Which performance to espect from a 100W chiller?
 

I'm thinking about building myself a little H²O chiller. Not because I want subzero temps or I really need it, but because it's fun and it should improve performance a little bit... i hope.

Basically, it's 2 80W pelts sandwitched between an old swiftech slot A heatsink and 2 medium performance aircoolers.
Should it be enough to drop h²o temp by 5~10°C? My waterrig cools a P4 2.53B, i845e NB & GF4 Ti4200, that's about 100W non overclocked.

Now I just need to find an extra 80W pelt. :)

courtesy of BermudaTriad

TECs, or peltiers, are very inefficient for cooling down water. Also, pelts only cool as well as you can remove the heat from the hot side, which means you'll either need a monster HSF on it or a whole other water-cooling loop. I've seen peltier chillers, which are basically pelts slapped between two large waterblocks, one for the cpu loop, and the other simply to cool the hot side down. These chillers really don't cool your water down enough for the amount of money it costs to buy the blocks and the pelts (and the PSU to power the TEC) and the other equipment for the chiller loop.

In my opinion, TECs are only worth using if you are using them to directly cool the cpu. The advantage is a great improvement over using straight water-cooling. The problems are condensation below the peltier, and the pain of powering the TEC (which SHOULD have its own PSU, especially if rated over 120w).

Also, Peltier wires are notoriously brittle and snap off easily. of the 4 TECs I've owned so far, only the first one (120w with molex connector from http://becooling.safeshopper.com but is no longer available) had a strong, decent heatshrunk connection to the ceramic plate. the other 3, which includes two 72w's and one 226w, all had to be resoldered, because the wires would snap off so easily.

If you really want a chilled reservoir, modify a dehumidifier or air-conditioner (which uses phase change), so you can turn the evaporator (tubing or radiator-like component where the phase change coolant evaporates and gets REALLY cold) down into a bucket of water. I've done this with an old dehumidifier i found in my garage, and it keeps my coolant temps under 0C.


Chillerlink ?
http://westech.home.mindspring.com/c.../mychiller.htm

I don't want my temps below 0 (or even below 10°C), just a couple degrees colder. Costs would be minimal since I already have all the parts (except a second 80W pelt).

80W pelts @50W aren't difficult to cool down by air, because most basic HS can handle 50W of heat without any problem. If i can get my hands on a cheap 80W pelt i'm going to try it anyway. I don't expect a large temp drop, so I'm sure I'm not going to be dissapointed. :D

Let us know !

I would suggest using some kinda waterblock with "long canals" in it + slow waterflow for maximum efficiency.

Don't know which slotA waterblock you have ... does it fit this description ?

It's a slot A waterblok... the're huge (~16*5cm) and have long canals. :D

I bought it from OPP, he used 3 of these waterblocks to sandwich 6 80W pelts (1 cold, 2 hot), and he got temps below zero. So 2 pelts must do a little bit... i hope. I can try it with only one pelt, but i'm afraid that would do almost nothing. I'm going to try it this weekend.

Do you have a backup PC to post the results here ?


:D

next week my swiftech mcw462-UT arrives. Subzero ahoi!

Hehe, I've got a spare PSU to power the tecs, so I don't see what can go wrong. :)

I've got a second pelt in loan thanks to bicker, and i'm picking up a second hand copper aircooler monday, so I'll be all set to try this puppy out. :grin:

Here's a pic with one pelt installed:

:o

Looks [MAD] !

Where are you going to bolt it down into ? As in "which side of the case ?"

testfase: outside of case
If it performs well, the pelts will be placed on the same side (the waterblock is just large enough to hold 2 sockat A coolers on one side), and put it in front of these two outtake holes in the back of my lianli: