mini fridge water chiller

i know people have brought up the idea befre as using a mini fridge in place of a raditor in a watercooled setup.

but is anyone using a minifridge after a raditor just to chill the water?

i was thinking get a large coil of copper tubing and stick it inside the fridge and put it in the loop after the radiator... that way the load is less on the fridge but it should hopfully reduce temps

It will probably be good for a few degrees but don't expect miracles. I would certainly look to using a fan placed so that air is sucked over the evaporator and blown into the body of the fridge to maximise dispertion of the heat.

Basically the problem with using a mini-fridge is that it might not be able to handle the load you're putting on it. After a while your temps will start to rise because you're putting more heat in the system than the fridge can dissipate. If you do decide to go with a fridge you'll have to make sure it can handle all the watts you'll be putting in it. (and you thought trying to explain to the guy at Autozone that you don't want to put that heatercore in a car but that it'll be used to cool your P42.26@3ghz was funny. Try explaining to the salesman at Sears that you need a mini-fridge that can handle the combined heat output of your XP2200+@2ghz, dual 226W TECs, GF4 Ti4600 and your NB.)

BTW Tiger would you be so nice as to explain your water chiller setup or point me to a link where it's already been explained? Thanks

see i don't want to go to the extent of peltier cooling.... cause its a pain in the ***.... requires powerful power supply( which is going to be expesive) and lots of insulation.. all in all a pain in the ***... so i have been trying to think of ways to maybe cool the water with less pain... and mini fridge is cheap and easy to implement....but im not sure how well that will work.. i remeber one site that stuck a whole computer in a fridge and then put a bucket of coolant in the freezer part of it to be pumped down to the processor... and got like -17C temps stable. on a celeron. so i don't know.....

putting a peltier inline seems like a waste of time from what i've heard. so is there any other options sort of buying an actual "waterchiller" ( which costs a fortune)

do bongs really perform that much better than radiators?

Bongs have the possibility of getting your water temps down to slightly below ambient, so they are a fraction better than radiators, AFAIK

Scottland said:

see i don't want to go to the extent of peltier cooling.... cause its a pain in the ***.... requires powerful power supply( which is going to be expesive) and lots of insulation.. all in all a pain in the ***... so i have been trying to think of ways to maybe cool the water with less pain... and mini fridge is cheap and easy to implement....but im not sure how well that will work.. i remeber one site that stuck a whole computer in a fridge and then put a bucket of coolant in the freezer part of it to be pumped down to the processor... and got like -17C temps stable. on a celeron. so i don't know.....

putting a peltier inline seems like a waste of time from what i've heard. so is there any other options sort of buying an actual "waterchiller" ( which costs a fortune)

Click to expand...

No matter what form of extreme cooling you decide to use you will need to insulate your board if you expect your temps to go below 0C. And buying a mini-fridge is much more expensive than buying a TEC+dedicated PSU.

I dunno about that cost comment, I've seen mini fridges lately for $67 at walmart, it'd be hard to find just a good power supply for a tec for that much.

You should also check out dehumidifiers and mini ac units, you can manipulate them into doing what you want also.

-Sidney

yeah, mini fridges are dirt cheap nowadays. I actually think the idea might not be that bad. any fridge you buy will tell you how many Btu's it can cool or something that can be converted into watts. couple that with good old Q=mc(dT) and you can find out how much heat you'll need to dissapate in the fridge. you could even get a rough estimate of the temp drop over the coil you place there with enough calculations. I think its a simple straightforward idea, no reason why it shouldnt work...

000 said:

I dunno about that cost comment, I've seen mini fridges lately for $67 at walmart, it'd be hard to find just a good power supply for a tec for that much.

You should also check out dehumidifiers and mini ac units, you can manipulate them into doing what you want also.

-Sidney

Click to expand...

ooooooooooh nice! 67$ isn't much =) best I saw before was 99$. With that price tag on it, it might be too little to handle the load though...

SkiFletch said:

yeah, mini fridges are dirt cheap nowadays. I actually think the idea might not be that bad. any fridge you buy will tell you how many Btu's it can cool or something that can be converted into watts. couple that with good old Q=mc(dT) and you can find out how much heat you'll need to dissapate in the fridge. you could even get a rough estimate of the temp drop over the coil you place there with enough calculations. I think its a simple straightforward idea, no reason why it shouldnt work...

Click to expand...

Okay I think we're on a roll here and might actually be able to resolve this mini-fridge thing once and for all. First how do you convert BTUs into watts??? Also please refresh my memory as Q=mc(dT) does not ring a bell...

1 btu (british thermal unit) = 1055.06 J (Joule). That is energy.

1 kWh = 3.6 *10^6 J.

Perhaps it will help you

Okay let's do some theoretical math then.
Let's say my tualeron + a 226W TEC have a combined heat output of 450W which equals to 0.45kWh so that would mean 1620kJ in one hour so I'd need a 1535BTU fridge to keep it at a constant temperature.