Hybrid Chilled & Water-Cooled; Build 1

Here is my test build for a rig that I use for gaming and crunching (my sig rig). It is cooled by 1. a chiller (condenser with heat exchanger) that was ripped from a piece of lab equipment ($100 shipped on ebay), and 2. a heater core + 2 deltas, plumbed in series. The flow of coolant can be shunted through both devices (for water-cooling, with condenser turned off), or through the condenser only (for chilling), by a set of ball valves. I chill when gaming (a couple of hours a day) and water-cool when crunching (the rest of the day). I switch overclock settings between the two cooling modes via saved bios settings.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...o/CIMG1272.jpg

I know from test builds that the temp of the coolant under load is right at 0C. With no load it gets down to about -12C, but I never run it without a load. The ambient down here in the basement is about 50F in the winter and 60F in the summer, so that helps, as does the house fan. This works well for a medium level of overclocking. The bang vs. buck for the chiller was pretty good: it has a built-in heat exchanger, all I needed to do was connect the tubing, plug it in, and turn it on to get to 0C loaded. Bios temp and software temp readings are between 45F and 60F loaded for the cpu. That gets me just under 3.9 ghz at 430 fsb, with complete stability in games, benchmarks, and crunching. I can go faster but I lose complete stability.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...o/CIMG1266.jpg

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...o/CIMG1268.jpg

I knew this would work ok, the point of this build was really just to make sure I mounted the water-blocks properly. There are alot of things I can improve in build 2. Some of the tubing runs are too short, some are too long. I need to do the v-droop mod for the mobo. The video card needs alot of work: memory heatsinks, volt-mods, more insulation, and probably a bios flash. I need to finish insulating the waterblocks, worm clamps, and tubing.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...CIMG1257-1.jpg

Wire/cable management definitely, lights probably, case painting maybe, who knows. Or maybe I will get bored with it and go back to the unwieldy a/c conversion for some serious cooling.

beautiful SS shroud!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very nice! I'm guessing your coolant is antifreeze/glycol based?

Looks like he is using Arctic Ban with some distilled water for dilution.

based on a test build I knew what my coolant temp would be so I used distilled water + a cup of antifreeze. I didn't win it - the "Buy It Now" price + shipping for the chiller was $100

looks nice but i would advise getting some more insulation on that asap, looks a bit risky too me, but then i have had some misfortune with bad insulation so im a bit like that.

I see aesthetics aren't your thing :rolleyes:

In other news, however, nice job hooking everything up and I love that you rigged up those valves so you can change over between chilled and ambient WC.

Right you are sir, aesthetics aren't my thing. I'm leaving that for build 2. It will probably take me longer to make it look good than it did to slap everything together... And yes, insulation is a priority, but I'm going to re-do the tubing runs first. In the meantime it's going to be crunching.

well done

thnx for the compliments

Build 1.01: Polishing the Turd

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...o/CIMG1306.jpg

Getting closer to a final build; re-ran tubing, began tubing insulation, mobo vmod done, video card gpu and mem vmods done, flashed video card bios, video card heatsinks mounted, removed ram heatspreaders, re-structured valve coolant flow & fill config, cathodes added, case painting done, wire management done, pulled hard-drives outside of case to reconfig raid and reinstall os (vista 64 bit)

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...o/CIMG1311.jpg

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...o/CIMG1307.jpg

You've done quite a nice job...

However, I am uncertain how you are applying your "hybrid" design. If you're using a heater core to cool the same fluid that is being chilled, you're actually adding heat load...

by opening and/or closing the valves in certain patterns you can run the coolant through either the chiller alone (with chiller on), or through the chiller and rad (with chiller off). rad fans are on a fan controller, and can be run from min to max voltage (but not turned completely off)

Oh okay.... I obviously wasn't thinking very hard. hehe

Pretty neat idea.. running my SS 24/7 sure shows on the elec bill...
But don't you need to insulate the tubing as well if you run 0C coolant temp or even below that?

That's why I'm running mine on a thermostat with a large differential.

Yes the tubing should be insulated, but I have already dismantled the setup for another build, possibly with an a/c convert, and with new parts that I just purchased in the XS for-sale forum. I wanted to post the pics of the build, even though its not entirely finished, and now won't be.

Now won't be?

(The Build) now won't be finished with the current pc parts and cooling equipment. I have new pc parts en route and am looking at different cooling options. I got bored with this build and don't want to mess with it anymore, so I took some pics of the build as far as I got it, before I took it apart to start over.

I like to fix what ain't broke. I can't help it.