Hi,
For quite some time now I am keeping my PC in a different, unused room, that is not thermally insulated, so it gets a very low ambient temps during winter, and for quite some time I was toying with the idea making that work for whole year. I was also thinking about going custom loop, but the gains doesn't seem to be staggering compared to the cost, risk and work needed over my current AIO with fans blasted at 100% speed approach (remember the PC is in a different room, so noise doesn't matter), so I need to do something else in combination to make it a proper leap.
So far I was considering either a chiller or some very small dedicated cold room/chamber, I could do this in a space that is unused anyway.
Chiller would require bringing PC back to my room because this is the only room that is under AC and has stable ambient environment. Realistically that's 22C and 45% RH, so dew point would be around 10C. I could get a chiller, and first make water go through radiator in the front of the case, so it would chill the ambient air going into the case, making inside of the case slightly cooler than the ambient to bring dew point further, and only then to the components in custom loop, so I could utilize 4C water temp ability of a chiller almost fully. Chiller would be in a different room of course. Problem with that approach is that it is all feels a bit flimsy, it would be enough for my AC to fail to maintain perfect environment in my room to cause condensation issues and decent power chillers here are generally hard to find and very expensive. This would also mean bringing back coil whine to my room, which is why I put the PC outside of my room in the first place (I hear every whine, there is no such thing as GPU without coil whine), ability to blast cooling to 100% regardless of noise was just a bonus, so that's another challenge. But on the other hand I could still make this setup look like a normal PC kept in normal room.
Dedicated cold room seems a bit better though. Kind of industrial approach, not bothering with looks or noise, just function. I would keep everything on test bench without even using a case. And what's probably most important it would be perfectly safe, if room cooling fails to maintain temperature then everything will just scale with it like it does with ambient temp. It probably wouldn't be less expensive than chiller, since I would still need to build a full loop while chiller replaces rads and fans, but with this little empty space I have for it in place that really will never be used, it seems perfect solution and very similar to what made me want to do this in the first place. I don't know what kind of cooling I should use there however. All AC units I found won't go below 15C, and I would rather aim for something like 3-5C. The temp of the air exhausted by my portable AC is around 1.5 to 4C and it is specified to work from 0 to 40C, so if I could somehow fool the sensor, I should have no problem maintaining 5C while recirculating the same air over and over. Or should I use something else? Room dimensions would probably be like 1m x 1m x 1.9m.
Also maybe there are any better ways than what I thought about so far? I don't really have any experience with cooling like this, these are just my best guesses.
Main rule is that it has to be for 24/7 use, not just overclocking sessions. Temp of water or environment close to 0C.
Thanks in advance for any help
P.S Please keep in mind that the question of the thread is "How", not "Whether", so how should I do this, not whether I should, whether it is "worth it" or any other whether.
For quite some time now I am keeping my PC in a different, unused room, that is not thermally insulated, so it gets a very low ambient temps during winter, and for quite some time I was toying with the idea making that work for whole year. I was also thinking about going custom loop, but the gains doesn't seem to be staggering compared to the cost, risk and work needed over my current AIO with fans blasted at 100% speed approach (remember the PC is in a different room, so noise doesn't matter), so I need to do something else in combination to make it a proper leap.
So far I was considering either a chiller or some very small dedicated cold room/chamber, I could do this in a space that is unused anyway.
Chiller would require bringing PC back to my room because this is the only room that is under AC and has stable ambient environment. Realistically that's 22C and 45% RH, so dew point would be around 10C. I could get a chiller, and first make water go through radiator in the front of the case, so it would chill the ambient air going into the case, making inside of the case slightly cooler than the ambient to bring dew point further, and only then to the components in custom loop, so I could utilize 4C water temp ability of a chiller almost fully. Chiller would be in a different room of course. Problem with that approach is that it is all feels a bit flimsy, it would be enough for my AC to fail to maintain perfect environment in my room to cause condensation issues and decent power chillers here are generally hard to find and very expensive. This would also mean bringing back coil whine to my room, which is why I put the PC outside of my room in the first place (I hear every whine, there is no such thing as GPU without coil whine), ability to blast cooling to 100% regardless of noise was just a bonus, so that's another challenge. But on the other hand I could still make this setup look like a normal PC kept in normal room.
Dedicated cold room seems a bit better though. Kind of industrial approach, not bothering with looks or noise, just function. I would keep everything on test bench without even using a case. And what's probably most important it would be perfectly safe, if room cooling fails to maintain temperature then everything will just scale with it like it does with ambient temp. It probably wouldn't be less expensive than chiller, since I would still need to build a full loop while chiller replaces rads and fans, but with this little empty space I have for it in place that really will never be used, it seems perfect solution and very similar to what made me want to do this in the first place. I don't know what kind of cooling I should use there however. All AC units I found won't go below 15C, and I would rather aim for something like 3-5C. The temp of the air exhausted by my portable AC is around 1.5 to 4C and it is specified to work from 0 to 40C, so if I could somehow fool the sensor, I should have no problem maintaining 5C while recirculating the same air over and over. Or should I use something else? Room dimensions would probably be like 1m x 1m x 1.9m.
Also maybe there are any better ways than what I thought about so far? I don't really have any experience with cooling like this, these are just my best guesses.
Main rule is that it has to be for 24/7 use, not just overclocking sessions. Temp of water or environment close to 0C.
Thanks in advance for any help
P.S Please keep in mind that the question of the thread is "How", not "Whether", so how should I do this, not whether I should, whether it is "worth it" or any other whether.
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