Refrigerated Chillers

[jayawms]

I've been looking into refrigerated chillers as a possibility for sub-zero cooling instead of using Dice or LN[sub]2[/sub]. Most are meant to recirculate water and can go down to -10°C, not that great. There are also cryo-coolers that can go down to as low as -110°C. At work, we have one that goes down to -90°C. It would require construction of a heat exchanger coil to tightly fit the thimble and encased in a chamber pumped under vacuum to prevent ice formation. That would be used to run a line to the processor and possibly the video card(s). I'll probably have to use alcohol as the coolant and a cryo-pump to handle the circulation; also need to make sure the tubes and fittings can handle it. Since we have very low dew point (well below -40°C) compressed air and a dry N[sub]2[/sub] generator, I could flood a specially modified or built chassis with them to greatly reduce or eliminate condensation. I would, of course, route the dry N[sub]2[/sub] with tubing to concentrate it over the coolest parts. The motherboard would probably be the GB OC one and I'm trying to decide if I should use the i7 950 or the 990x. Will most likely SLI at least 2 GTX580's. If I manage to pull this off, I'll try to post pics and vids with results. Not expecting to break any world records or anything, just hoping to maybe break the 7GHz barrier and post respectable X and P scores with this thing... we'll see what happens.

[marsey99]

you need to come join the bench team mate

acetone would work for the coolant too i think

[SparkleDJackson]

if the system was submerged in oil and was piped for the mentioned setup would that eradicate condensation or any icing n such. as if there was any moisture on the system after submerging it the liquid would just chill ontop of the oil to make it the ultimate risk free cooling solution lol. i aint gonna lie. that would rock hard

[jayawms]

Originally Posted by marsey99

you need to come join the bench team mate

acetone would work for the coolant too i think

Acetone could work, unfortunately it likes to eat a lot of plastics and rubbers. I would probably use anhydrous Methanol and silicone or teflon tubing with metal fittings; would also have to replace the block seals with silicone as well.

It would be cool to join the bench team if I lived in the UK.

Originally Posted by SparkleDJackson

if the system was submerged in oil and was piped for the mentioned setup would that eradicate condensation or any icing n such. as if there was any moisture on the system after submerging it the liquid would just chill on top of the oil to make it the ultimate risk free cooling solution lol. i aint gonna lie. that would rock hard

Well, here's a thought; as long as the fluid is (and remains) non-conductive, is non-flamable and stays relatively low viscosity at the target temperatures, how about submerging the entire rig in it and just use that fluid as the coolant. Whatever is used could be piped directly over the cpu and gpu's, and just recirculate the fluid in general to the chiller. The entire rig would be cooled. Be interesting to see how that would work. Maybe that's another project.

[marsey99]

anybody is free to join the oc3d benchteam mate, we have people from the uk, mainland europe, north america and africa i think 1 guy is from, we are a uk team as its where oc3d is but there are no limitations on where members come from.

thats true about acetone, not something i thought about tbh. if you could use it to chill a submerged system i think you would be onto a winner as keeping the liquid (oil normally) cold in those systems is the hardest thing about them.

[jayawms]

Did a little more research and it looks like acetone and methanol have freezing points too close to -90°C. Oddly enough, it looks like the freezing point of methanol drops a bit with a small amount of water (>30%) added, but I think it would still be a little too risky to use. So now I'm looking at Novec 7000 as an alternative; it's non-conductive and relatively safe. It's freezing point is around -120°C so as long as the viscosity doesn't increase too much at -90°C, it would be better for both projects (unfortunately it's about US$250 per gal). For the immersed system, I'd have to set up 2 isolated zones, a -80 to -90°C zone for the cpu/gpu's and a -10 to -20°C zone for everything else since many of the on-board components (caps, resistors, and such) don't like to be too cold. Also needs a vapor condenser and I need to decide what materials to use for the tank and reservoirs. Would take a little more work but can be done. Still in the early planning and design stages but will see how it goes.

What exactly is involved in becoming a member of the OC3D benchteam anyway? I've seen a few talking about HWbot and boints and such. Never really looked into it all before.

[Perturabo]

How about a "cold finger" type system with a small vacuum chamber just around the components? Evacuating an entire case will require a pretty extreme pump (well depending on what kind of pressure you want to reach) plus the case will need to be reinforced substantially to deal with the pressure differential. Building a smaller chamber just around what needs to be protected would be easier I would have thought.

Dont know much about full immersion systems though so couldn't compare the two.

[wassupdoc]

Whatever you come up with, this needs a project log. I would - and i'm sure everyone else would - like to see this very much

[DVafka]

Interesting and good idea! Keep up the enthusiasm and post updates aswell!

[jackjack]

can't wait to see the result bro

Goo JAWs