the ~1.5 liter of water that is running around in the cold loop.
The core temperature of the GTS 250 followed the temperature of the water nicely with around +5 degrees.
I have no anti freeze in the system yet so the plan was to stop a 0.5 degrees. But right at 0.6 the core temp shot up to ~35. Some water properly froze in one of the CPU coolers and blocked the water from running around.


The above shows how the core temp fell from ~36 to 6 degrees in 15 seconds when the water began flowing around again
So I should properly get some anti freeze in the systems. Any ideas what to get?

Also, how much does I need to insulate the GFX? Perhaps someone got a good guide?
Since it does get some condensation:


The hot loop was at 32 degrees when I stopped, and the room temperature was 22.
So with a load of 250-300W I should be able to get the cold loop down to ~-10 degrees

OMG :O. I counter 10 TECs. Are all those 26A ? That's 12*26*10W = 3.12KW = holly crapsky.
I tried stuff like that - it is bad economically. AC compressor based stuff is way more efficient.
Used also 2 separate loops but cooling the hot loop was a nightmare.
Relatively small condenser will cool refrigerant gas in less then a second.
I wonder if anyone tried to stack TECs vertically and slowly dissipate heat so there is not much heat on last surface.

Deous said:

OMG :O. I counter 10 TECs. Are all those 26A ? That's 12*26*10W = 3.12KW = holly crapsky.
I tried stuff like that - it is bad economically. AC compressor based stuff is way more efficient.
Used also 2 separate loops but cooling the hot loop was a nightmare.
Relatively small condenser will cool refrigerant gas in less then a second.
I wonder if anyone tried to stack TECs vertically and slowly dissipate heat so there is not much heat on last surface.

Click to expand...

Sorry to tell you but this is a 3 year old thread and the OP has not been back to the site since late 2014 so I doubt you will get a response from them.

Lochekey said:

Sorry to tell you but this is a 3 year old thread and the OP has not been back to the site since late 2014 so I doubt you will get a response from them.

Click to expand...

well that sux I started at post one then made it here =(

Me too.
Good necrobump. Totally worth it. I was gonna thank the bumper, but I think I ran out of thanks for today

||Console|| said:

well that sux I started at post one then made it here =(

Click to expand...

WHat happened next?1!
anyone know if this guy had a reddit lol?
did he ever cool his GTX 980?

peltiers are such a nifty idea, with temps getting as crazy as they are these days I think it could be fun.

I mean i had to retire my SS cuz it cant handle 6core+ loads, would be nice to figure out an approx 5ghz near 0degree cooler for playing with mem like i used to.

I got parts around, 4 XSPC ram blocks I bought for a nonPC related project I never built that are supposedly the best peltier waterblocks ever made. tons of radiators, a case of GT AP30s. fittings on fittings and tubing on tubing... d5 strong pumps....

i mean i kinda wanna build one for schlitz n gigs

I know this is an old thread that obviously never came to reality but I just wanted to say I could have built 5 or more of my Chilled Water Cooling setups for the parts cost I've seen listed in this thread.

I will say he did have the right water block with some modifications that is, but did not need but 3 of them.