Peltier cooled WB instead of radiator?!

[nijel]

Hi guys.

Great forum you have here!!!
That's my first post here, so bi nice.
Here is the question.

How you think, guys? Is this gonna work?
Now my temps are 30C case, 34C CPU Idle, 40C CPU Full Load with radiator.
I don't need sub-zero temps. I need to get rid of those radiator's fans.
If this gonna work, what kind of Peltier I'll need.

Thanks in advance.

 

[mustangman]

How are you planning on cooling the hot side of the pelt? From your drawing it looks like you are missing the cooling of the hotside of the pelt. The pelt will not work properly if it does not have adequate cooling the cold side will eventually start to warm if you don't get rid of the heat that it is producing. The side of your case won't be good enough of a heatsink if that is your idea, I tried it short term once.

 

[nijel]

Well, that was my idea. Obviously it won't work.
Any better ideas?

 

[mustangman]

You could try clamping it between a high quality hsf and the block to cool it. You could also put it between two w/bs one to cool the hotside and one that would take the chilled water back to the cpu. I'm experimenting with the second setup now.

 

[Tecumseh]

Don't give up on the idea too quickly. It can be made to
work and **could** be quiet if you don't need fans on the
hot side. First, you must have high clamping pressure on
pelts for them to work correctly. Second, you MUST cool
the hot side. You would need a large HS on the outside
of the case. The problem here is the case is probably
some sort of steel. Heat transfer wont be good. If you
have aluminum sides you could be OK, but most alloys
of aluminum are pretty poor, too. What you might try
is cutting out a section of the case and mounting
your chiller in the hole. Speaking of chillers, go to the
front page and read up on these. What you are proposing
is basically an in situ chiller. Making one efficient is
not easy.

Good Luck!

 

[mustangman]

Tecumseh
I wasn't trying to discourage anyone from trying something different. I just think using the case side is not worth doing unless maybe you had a large fan to cool the side of it assuming that it is aluminum it may be ok but this would kill the quiet aspect. Also you need to consider that your case temps may rise a little. The case that I used was steel which I failed to mention and was definitely a drawback due to poor heat spreading capabilities. Another problem that I encountered was the clamping pressure, I had a terrible time getting the pressure on the tec to where I wanted it. I think using a good heatsink would be more cost effective and effecient in the long run. But overclocking and the cooling that goes along with it have never been cheap and experimentation is the fun part of the whole thing.

 

[flounder43]

I like the idea. On one hand, you have the benefit of a pelt to cool down your water, and on the other hand, you don't have the coldest part of the pelt on the cpu where the condensation is the biggest problem. The pelt is away from the mobo, and more accessible. I like the idea a lot.

I also would like to see a thermostat built in, so that you could monitor the temp of the water and perhaps cycle the pelt between on and off so that the water is cooled, but not to the point where it develops condensation.

The key is to find a way to cool the hot side of the pelt in an efficient way.

 

[Tecumseh]

No problem, mustangman. I didn't take it that way.

You make a good point. Because the physics of cooling
is so complex, experimentation is a quick way to see if
something will work. We never want to discourage
experimentation here. But collectively we all have tried
a lot of stuff and can be pretty quick to shoot down
ideas.

So, it's great to post new ideas to get some feedback.
Someone might have some insight to save you some pain.

 

[Tecumseh]

*snip*
The key is to find a way to cool the hot side of the pelt in an efficient way.

Yes, how? Having fans on the outside of the case could
be too noisy. A large passive heat sink along the side
of the case might work. This is the same design problem
as making an efficient chiller. Difficult!!

 

[JFettig]

with a regular wb it wont work, not enough surface area, surface area and turblience is the key in cooling water, people have tried this and the most someone has gotten out of it with a watterblock is owenator, and he got 2c out of it.... you need to make something that will cool a lot, i was thinkin a svc goldengate or a mc462 plex block..LOTS of surface area.... id do it with my svc golden gate, but thats whats gonna cool my pelt on my heatercore, wich i really think will work!, im ordering some copper for the cold plate and then im gonna order a pelt and give it a try, but im thinkin im gonna smear a lot of thermal paste on the heatercore for better contact....

but another idea of mine that should work, to make one out of copper with thin (1/32in) fins encapsulated like a waterblock, and make it like 4x4in..... or make it with pins in it..., i think i mite do that, when i order some copper , make a little box, and drill holes thru it and take some copper wire and soldier it into the holes and make an inlet and outlet on it....(is copper wire pure copper?)

 

[Tecumseh]

but another idea of mine that should work, to make one out of copper with thin (1/32in) fins encapsulated like a waterblock, and make it like 4x4in..... or make it with pins in it..., i think i mite do that, when i order some copper , make a little box, and drill holes thru it and take some copper wire and soldier it into the holes and make an inlet and outlet on it....(is copper wire pure copper?)

1/32in fins would be too thin. You would have better
luck with fins at least twice that thick. The thermal resistance
of copper wire is even worse. You have to distribute the heat
to the heat sink before the water can carry it away.
I don't see a way you can win with wire.

 

[mustangman]

I ordered a large chunk of copper, and some aluminum to boot, today to make my own heat exchanger. I'm going to use copper on both sides of the pelts and see what happens. After the short test runs I did with blocks earlier today I agree they don't do real good although I didn't give them long enough to run I decided things weren't going the way I expected fast enough. I think I will drill several channels in each to make multiple passes but I haven't decided how to go about creating the turbulence yet.
Sorry for high jacking your thread I had to get that out.

 

[nijel]

No problem. Keep going. We need more ideas.

 

[JFettig]

i think i know how i could make a rez chiller work! its all in the movemetn

 

[gone_fishin]

Here's my take on it.
You need a large spread out coldplate like these.

http://www.sscooling.com/lc_plates.html

Then you would need multiple low wattage peltiers spread across the surface instead of a single high wattage one.

To remove the heat from the pelts you would need a second thicker coldplate running it's own independant water loop with a radiator that could be installed away from the computer, preferably mounted and piped outside on the nearest wall.

I believe this would work but it would be expensive. The only noise would be the two water pumps.

 

[Stoanhart]

sandwich

This is the same idea that was mentioned up above somewhere. Basically, you sandwich the pelt between 2 Waterblocks. The heat output of a pelt isn't that much more than a cpu, so a regular waterblock can cool it. It wouldn't add much more heat than a dual cpu set up like cpu->cpu->heater core, which is only about 0.5C warmer on the second CPU. The waterblock that cools the water would be home made. It would be made by cutting off the top, and drilling out the interior, leaving the black things for turbulance. Then you out the top back on. This would give you plenty of turbualnce because of the obstacles and the rough drilled out inside, plenty of surface area because it's hollow, and should work pretty well. You could also put the entire sandwich in a res box so that any condesation would not be a problem.

 

[gone_fishin]

Stoanhart, you're not removing any heat from the loop that way from your pic.

 

[mustangman]

I have attached a pic of what I plan on making. Forgive the terrible drawing as I don't have great control of my thumbs because of an accident when I was a firefighter but it should get the idea accross. I plan to use to blocks like this one for the hot side and one for the cold side. The hot side will either go to my bong or my heater core that I used before going to the bong. I plan on using multiple pelts this go round and clamping the blocks together using ARP head (I've got a couple extra sets laying around for my 5.0) bolts through the blocks. What do you guys think of this? Any suggestions before I start drilling hopefully later this week or early next week.

 

[JFettig]

wow i love that pic

 

[mustangman]

I guess I'll try it again. I didn't notice right yesterday when I posted that it didn't work.