Vapochill as Water tank chiller?

[TheDude]

Hey guys,

My vapochill ate another cpu xp2200+...I gonna tear it apart and use it to chill the water for the case I got from JBELL. I've been sitting here in the hospital with my son thinking about how best to do this. I am leaning towards having the evap core chill water in a metal tank which will then circulate thru the swifty blocks for cpu, n.bridge and gpu. You guys got any ideas on how to set it up? Don't tell me it won't work..or I am crazy to do it..etc. We all know I'm crazy..that's why it will work one way or another. Am thinking it needs a tank so as to give the water time to cool down. Pushing it thru too fast probably won't cool it as well? Metal tank ok? or plastic? Forsee any problems? I don't think I have to worry about it freezing as it will be moving and there will be a lot of heat to get rid of....still gonna have the radiator and 3 fans on top of Koolance case with all swifty blocks. Condensation will have to be addressed, but not a biggie. Where should in be placed in the system?
Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks for your help!:D

[|PuNiSh3R|]

I guarantee you won't have condensation. This won't work.. lol

You need to some how add a lot more surface area to the vapo evaporator.. Then.. I doubt the thing will have the right freon charge to deal with water chilling.. might be to much.. might be to little.. I'm not sure.. Have the water exit the tank at the bottom and enter at the top.. if possible have it blow over a large set of cold fins in the tank.. Maybe if u got yourself a NICE LARGE copper heatsink.. that would help..

Either way I HIGHLY doubt this thing will chill your water very much.. probably keep it cooler.. a little bit below ambient possibly.. Since you are using a rad too.. You might be best off not even using the rad.. just letting the vapo chill the water.. it might do it enough to actually keep the water around ambient.. I'm not sure. From everything I heard about the vapo's .. they suck.. If it can't do well on the CPU.. direct die.. it won't do very good in the water either. Good luck.

[TheDude]

lol well you may be right..thanks for the pointers. The vapo worked ok directly on the die..not much better than plain old water cooling tho. I'm gonna fool around with it and try different things just to see what happens..probably end up going with a 226 pelt instead. I actually had a problem with condensation so that I had to rewrap the hose on the vapo...I would think it should take it down to sub ambient temps...we will see.
thanks again:D

[|PuNiSh3R|]

Um.. barely did any better then straight water cooling? WOW that's a horrible.. what 400 dollars? spent!

If it barely did better then straight water cooling.. then it won't do jack s_ _t in water chilling!

[TheDude]

Well..you are probably right as I see from your posts you know a lot more about this than I do.
The vapo did a little better than the water rig with a peltier that I was running...but NOT worth the $ I agree. I may just set it up with an XP1500 chip I have and OC it as much as possible ..just to use as a folding rig. I am excited about the Koolance case with the swifty blocks that I got from JBELL..haven't had time to play with it yet.
I've been following yours and others posts and may try my hand at building a real chiller based on you guys posts..bottom line is I want some COLD temps.
Thanks

[JBELL]

Glad you like - that 81cth was rebuilt from scratch basically!! See the quality difference between koolance and swifty... truly amasing koolance thinks they can sell those parts!

[|PuNiSh3R|]

I personally think it's a horrible thing that Vapo gets away with selling such garbage IMO.

Build yourself a real system.. a water chiller or on-die.. don't matter.. just ask us for help.. we're here.. unfortunatly.. lol

[TheDude]

JBELL..

I really like the design of the case, but replacing that crap with all swifty gear was an excellent idea. There is no comparison between the two!
|PuNiSh3R|...

I will take you up on the help bro..gonna need it!
:D

[hamzam]

Hey, you know what I think would make a good waterchiller: A coca cola fridge.

I have one in the basement, and I'll ask my dad if I can have it brought upto my room in the winter, when I transfer over to watercooling.

That way, I'll have good temps, while drinking some coke :).

OR would it be better to rip everything out of it.

[|PuNiSh3R|]

Specs on the Coca Cola thing.. if you have pics that would be nice..

[wymjym]

Hey folks,
I built a low tech pelt chiller and from my experiance 225watts of pelt cooling is enough to chill the water in my sys wayyyyyy below ambient. How low???? don't know as I run it at 10 below to avoid condensation issues. So if that vapo has more cooling capability than 225watt pelts...go for it.

check out my chiller here (http://westech.home.mindspring.com/chiller/mychiller.htm)

wj

[TheDude]

wymjym,

Very nice job! Thanks for the link and the ideas!:D

[wymjym]

no sweat,
it's still crankin' along...haven't had time to rebuild the box and add a different (super special) homemade copper block as yet, but soon.
wj

[TheDude]

I got the guts out of the vapochill and did some testing with some very hot water. It looks promising so far. I am gonna sink the evap into a metal tank and see if it will cool a water rig that I have running (not my new one). If anything it seems it might be too cold, but with the circulation that was lacking in my test, it might just work ok. If it does..I will post a couple of pics. If not...well you can say you warned me!:D

BTW....either way ....it seems that you guys posts have introduced me to a whole new level of sickness!

[|PuNiSh3R|]

I hope it works.. best of luck to you.. I'd rather you prove me wrong on this for your own enjoyment :)

[TheDude]

Here's a pic

[TheDude]

I'm not ready to call it a failure yet. It did reduce temps 10c. At load and OC I'm at 36c. At no load and default settings it goes to mid 20sC. But this was with just cramming the evap in a hole in the tank and using just the round copper core from Vapochill. I am sure it can be improved upon.
Also I think I have too much anti-freeze in the mix.
Old vapochill read -10 under load...but bios was in the low 30s...and mm5 was higher still. It's still running and may drop some more..seems to take a while to go down.

[Neptune5k]

Glad to see it has some promise, and also that you found a use for your Vapochill - I had to convert to a P4 rig to get use out of mine :rolleyes:

[TheDude]

Neptune5k,

The main problems I had with it were not what I expected. I never crushed an AMD core like so many have. After running for a long time, it would corrode the top of the chip and kill it. Yet it only made cntact with the die...very odd. After losing 2 xp2200+ chips this way, I had enough!
After following the phase change thread closely, I would really like to step up to making my own, but I guess you have to start somewhere and here was this useless and expensive vapo lying around. Well...it will keep me off the streets for a while.:D

UPDATE:

Well those of you who said I told you so were correct...I can't get it to chill water low enough to justify using it. Maybe someone with more experience could. It was fun and educational tho.;)