Miles_Teg
04-30-2004, 12:55 PM
Hi fellas,
This will be a rather lengthy post about my Liquid Chiller from start to finish. Anyone is free ofcourse to copy my project; it's especially ideal for guys that don't know the first thing about the phasechange principle, it's just not needed. The reason for me personally to have done things the way I did, is because very little funds are needed, and I live in a country where phasechange related hardware is very very hard to get, let alone refrigerant.
Let's start from day 1 shall we? First I bought this thing off an online auction...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/waterchiller.jpg
As this thing is a liquid chiller allready, in essence all I needed to do was add some tubes, a waterblock and a pump. Yet, I decided I might as well make it somewhat visually appealing, so along came a lot more work then I had in mind. First thing I did was taking snapshots of the spec. tag...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Chiller_spectag.jpg
1/20 hp(!) R134A. That's not a whole lot. I searched the Danfoss site and came up with a nice PDF (http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Danfoss_TL2.5F.pdf) about the compressor, it's a TL2.5F. At this point I thought about giving up on the thing, as it's so weak. But hey, I bought it, I might as well try it, right? So I started stripping it's bidy off...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Chiller_stripped.jpg
The internal reservoir stands too high for my taste, so I had to bring it down some...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/1floordown.jpg
Next pic shows the reservoir. It's made of aluminium, and houses the evaporator in it's walls...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Reservoir.jpg
Now it's about time for an initial testrun to see what the thing is capable off. I re-routed some wires, bypassed the thermostat, connected a hose to the outlet and filled it up with some antifreeze...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/-24C.jpg
Next I made a lid to fit on the reservoir, and a couple of pieces of closed-cell foam for insulation...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Lid.jpg
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Lid_Insulation.jpg
Now it's time to insulate the waterblock. I used the same closed-cell foam, as I just have a lot of it. It's a mat for backpackers to sleep on, approx 1/3" or 8mm thick. Got it for € 2,50...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/WB_Insulation.jpg
I got the coolant I used at an automotive store, nice 'n cheap windshield wiper fluid. Will go down to -70°C the bottle says. After playing around with it for a while, I ended up with a 50/50 mixture with water. According to the bottle, good for -25°C...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Coolant.jpg
The waterblock shown is a DD Maze2 V2. The block was made for S462, but I made my own plexi holddown. (Covered in foam on the pic) Next I connected some more hoses, the waterblock and did some construction work on the housing, using 8mm MDF wood...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Construction1.jpg
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Construction2.jpg
I made used a switch for on/off action, and one to use the thermostat, or to bypass it. Both switches have lill' LEDs built in. The thermostat bypass switch will illuminate if the compressor is running, regardless if it's being controlled by thermostat of running full time. I used a radioshack-type digital temperature sensor, which won't be very accurate, but it'll do. Next up was some more work on the housing...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Chiller.jpg
What we have here my friends is an iced over waterblock. If the chiller is being set to run full-time, the coolant will go down to -18.5°C. Better then I thought. The taped-in armaflex was 'leaking cold' so I redid the armaflex job, and glued it this time. Next up was a paint-job to get the aestetics I was looking for. Also added some aluminium L shapes to it's corners...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Paintjob.jpg
So that's the finished product. Now to prepare the mainboard. I cut up some more closed-cell foam, and managed to get an airtight fit making excessive use of vaselin. (non-acid/ no H2O / metalprotector type)...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/MB_Insulation.jpg
The black piece you see between the PCI and DIMM slots is a piece of neoprene. I cut up my mousepad for this, as the foam was to thick for the back of the mainboard. I checked everything for conductivity before attaching it to the mainboard. After waterblock installation things look like this...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/WB_Mounted.jpg
This concludes my guide, a few notes left to mention. The chiller can hold a liquid temp of around -10°C with my 2.4C @ 3.5GHz. After leaving the chiller running a night, the coolant temp will settle around -18.5°C. Even with an overclocked CPU, the liquid temp will only increase quite slowly upon starting the PC. More then enough time to do some hardware finetuning and benching. BUT. The coolant temp IS NOT the CPU temp. There's a difference (dT) of around 19~21 °C between coolant and CPU temp. This means that even if the coolant is quite cold, the CPU still won't reach minus temps. Baring this in mind, I'm still pleased with my chiller's performance, but I do have to say I'm allready looking at Direct-Die to take on. Might take me years of collecting stuff though :( But I'll see you when I get there ;)
Anyway; let me know what you think.
