Anyone got any suggestions on my 'air chiller'

[eXtenz]

Well i have been tinkering with the idea for about 2 yrs now, and i come across these forums (which i am addicted to and only been here maybe 2hrs ;)..) but i saw clone do exactly what i was planning.... well a variation of it.



basicly my idea is to use 3 heatsinks, one alpha slot1/slota to cool the hotside of 2 peltiers (which will be ducted off, 2 80mm fans blowing air over the heatsink, then promptly forced / ducted out the bottom of the case...), then have a a aluminum heatsink on the cold side of the peltiers and have fans on them suck air over the fins and then blow into the case, and to the cpu (since i will have 3 ill use one and duct ti off straight to the cpu heatsink, id probably use a 40cfm fan to push the air thru the duct to the cpu, if i have a 30cfm fan on the cpu heatsink it self.... anywho heres some pics i did up in photoshop, one is a side shot, other is a over view....


http://www.pcbruisers.com/forumpics/fig1.jpg


http://www.pcbruisers.com/forumpics/fig2.jpg


I was thinking 2x 51.4w peltiers should be ok but i would like input from any here, i have been up for almost 48hrs so if this doesnt make to much sense, lemme know and ill try to clean up what doesnt make sense...




EDIT:: here is a link to clones thread on his chiller

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19016

[Jabo]

to get it really working you'd have to make your case as air-tight as possible.
Then use some thermal insulation to line your case as much as possible (as a bonus you'll be getting ssome sound atteniuation too.
As far as modules sizing is concerned...
It solely depends on money...
go as big as possible but then you may find that it'd be better to pelt cool your cpu, gpu and nb direclty...
Will send you some drawings of my ideas on how to do it :)

[eXtenz]

well, true it would be better to pelt the cpu / nb / gpu but doing so effectively on air would be a bit harder, and then the rise in case temps too. With the air chiller you would be cooling other heated stuff in teh case too (somewhat)....

as for the sealing case off and air tight, i dont think that would be the way to go as i would have to have exceptionally large pelts to keep up wit hteh heatload..... otherwise it would just continue heating up.

what i would be doing is probably going to home depot and finding some lining i could use, otherwise probably just purchase some dynamat or something, nothing overboard or extremely thick..... ventilation wuold be 2x80mm and 1x92 or 120 in the psu (plus the 80 blowing out the psu) and then the heat from the pelts in teh front would be force ducted out the bottom (albeit not the best spot to do it since heated air rises, shouldnt be a problem...

:: just a edit ::

I should of mentioned i have been toying with the idea of pelting the nb / gpu as well as doing the 'air chiller' as i like to call it...... because im always looking for that little boost, just finished doing a complete pelt / wc project for a friend running a 2500+ @ 2.7ghz (i think ill get it up to 2.8 within the next month or so...)

it wouldnt be as effective as water cooling but if i could provide the somewhat chilled air to the heatsinks... i would probably be useing some choped up swiftec or alpha heatsinks for the gpu/nb with 80w & 68w pelts, i would mostly just scrap the heatsinks to size, and cut it to atleast only take up 3 pci slots and have there be plenty of room for a beffy heatsink or waterblock should i go down that road again soon

[Jabo]

Ok, there many ways of doing the same thing I guess :)

Let's do some quick calculations.
I will use 226 tem as an example.
It can move 226watts of heat which without any heat moved (no work done) transfers into 60degrees temp difference between sides i.e. connect it to power and leave it without any load and after a short while, given water in your wc loop is +30C your cold side is going to be -30C.

Now, CPU can produce as much as 120Watts (slight exaggeration but heavily overvolted and overclocked units come very close to it), lets say you have 4 sticks of overvolted memory in your machine producing… lets say 30watts (another exaggeration). Video card, sound card, nic and North Bridge and all the rest shouldn’t be producing more than 150watts all together. Quick maths and we have round 300watts of heat energy.
I can hear you asking ‘What about PSU, HDDs and optical drives?’, well the do not need cooling as such (except PSU which is a separate issue) and to make this project work one has to separate them form the rest by some clever compartmentation method (using plexi?).
Now, using 226watt pelt and 176watt piece together we can power them from one Enermax465 series PSUs used as dedicated power supply. As you can see we have additional 102watts of cooling power at our disposal to drop temps in our ‘mobo compartment’ below ambient. Additional advantage of mobo ‘compartmentation’ is smaller volume of air to be cooled meaning better response system. All of course is a closed system, no air gets in and no air gets out from ‘mobo compartment :)

