- Joined
- May 8, 2011
- Location
- Darlington, South Carolina
A friend called my chilled water cooling a hobby but actually it is absolutely an obsession! In one way or another I have been Chilled Water Cooling my CPU for a higher overclock threshold since 2011, it all started with 10 gallons of water in a Coleman cooler. Using gallon jugs of distilled water that had been frozen and exchanged out daily to keep the water in the cooler around 10c. The 10c coolant range was a high level of curiosity for me to experiment with, which allowed experimentation into below ambient cooling. Many think that any temperature below ambient produces condensation but that's just not true, but there are affecting factors such as dew point, and relative humidity, elevation relative to sea level, Blah, Blah, Blah. However those factors do not have as much of an impact in a home that is air conditioned from the outside raw environment. So my experimentation was simply to go below ambient but above condensation forming and the 10 gallons of water in the cooler provided the first limitation. Which was no matter how much ice you add to that 10 gallons of water you cannot get much below 10c or around 50f. Because as long as you still have liquid water with the ice there will be an equalization point of ice vs water. Now for arguments sake you can force lower temperatures, by simply adding salt, producing the same results of freezing ice cream, but you're not going to pump salt water through your cooling system, that would be really bad.
So for me 10c coolant temperature range became an operational target window, WHY? Because all CPUs are designed to operate in an ambient world whether you live in Alaska or India which have drastic temperature differences CPUs are designed to operate in those environments successfully. The CPU manufacturers work with the Motherboard manufacturers sharing their design parameters so the motherboard which supports the processors cooling knows exactly from the CPUs signals when to increase cooling fan speeds to keep the CPU cool enough to operate efficiently, all the way up to the point that the cooling is running at it's maximum capability to attempt to keep the platform cool. These trigger signals of course happen at various internally set temperature levels in each CPU, and if the motherboards cooling solution can not handle keeping the CPU cool enough, the CPU itself protects itself by various means to get it's temperature down, down clocking itself to pitiful performance levels. Now what happens if you can actually operate below these ambient trigger levels, take a minute to think on that.
So back to my obsession, the 10 gallons of water in Coleman cooler with ice blocks, served a learning purpose to discover there was an operational level below ambient without condensation destroying my computer, but freezing the ice everyday, swapping out jugs, got old! There had to be a better way of reaching a 10c coolant temperature without freezing water and swapping out jugs, so after much research I decided to give peltiers a try, even though I got literally nothing but negativity from the idea. Especially when I divulged I was going to cool the hot side of the peltier with an air cooler, instead of a water block and radiator cooling loop. Those that were actually using peltier cooling at overclock.net, thought trying to use air coolers to cool the hot side was ridiculous and not even possible, but they were wrong!
Chilled water cooling vs #1 was just an experiment to see if a heat pipe air cooler could actually cool the hot side of a 12v 200w 15a peltier and it could, but back then 9 years ago heat pipe air coolers were pitiful compared to whats been available for the last 5 years. So today's heat pipe air coolers can definitely get the job done cooling the hot side of a peltier, but back when chilled water cooling vs #2 was put into operation the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Rev.3 was my choice to use, running 3 peltier assemblies. Version #2 ran 3 200w 12v 15a peltiers, requiring the cooler to have it's own power supply to handle the peltiers and when all 3 peltiers were powered it was 600w just for the peltiers power consumption. But it actually worked successfully and even though it was an electrical power sucking monster it was still using less power than freezing the water in the jugs using 2 freezers.
The main goal of Chilled Water Cooling vs #3 was to see if the job could be accomplished using less electrical power, and possibly be accomplished with just the computers power supply, so the end result of vs #3 was a maximum peltier draw of 300w, using only one power supply. The secondary goal was to house it all inside one case, which was accomplished, but turned out to be a bad idea, for various reasons, but since I am not writing a book here unless asked, I forego the details, lets just say I learned what not to do. The goal of vs #4 was to take the best of vs 2 and 3 and put it into a smaller case, with quick disconnects and have the cooling unit separate from the actual main computer but powered by the main computers power supply. The picture below is a look under the hood of Chilled Water Cooling Version #4.
