-
Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!
Using a car radiator?
- Thread starter issicus
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2010
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2002
For the sake of learning/fun. Say your average mini fridge is capable of converting the moisture in the air to ice over a few days, thus freezing the freezer shut. Let's also say it can cool a 6 pack of your beverage of choice in 1 hour (pretty impressive here, I'd rather give it 4). After that it just has to maintain the temperature of an insulated environment, easy beans.
Here is a nice work up of the energy required to cool a 6 pack of beverage from 25c to 5c. https://www.chegg.com/homework-help...er-8-problem-85chp-solution-9781111427108-exc
Comes out to 169000J. A watt is defined as joules per second. So to cool that amount in 1 hr, you would be removing heat at a rate of 47 watts. Say this wasn't such an amazing fridge, and it takes 4 hours. Now we're down to 12 watts. Now we decide to cool our CPU which generates 100W of heat. Our mini fridge removes less than half of that, probably less than a quarter of that. We can consider the rough calculation for radiators of 120mm of rad per 100W of heat produced, and recognize that we are also removing less than half of the heat that an ambient 120mm radiator could remove from the loop. Because this is an insulated environment inside the mini fridge, it doesn't matter what size of radiator we put in the ice at the top of the mini fridge. Once the ice melts the system will climb to damaging temperatures pretty fast.
Here is a nice work up of the energy required to cool a 6 pack of beverage from 25c to 5c. https://www.chegg.com/homework-help...er-8-problem-85chp-solution-9781111427108-exc
Comes out to 169000J. A watt is defined as joules per second. So to cool that amount in 1 hr, you would be removing heat at a rate of 47 watts. Say this wasn't such an amazing fridge, and it takes 4 hours. Now we're down to 12 watts. Now we decide to cool our CPU which generates 100W of heat. Our mini fridge removes less than half of that, probably less than a quarter of that. We can consider the rough calculation for radiators of 120mm of rad per 100W of heat produced, and recognize that we are also removing less than half of the heat that an ambient 120mm radiator could remove from the loop. Because this is an insulated environment inside the mini fridge, it doesn't matter what size of radiator we put in the ice at the top of the mini fridge. Once the ice melts the system will climb to damaging temperatures pretty fast.
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2007
Oh boy!
It's been a few years since I've seen a good mini fridge argument.
Subbed for entertainment.
QFT.
Of course Zerileous comes along and posts some actual science and the entertainment ends up being very short. Sheesh man, where's your sense of adventure?
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2003
When I first built my water cooled system around 2000, there was no such thing as a prebuilt AIO system. I was able to get water blocks from Danger Den who went under a few years back. I used a plastic cool-aid jug from WalMart, a 110v aquarium pump and a heater core from a '74 Vega. The guys at the junk yard about whooped my *** when they asked what I needed it for. They must have thought I was jerking them around. I wasn't. I had to flush the heater core many times to get the gunk out of it but it wasn't too bad really. Antifreeze does a good job of preventing corrosion. It does crap for heat transfer but great things for mixed metal systems.
I thought long and hard about the mini fridg idea and even drew up a plan for putting a radiator inbetween the computer and the fridg to bleed off heat first. Ultimately, guys like Mr. science showed me that it was not going to work and since my high quality, low cost air coolers were keeping my CPUs cool, I gave it up. Cooler Master 212 FTW! WOOT!
I thought long and hard about the mini fridg idea and even drew up a plan for putting a radiator inbetween the computer and the fridg to bleed off heat first. Ultimately, guys like Mr. science showed me that it was not going to work and since my high quality, low cost air coolers were keeping my CPUs cool, I gave it up. Cooler Master 212 FTW! WOOT!
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2004
- Location
- Albuquerque, New Mexico
I was thinking along similar lines the other day.
I know many "niche" market areas sell the same products as those used in other larger industries and applications at a significant markup (for many reasons). I hypothesized that the PC rad market seemed like a likely area for markup to occur.
So I did, "the old jazz hands routine," and started looking for water to air heat exchangers, intercoolers, oil coolers, etc. Most of the stuff I found that would be suitable was of the industrial nature and way overbuilt (more $$$) for the purpose.
The HVAC hot/cold water heat exchangers looked promising though. Automotive oil coolers also seemed possible and they are sized nicely. I wouldn't bother with a used oil cooler unless I was prepared to pump hot solvent through it for a period though.
Having built a SS from an old A/C I know how easy old A/C units are to come by. Scrap yards have often already evacuated them so taking the condenser would be easy. They are often 1/4" or 3/8" inlet tubing though so flow may be a issue with those.
As said above, you'll want to do more digging on the technical specs of this stuff. The design of a radiator that needs to keep water in the couple hundred of degrees range and a powerful fan will be different from that of one designed to cool electronics. This is relatively easy for industrial parts as they often provide data sheets that will speak to things like outlet pressure as a function of inlet pressure, cooling capacity as a function of fluid flow, fluid temp, air flow, air temp.
Also, you can find new car radiators cheap <$50 so a used one may not be worth it considering the cost and hassle.
I've never done much with water so I can't say if any of this is actually wise; just some thoughts I had.
I know many "niche" market areas sell the same products as those used in other larger industries and applications at a significant markup (for many reasons). I hypothesized that the PC rad market seemed like a likely area for markup to occur.
So I did, "the old jazz hands routine," and started looking for water to air heat exchangers, intercoolers, oil coolers, etc. Most of the stuff I found that would be suitable was of the industrial nature and way overbuilt (more $$$) for the purpose.
The HVAC hot/cold water heat exchangers looked promising though. Automotive oil coolers also seemed possible and they are sized nicely. I wouldn't bother with a used oil cooler unless I was prepared to pump hot solvent through it for a period though.
Having built a SS from an old A/C I know how easy old A/C units are to come by. Scrap yards have often already evacuated them so taking the condenser would be easy. They are often 1/4" or 3/8" inlet tubing though so flow may be a issue with those.
As said above, you'll want to do more digging on the technical specs of this stuff. The design of a radiator that needs to keep water in the couple hundred of degrees range and a powerful fan will be different from that of one designed to cool electronics. This is relatively easy for industrial parts as they often provide data sheets that will speak to things like outlet pressure as a function of inlet pressure, cooling capacity as a function of fluid flow, fluid temp, air flow, air temp.
Also, you can find new car radiators cheap <$50 so a used one may not be worth it considering the cost and hassle.
I've never done much with water so I can't say if any of this is actually wise; just some thoughts I had.
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2009
Somewhere someone sells a 3x3 rad made for computers. I don't remember if it's a 9x120 rad or 9x140, but with that kind of surface available, it can operate fan-free.
Mora radiators.
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2004
- Location
- Albuquerque, New Mexico
I think Zalman made some finned copper tube that was a fanless radiator/reservoir at some point back in the P4/Athlon days. It always looked kind of gimmicky to me and I don't know how it performed, probably highly dependent on whether or not you set up a box fan next to it...
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2003
It looked pretty as it was a blue anodized aluminum "reserator" (sp?) It was a reservoir and radiator in one. Back in those days, the heat energy created by newer CPUs out paced what this product could handle. That was when we when from MHz to the first GHz speeds and the thermals went through the roof.