[eXtenz]

Well i see what your saying, but i wont be useing water cooling, i will be useing standard air cooling, and do you realize what size heatsink i would have to find? it wuold have to be fairly big to have a decent effect on 226w...... and probably cost / weigh more then me ;) (overexagurating) now im not trying to produce constant case temps.... im just trying to get a cold object for air to flow thru and then into the system to flow around the system and expell teh hot air out, and as well as duct some to the cpu it self.... with standard heatsinks (im most likely getting a Alpha P3125 with a pair of ys 60mm 32-40cfm fans for the hot side of the pelts and cool side would use another p3125 with some 30cfm fans.... this heatsink wont handle 156w..... much less 226w, well it MAY handle both those but the noise involved is to much, im wanting something small, and low on power (2x51.4w peltiers at 12v = 6a) so i can run it from a fairly large psu with my system (upwards of 450-550w) the heatsink should be able to handle 100w easily tho.

But like i said im not trying to maintain the system at a said temperature, if i can pull air thru a heatsink that has frost all over it, and into the system, and exaust it out after it picks up the hot spots, it should maintain temps it self.... now if i were to seal the motherboard off i would have to have a peltier big enough and bigger to overcome the heatload and keep temps nice, but im not im still exausting hot air out the case..... so chilling air in a 'chamber' befor it reaches the cpu, video card, nb will have somewhat decently colder air when it gets to those spots thus reducing the temps

[Jabo]

My idea was based on the following principles:
1. TEM is a heat pump and pumps heat from one side to the other
2. Mobo, cpu, vid card, NB, mosfets and whatever extension cards you got produce heat
3. Enclose it all within insulating compartment (thick plexi will do) and after a while there will be meldown.
4. To avoid the above we need to 'pump' heat out
5. TEMs are heat pumps, which can be used to the above described job.
6. If you size your tem's appropriately you will not only pump all the produced heat out to keep status quo (ambient temps of your cpu, nb, vid card and the rest) but you may also pump sufficiently more energy (heat) out to get your equipment below ambient.
7. The beauty of this solution is no chance of condensation whatsoever and quite stunning looks.
8. Want to build one? I will supply you with complete set of drawings

I hope it explains it all, and to be completely clear I used water cooling as an example of heat pump principles. All of the above will not use an unce of water :)

Just to remind you. Hot side's heatsinks will get VERY hot, thus making effinciemcy of such an assembly very high (the bigger temps difference the more efficient the system)

[eXtenz]

I dont see you understanding what i mean.... heh..... ill try again to re-explain it.

Ok there is no COOLING of a compartment, not trying to use the tecs to remove the heat from all compontents in the air as this would be 1. inefficient, 2. to much work, 3. very large.

What im trying to do is get a metal object to say 'frost' over essentially, now when air passes over this it is very much so 'cooled' now im wanting ot use that cooled air to run towards my heatsink (ducted) so while normal air would generally be 70-80F (gets upwards of 95F during summer) air to the cpu would probably be more like 50-60F, now this would result in lower temperature, wont be far below ambient so condensation wont be to big of a deal (although i will be taking the precautions cause i will need it later on)

now ill have another heatsink frosting over as well which ill just blow air into the case (insted of ducting to cpu) which any heated objects can use to cool better, and then ill have a dual 80mm rear and 92mm psu exaust setup to remove any hot air...

See by logic this should work, cause im not trying to cool everything in a compartment down, im just trying to cool air going to certain places down.

[Jabo]

You asked question I answered.
My way is the efficient way.
Only recirculating, or close systems are efficient- all 'spot cooling is just a waste of energy :)
You'll do whatever suits you best, mate ;)

Have fun and don't forget to post pics of your finished project and do some testing:)

[eXtenz]

Will do, and incase i sounded hostile i wasnt ment i was simply stating what i was trying to in the first place clearly.

If i was to use a 226w pelt in anything i would slap it on the cpu ( i just finished a system for a friend like that ) but my next big cooling will be a mix of phase change / chiller

[Jabo]

No probs, mate. :)

Waiting for pics.....