Chiller project

[Gray Mole]

Well I did make a chiller to test the effectiveness of my SLHX's but that's not really a chiller. The slhx was very good for what it's designed for, but made a lousy line chiller for any kind of load.



That's just after I shut off the pump. It's just a Hydor L20 and as soon as I got to -2 or so, the pump was super slow. It started to leak pretty bad at -5 and was almost stopped at -8. I ran the 130w load tester on it, but it didn't help. The water in the Res was at -8 and the evap temp was -27.8 for a while. Likely would have been a lot colder if the pump was working. I'm gonna have to get a better pump for this if I'm gonna make chillers.



Another pic

Cont

 

[Gray Mole]

Another one



That's evap and water in the tank after I pulled the pipe off. Would have liked to test further. I'm sure I'd have had a lot colder if it was actually pumping right.

cont

 

[Gray Mole]

Better view of the HX



And closer.

Once again I didn't take pics of this build, but it's hard to make time for that.

The HX/res is a 2 1/8" pipe, capped, about 10" long or so. Inside is a coil evap, 1/4" tube and roughly 8-10' long. Can't be more specific, that's just working off the number of coils at 2" times pi. I'd estimate the volume of the HX tank at about 1 litre or so.

Ran at about 10psi or so, both idle and load, but I really wasn't applying a very good load with the pump so slow. I've got a condensate pump but it's small, and I don't know the wiring on the plug, so I'm not gonna do that tonight.

Not bad, it's not fully insulated as I wanted to test how effective it would be, and for this kind of load I think it's ideal.

Running -35 unloaded and -27ish load so far is decent for the evap, I just need to see what the water temp is gonna be when the water's flowing faster, but the water held -8 steady as long as I was running the pump, just the water was so slow, and the res was after the block (silverprop) so the water would be warmer there anyways.

I think a larger pump is in order, and I can see a lot colder water temps.

Still need to insulate properly, and build a box for it, but that's just the guts in action. I'm gonna have to get a pair of proper barbs and braze 'em on too.

I really need a good pump for this though, and I'm not sure what to get, cos most watercooling pumps aren't ideal for chillers, but I'll look into what's good for 'em anyways.

Gray

 

[maverik-sg1]

Great work gray mate.

The aquaextreme never gave me any problems at -5 degrees which is a lot lower temps than i would expect to run a fully chilled system.

16degrees water temps (giving 22degrees component temps) seems to be the magic number, any lower and your PC turns into a water feature due to the condensation and you have to wrap everything up in bulky neoprene, which is very difficult to install properly.

MAv

 

[Gray Mole]

Well I'm expecting as a single cpu or gpu chiller with tec to keep the water at 0c or better, but that's more testing away.

The pulldown is pretty fast on this one, 5-10 minutes, as the tank isn't as big as some of the ones I've seen out there.

The compressor isn't as big and powerful as the Mach's but the condenser is massive which makes a big difference in keeping the refrigerant condensing nicely.

I'm putting this together for someone, and he's said it's just gonna be a gpu cooler at first, so it's gonna keep things very cold. Combined with a tec, I'm thinking it's gonna be as cold or colder than a vapo conversion, with the potential for expanding to sli and all that far more easily.

Once I have a pump to throw the 260w load tester, and possibly both the 130w and the 260w tester's on it with the 2 blocks, I'll have a far better idea of how it will handle in a full system. I think that 400w would be a good test of this chiller, whether it'll take that load I'm not sure, but the condensor is the same as the one on my cascade, and it's working fine. The captube is the same length as well.

I'd like to put 4 80mm papst fans on it, but the complication is 12v. It would be nice if the unit didn't need a 12v source, but we'll see.

Gray

 

[Master_G]

Nice project, with a better pump you should really be able to find out how it handles.

G

 

[scorchio]

Be interesting to see what overclock one of these babies can do!

I know Mav has expressed interest in water chilling the whole system,keep up the good work Grey we want tests.

Nice project, with a better pump you should really be able to find out how it handles.

G

 

[Gray Mole]

Well I'm putting this one together for someone, but if he decides it's not what he wants, I'll just sell it off.

I'm gonna finish off the cascade today, so no more on this one til that's all done and settled, but in the next week I'll get back to it, and do more testing.

Hopefully I've got another pump for testing soon, but no real cash to be buying pumps and such at the moment. Gonna have to sell off a few things lying around to raise some money to keep doing all this stuff lol I've got too many freezers I'm not using.

Gray

 

[scorchio]

I noticed you found the problem on the cascade i knew you would.Damn do you ever stop to sleep!

Well I'm putting this one together for someone, but if he decides it's not what he wants, I'll just sell it off.

I'm gonna finish off the cascade today, so no more on this one til that's all done and settled, but in the next week I'll get back to it, and do more testing.

Hopefully I've got another pump for testing soon, but no real cash to be buying pumps and such at the moment. Gonna have to sell off a few things lying around to raise some money to keep doing all this stuff lol I've got too many freezers I'm not using.

Gray

 

[Gray Mole]

LOL not very much. It just get's in the way, and is of no real use.

Yeah, I replaced the evap with the other chilly1 head I've got now, and it's got the standard mounting system on it, so it's proper chilly.

I hope to get that done today, or at least insulating and charging and testing. Once I know it's all set it'll get boxed up and ready for delivery. I don't have anything worth benching at the moment, and 2 other cascades to make anyways.

All the stuff finally arrived that I needed for the Autocascade so I might just get working on that one again as well. My wife's told me that I have to take a week between finishing this cascade and the next one so I'm squarely under the thumb there, but I'll try to sneak off and do a bit at a time

Gray

 

[Master_G]

My wife's told me that I have to take a week between finishing this cascade and the next one so I'm squarely under the thumb there, but I'll try to sneak off and do a bit at a time

Take a week off to sleep then you can get back and focus lol.

G