Miles.
This will be a rather lengthy post about my Liquid Chiller from start to finish. Anyone is free ofcourse to copy my project; it's especially ideal for guys that don't know the first thing about the phasechange principle, it's just not needed. The reason for me personally to have done things the way I did, is because very little funds are needed, and I live in a country where phasechange related hardware is very very hard to get, let alone refrigerant.
Let's start from day 1 shall we? First I bought this thing off an online auction...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/waterchiller.jpg
As this thing is a liquid chiller allready, in essence all I needed to do was add some tubes, a waterblock and a pump. Yet, I decided I might as well make it somewhat visually appealing, so along came a lot more work then I had in mind. First thing I did was taking snapshots of the spec. tag...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Chiller_spectag.jpg
1/20 hp(!) R134A. That's not a whole lot. I searched the Danfoss site and came up with a nice PDF (http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Danfoss_TL2.5F.pdf) about the compressor, it's a TL2.5F. At this point I thought about giving up on the thing, as it's so weak. But hey, I bought it, I might as well try it, right? So I started stripping it's bidy off...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Chiller_stripped.jpg
The internal reservoir stands too high for my taste, so I had to bring it down some...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/1floordown.jpg
Next pic shows the reservoir. It's made of aluminium, and houses the evaporator in it's walls...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Reservoir.jpg
Now it's about time for an initial testrun to see what the thing is capable off. I re-routed some wires, bypassed the thermostat, connected a hose to the outlet and filled it up with some antifreeze...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/-24C.jpg
Next I made a lid to fit on the reservoir, and a couple of pieces of closed-cell foam for insulation...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Lid.jpg
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Lid_Insulation.jpg
Now it's time to insulate the waterblock. I used the same closed-cell foam, as I just have a lot of it. It's a mat for backpackers to sleep on, approx 1/3" or 8mm thick. Got it for € 2,50...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/WB_Insulation.jpg
I got the coolant I used at an automotive store, nice 'n cheap windshield wiper fluid. Will go down to -70°C the bottle says. After playing around with it for a while, I ended up with a 50/50 mixture with water. According to the bottle, good for -25°C...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Coolant.jpg
The waterblock shown is a DD Maze2 V2. The block was made for S462, but I made my own plexi holddown. (Covered in foam on the pic) Next I connected some more hoses, the waterblock and did some construction work on the housing, using 8mm MDF wood...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Construction1.jpg
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Construction2.jpg
I made used a switch for on/off action, and one to use the thermostat, or to bypass it. Both switches have lill' LEDs built in. The thermostat bypass switch will illuminate if the compressor is running, regardless if it's being controlled by thermostat of running full time. I used a radioshack-type digital temperature sensor, which won't be very accurate, but it'll do. Next up was some more work on the housing...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Chiller.jpg
What we have here my friends is an iced over waterblock. If the chiller is being set to run full-time, the coolant will go down to -18.5°C. Better then I thought. The taped-in armaflex was 'leaking cold' so I redid the armaflex job, and glued it this time. Next up was a paint-job to get the aestetics I was looking for. Also added some aluminium L shapes to it's corners...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/Paintjob.jpg
So that's the finished product. Now to prepare the mainboard. I cut up some more closed-cell foam, and managed to get an airtight fit making excessive use of vaselin. (non-acid/ no H2O / metalprotector type)...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/MB_Insulation.jpg
The black piece you see between the PCI and DIMM slots is a piece of neoprene. I cut up my mousepad for this, as the foam was to thick for the back of the mainboard. I checked everything for conductivity before attaching it to the mainboard. After waterblock installation things look like this...
http://members.home.nl/jan.barelds/Miles/Chiller/WB_Mounted.jpg
This concludes my guide, a few notes left to mention. The chiller can hold a liquid temp of around -10°C with my 2.4C @ 3.5GHz. After leaving the chiller running a night, the coolant temp will settle around -18.5°C. Even with an overclocked CPU, the liquid temp will only increase quite slowly upon starting the PC. More then enough time to do some hardware finetuning and benching. BUT. The coolant temp IS NOT the CPU temp. There's a difference (dT) of around 19~21 °C between coolant and CPU temp. This means that even if the coolant is quite cold, the CPU still won't reach minus temps. Baring this in mind, I'm still pleased with my chiller's performance, but I do have to say I'm allready looking at Direct-Die to take on. Might take me years of collecting stuff though :( But I'll see you when I get there ;)
Anyway; let me know what you think.
Miles.