Winter-air cooling

[Cathode0]

I've been thinking about this for a while. It's really cold where I live during winter (and warm in summer ) and I want to put some of that cold to good use.

I was thinking I'd go down to a hardware store and buy some insulated flexible duct (or make some myself out of two sizes of duct, cause it looks expensive). Then I'd drill a brand new hole above where my cheap looking A/C cooler is purched and connect the outside of my house, to the front of my computer.

I have a q9300 and a HD 4850 that's idling at 70 with out overclocking. Later in this winter the outside temperatures can be expected to dip as far as 20 below and beyond.

My major concern is that the fluctuations will warp all my gear (micro). To help stabalize internal temperatures I think I can set up a 120mm fan to vary the outdoor air intake based on Mobo temperatures.

Would this work out for me? Another thought was to place a fish tank bubbler outside and feed the tubing directly onto my heatsinks at CPU and GPU. (already have a bubbler, and the fish will just have to learn regular breathing)

 

[SwaleSmith]

lol wouldn't a decent WC kit be a better neater and more effective bet plus you have 24/7 temps

 

[MeltedDuron]

I doubt that temperature fluctuations would be a problem at all. Intel are actually trying something like this on a small server farm and so far the results are quite good.

I'd be much more worried about air filtration and to some extent condensation, and also the length of the duct vs the size of the fan, you might need a lot of cfm (and noise) to pull a noticable ammount of air through the duct, but by all means go ahead and try this and please post your results, just make sure you keep the air clean, chopped up spider all over your mobo probably wont do it any good!

The fish tank bubbler is a terrible idea though, please dont do that! If you want to go that route you're much better off building a long enclosed watercooling loop, insulating the tubing and blocks, and hanging the radiator out of the window!

Well good luck whatever you try to do, and make sure to take lots of pics!

Alex

 

[Cathode0]

Thanks for the encouragement and the heads up about condensation I hadn't thought of that factor. I threw together a rough draft of my thoughts on the teqnique and posted it in the logs, but I haven't decided what solution to invest in. I might instead go with circulating water from the outdoors for the sake of the heating bills (the air ducts would have to be stretch a yard or so across the room, but the water ducts could be drilled inside the closet).

 

[Pseudonym]

I thought I'd replied to your other thread, but it's not there.

Basically, what they said^^ and If you were to try the idea of water cooling with an outdoor res, then you might want to look at water bongs. They can get the water temp to ambiant - which in winter is bloody cold.

You would want to prevent freezing. You could run the pump 24/7, or maybe put some sort of anti-freeze in your loop, but that just seems like a bad idea.

 

[HypoglossalXII]

If you use these ducts aren't there a possibility of condensation? And as far as I know, condensation = a big no no!

What I do instead, is just open the window and let the wind blow in, and this just increases the ambient temperature, and my intake fan does the rest.

Cheers,

-HypoG

 

[monkey7]

A russian opening his window and letting the wind blow in? How much did you drink exactly?

On a more serious side, I think no one has ever researched condensation from cold air intake in a warm ambient appropriately. Who's said the condensation will form on the hardware? Maybe it forms on the case, making is just run down. Also, if you slowly replace the hot (wet) air in the case with cold (dry) air you should be able to remove the hot air without the moisture condensating because the moisture 'holding capacity' isn't decreasing radically enough.

When making a duct to my window I'm more concerned about rain, leaves, bugs and local kids marching into my rig though :/

 

[Bungral]

Grrr this thread is broken for me again! Posting this should fix it though.

 

[monkey7]

Yeah having the same. Too bad it's causing spam though :/

 

[Bungral]

Yeah having the same. Too bad it's causing spam though :/

Yup but doing the 1 post seems to solve the problem.

Was it us two last time that had this issue?? Hmmmmmage.