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Water sub-ambient temps

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Glaze132

Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2002
Location
Las Vegas, NV
Uh I've been watercooling since about June of 2002 and my water has always been about 3-5 degrees over ambient temp and I have been using basically the same setup since I started just different processors. Anyway I am still using the same candy thermometer that gave me the 3-5º over ambient and a couple of weeks ago it reversed now it is as much as 5ºF under ambient even using different thermometers to measure they all say below ambient. My question is do any of you have water at sub ambient temps without ice or whatever and just a radiator and fan?

Edit: I think I have an idea why they are sub-ambient. A while back my spir@ls lexan or whatever cracked so I didn't have anything but my old block but no clamp so I used air. And then for some reason I decided to put my radiator in boiling pot of tap water to clean my radiator but it didn't it just made the black kind of white so I am thinking that is calcium deposits possibly aiding in my cooling???
 
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i thought that if everything was working correctly with a rad system, ie no active cooling, no pelts, no bongs, no water/ice on the rad, the best you could get is ambiant temps, arre you using the same thermo to measure your ambi temps?
 
yeah I just took the thermometer out of the water and it while in the water it read 76º and now that it is out it now reads 80º which is what my digital thermometer says and it feels that hot too.
 
do you have some sort of active cooling on the setup, or do you have a evaporation type setup?
 
If there is no evaporation or other form of active cooling then it is an absolute IMPOSSIBILITY for subambient temps, so you were correct in assuming that in the first place.

No kind of deposits or anything else will aid in going below subambient unless it is a form of active cooling... which generally requires electricity unless you are using evaporation.

So... the problem could lie in your readings. When you take the temperature sensor out of the water are you holding it in front of a window? Is it sunny outside? Is there a nearby lamp? :rolleyes:

I would look into getting better temperature sensing equipment when getting readings like that, if I was sure I was not doing anything wrong.

Anyways, where do you live that it is 80 degrees in your house? I want to come visit, it's been snowing here.

BTW: Heat exchange in water cooling adheres to rules of thermodynamics, which means that heat energy cannot be created or destroyed and heat simply transfers from one thing to the next. Being that the cooling loop and the water is in contact with multiple heat sources, the coolest it can possibly be is the temperature of the coolest heat source which would be the ambient air... everything it is in contact with is as warm or warmer than the air. This is why the water must be atleast ambient temperature.
 
imog, i keep my house at 80f all the time, ok ok, my 6 larg sal****er tropical fish tanks, and my 2 king size waterbeds, plus all the computers keep it right near 80f in my house :(, but hey i dont think my furnace came on all winter this year, so i might be saving energy there, but i dont think so.


i just noticed that they edited my word of s a l t w a t e r :( damn anti cussing thingy. :D
 
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I'm sure you've already thought of this, but if your case is down on the floor, it is not unusual to see a gradient between the desktop and the floor. My shack is in the basement and my concrete floor in the computer room is cold. The air temperature 1 inch above the concrete is only 16.2c, while 1 foot up it's 17c, the desktop is 18.5c and up on the wall at the thermostat, its 20c.

Hoot
 
It is possible that your water temps are below room temperature because of the room temperature changing frequently... It takes only a few minutes for a room to cool off or heat up when the AC/heater is on, but because water has such a high specific heat, it will take much longer for the coolant to actually start changing to meet the temp of the air flowing through the radiator...

Unless you are consistantly getting these temps :(

Just a thought...
 
The computer is on the floor but so is the thermometer and right now we don't have heater or A/C units on so the room temp is pretty constant rising slowly like a degree an hour after 11:00AM. Oh and I am not sure that I put in my first post that I was using a 120mm fan to cool the water on top of my radiator.
 
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