Refrigerated cooling revisited

[RickyBobby]

I imagine the moderator is tired of this topic but I would still like to put in my two cents worth.

First off, if you live north of the Mason-Dixon line just move your box, monitor, keyboard and mouse out to your garage or patio or whatever you have and run your own no cost low ambient temperature overclocking and cooling experiment.

But if you have a garage, some basic cutting tools, the use of a pickup, and about two hundred dollars to waste you can do a much more elegant experiment.

Here is what you would need...
Used deep freeze from your local used appliance dealer
300 pounds of free weights from a garage sale
some velcro strips from the Dollar Store
an accurate thermometer, which you get also get at Dollar Store
a mixing bowl
five pounds of plain old rice from the bottom shelf at the market
cheapo usb hub would be helpful

When you get your used deep freeze situated in your garage put in 300 pounds of iron weights as a huge heat sink and the bowl of rice to absorb moisture.

Take your computer apart. Put the motherboard and video card in the deep freeze. Cut one of more holes in the side of the deep freeze big enough for your cable. The 24 pin connector from the power supply will determine the size of the hole. Use the velcro to stick your power supply and hard drive and optical drive to the side of the deep freeze so that the cable will fit.

 

[RickyBobby]

All you are cooling would be the motherboard, CPU, memory, and video card. Everything else does not need to be cooled and it outside the box.

Let's say your high power rig consumes 300 watts of power. I do not know how long it would take for that heat output to heat 300 pounds of scrap iron. I would guess that it would take a very long time. The short version is this, do not refrigerate your PSU.

 

[RickyBobby]

Or you could just move your rig out to your garage in the winter and see how cool it stays. That is free and takes about five minutes.

 

[Automata]

The issue with putting it inside a refrigeration unit (which includes freezers) is that it can't handle the sustained heat load of a computer. When you put food in, it cools down to what the unit is running at and produces no more heat. A computer is constantly dumping heat into the unit, which will force it to run all the time, which will burn it out quickly. There isn't anything to revisit.

 

[57udl3y]

This doesnt make too much sense to me. Rice and free weights dont make good moisture solutions or heat sinks. Also what would be the point? just to lower the ambient?

The reason fridges aren't used is because they are worse then the alternatives out there, which range from cheaper, to simpler, to more efficient cooling. Its always cool to plan out DIY projects but this one i dont see working or being worth it.

 

[RickyBobby]

We are debating at cross purposes here because we have no parameters.

A hundred dollar dorm fridge from Fry's is useless as a cooling or overclocking solution, we can agree on that.

A traditional deep freeze containing 300 pounds of frozen whatever to act as a heatsink is a thousand times different matter.

In this day and age all you need is a 25 foot HDMI cable and a 25 foot USB cable and your PC can be 25 feet away. I think that is the approved measure.

Cooling is either getting the chips to ambient temp or putting the chips in a lower ambient temp. Put a cast iron engine block in a deep freeze and chill it to 0 and then tell me how long it will take a little 1/4 ounce computer chip to heat it up.

 

[Automata]

A hundred dollar dorm fridge from Fry's is useless as a cooling or overclocking solution, we can agree on that.

A traditional deep freeze containing 300 pounds of frozen whatever to act as a heatsink is a thousand times different matter.

No, it really isn't. The motors in these are not designed to run 100% of the time and you will burn it out. If this was a fix that would lower temps, a lot more people would be using it.

 

[Bobnova]

A computer is an ongoing load, the freezer would still overheat even with 2000 pounds of iron in there.
600w in and 500w out only has one possible outcome.


Plus most of the people that are interested in this sort of thing will have a GPU that is putting out 300w all by itself. Or maybe two or three of them.


Go buy a deep freeze and build what you describe and report back with the results. Then recommend it.

At the moment, please badge your advice as an untested theory, as that is what it is.

 

[Automata]

To add more content, here is just from the first page (of 6) threads that have the word "refrigerator" in them that are directly relevant the topic at hand.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=574517
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=569211
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=513688
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=420192

The best thread of them all:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=373263

I'm sure I can get a lot more, but I think you get the point.

 

[RickyBobby]

Mod,

With all due respect to your patience with me, your ham is not heating up the inside of the fridge. But the ambient temp outside your fridge is heating up the inside of your fridge and that is why the compressor kicks on from time to time.

If all you have in your fridge is your motherboard and video card(s) as I suggest, it is a simple matter of heat exchange. A CPU and a GPU(s) and some memory sticks only put out a very small amount of heat. A 300 pound side of beef in a deep freeze with the compressor running now and then would take a month to warm up. I think you know that.

 

[RickyBobby]

Bob,

Are your intended readers playing World of Warcraft 24/7 and maxing out the heat output of their rig?

My only point, not to pick an argument with you, is that if your are serious about overclocking/cooling a metal case and eight fans and an elegant CPU cooling solution is not the right way to go.

Edison or Franklin or Einstein would put the motherboard and the parts that have to be directly attached to the motherboard in some sort of cooling solution and all of the external bits elsewhere.

I am sorry if I have been a pain in the neck. That was not my intent.

 

[Automata]

Just as a heads up, I'm not a mod.

Bottom line, this just doesn't work and has been discussed a ton before. We can sit here and go back and forth, but this isn't going anywhere. There are a ton of threads discussing why this is a bad idea and you don't want to listen. Obviously, there is no way I'm going to convince you this won't work, so you will need to experience it yourself. Feel free to buy hardware and try it yourself.

 

[RickyBobby]

One of the designers should build a case that is a 5000 BTU window air conditioning unit with a flexible external duct. That should solve all of the problems and all of the debates.

My main points, no matter how inexpert, where thus....

1) A case and a bunch of fans are futility on a sandwich

2) Lower the ambient temp of the main bits

 

[Automata]

An air conditioning unit is completely different and actually made to handle that heat load. That argument doesn't make any sense.

We aren't saying that phase change units can't handle the heat load, because that is blatantly wrong. We are saying that a fridge/freezer is not made for that heat load and will eventually fail.

 

[RickyBobby]

thid,

I believe you. If putting the mainboard and all of its related bits in some sort of fridge has been tried before and failed I have learned something.

Something can be 98% correct and workable and then when you try to make it work it is that odd one or two percent that cause it to fail.

My notion of putting the motherboard and related bits inside a chiller and running cable outside has doubtless been tried ten thousand time previously.

I think I will yield this forum to the experts now.

Thanks you all for playing along. Happy Holidays!

 

[Automata]

By the way, to the forums!

 

[57udl3y]

Case and Fans fit more the 99% of computer users needs. If you are serious about OCing then you wouldn't want waste time with a fridge and just jump to water cooling at the least, more likely LN2 or DICE which are much simpler, easily repeatable, and cheaper. If you wanna OC you should look at those options.

If you wanted to use a portable ac unit you could with ease i'd imagine just rig it up to blow into your intake fans.

also to the point of thinking bob was talking to WOW players, there are a large amount of other reasons peoples' PCs are continually drawing more then idle so it actually applies to a larger swath of people then just hardcore MMOs

 

[RickyBobby]

thid,

Everything will eventually fail. If the heat output if a PC rig is greater than the heat exchanging output of the vessel in which it is placed that eventually the PC will win.

 

[RickyBobby]

57,

Thank you for your reply. The reason for this forum is extreme overclocking. In order to accomplish extreme overclock you have to put you motherboard and the related bits in a deep freeze. According to Einstein and Planck and all them your want your rig to boot at -20 and start from there. You cannot do that at 70 degrees ambient. You have to have a deep freeze that is working right.

 

[RickyBobby]

The heat output of a CPU and GPU is not that much.