More to come, but I have to get this picture posting figured out. SS
The Graphics Card is Independently Cooled Using a Watercool MO-RA3 radiator, Alphacool Reservoir, and D5 Pump.
All of the Chilled Water lines and Reservoir are insulated to retain the cold.
My helper needed a break!
Just in case I added this fan over the CPU water block, if any condensation even begins to form it will dry it before it is a problem.
10c is my coolant temperature it supports overclocking the 8700K to 5200mhz at 1.35v Bios setting.
I hope all of you are well during this time, Bless You All! Silver Surfer
So for me 10c coolant temperature range became an operational target window, WHY? Because all CPUs are designed to operate in an ambient world whether you live in Alaska or India which have drastic temperature differences CPUs are designed to operate in those environments successfully. The CPU manufacturers work with the Motherboard manufacturers sharing their design parameters so the motherboard which supports the processors cooling knows exactly from the CPUs signals when to increase cooling fan speeds to keep the CPU cool enough to operate efficiently, all the way up to the point that the cooling is running at it's maximum capability to attempt to keep the platform cool. These trigger signals of course happen at various internally set temperature levels in each CPU, and if the motherboards cooling solution can not handle keeping the CPU cool enough, the CPU itself protects itself by various means to get it's temperature down, down clocking itself to pitiful performance levels. Now what happens if you can actually operate below these ambient trigger levels, take a minute to think on that.
So back to my obsession, the 10 gallons of water in Coleman cooler with ice blocks, served a learning purpose to discover there was an operational level below ambient without condensation destroying my computer, but freezing the ice everyday, swapping out jugs, got old! There had to be a better way of reaching a 10c coolant temperature without freezing water and swapping out jugs, so after much research I decided to give peltiers a try, even though I got literally nothing but negativity from the idea. Especially when I divulged I was going to cool the hot side of the peltier with an air cooler, instead of a water block and radiator cooling loop. Those that were actually using peltier cooling at overclock.net, thought trying to use air coolers to cool the hot side was ridiculous and not even possible, but they were wrong!
Chilled water cooling vs #1 was just an experiment to see if a heat pipe air cooler could actually cool the hot side of a 12v 200w 15a peltier and it could, but back then 9 years ago heat pipe air coolers were pitiful compared to whats been available for the last 5 years. So today's heat pipe air coolers can definitely get the job done cooling the hot side of a peltier, but back when chilled water cooling vs #2 was put into operation the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Rev.3 was my choice to use, running 3 peltier assemblies. Version #2 ran 3 200w 12v 15a peltiers, requiring the cooler to have it's own power supply to handle the peltiers and when all 3 peltiers were powered it was 600w just for the peltiers power consumption. But it actually worked successfully and even though it was an electrical power sucking monster it was still using less power than freezing the water in the jugs using 2 freezers.
The main goal of Chilled Water Cooling vs #3 was to see if the job could be accomplished using less electrical power, and possibly be accomplished with just the computers power supply, so the end result of vs #3 was a maximum peltier draw of 300w, using only one power supply. The secondary goal was to house it all inside one case, which was accomplished, but turned out to be a bad idea, for various reasons, but since I am not writing a book here unless asked, I forego the details, lets just say I learned what not to do. The goal of vs #4 was to take the best of vs 2 and 3 and put it into a smaller case, with quick disconnects and have the cooling unit separate from the actual main computer but powered by the main computers power supply. The picture below is a look under the hood of Chilled Water Cooling Version #4.
More to come, but I have to get this picture posting figured out. SS
The Graphics Card is Independently Cooled Using a Watercool MO-RA3 radiator, Alphacool Reservoir, and D5 Pump.
All of the Chilled Water lines and Reservoir are insulated to retain the cold.
My helper needed a break!
Just in case I added this fan over the CPU water block, if any condensation even begins to form it will dry it before it is a problem.
10c is my coolant temperature it supports overclocking the 8700K to 5200mhz at 1.35v Bios setting.
I hope all of you are well during this time, Bless You All! Silver Surfer
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