Hello!

[Red M]

I just wanted to say hi and thanks!

I've been a keen PC hobbyist for the last 10ish years and believe I'm knowledgeable enough these days to start giving back to the community (little less lazy these days too) so I just wanted to introduce myself and say thanks for all the great information I've gleaned from these forums over the years (I've been a bit of a lurker ).

I hail from New Zealand and have dabbled in air -> water -> TEC cooling + Vmods in the past and am looking forward to getting into chilled liquid, nearly started with direct phase but have ended up deciding a chiller is more suited for me as it is a more flexable setup.

Sadly I've recently returned to uni (BE:Mechatronics) so $$$ have become an issue but if I can over the next year I would like to get a chiller going, I like going for gold so a AC in a chilli bin isn't going to cut it for me

Here is what I'd like to put together, the design is a work in progress and HW will be decided apon once the box is complete but here you go:



Compressor/condensser on left, resiviour/evap/main pump/secondary pump in middle, computer/secondary resiviour/tertiary pump/primary + secondary water loops on right in an air tight seal.
The main res will be sub-zero (hopefully -30c ish) which will cool the CPU + GPU(s) and the secondary res to ~0c. The secondary loop will cool other components (fets, mem, stuff with caps near by, etc) and via the raiditor hold the sealed box at ~5-10c. All controlled with a custom controller that I intend to program with some form of GUI, I started playing with some ideas using a matrix orbital graphic LCD and picaxe chips got to ~1700 lines of code but never really finished it, the design has changed a hell of a lot since then and I'll probably have to start again but its all about learning for me and im definitly doing alot of that!

Thats the plan atm anyway but who knows how it will actually turn out after all thats half the fun of it ain't it (If the sandy bridge is the future then it may have to be tuned to higher temps but thats fine as it will mean better power efficiency but all that will all be setable in the controller and will probably have multiple modes anyway ie bentch (crysis 2)/game (BC2)/platform scoller (lol)

Again I cant thank you guys enough for all the great info I've collected over the years and I hope my $$$ will allow this project to blossom

[Gray Mole]

Well if you can build it as nice as you can draw it then you'll sure have a nice cooler

Looks like a decent layout, though as always a Brazed plate heat exchanger would very likely give both a more compact HX/Res design, and better temps and capacity. Up to you, since it looks like you've budgeted for a fairly large size of coax heat exchanger.

Looking at detail it's pretty thorough. Large enough condensor, sizeable compressor (watch the noise though, some 1/2 to 3/4 hp compressors get a bit loud for some) most of the usual suspects look fine.

Running the captube as fully within the suction line to the HX will give a bit better subcooling and can reduce the refrigerant volume per capacity if it's done right. That can bring your overall power consumption down at load, so may be a consideration.

Otherwise not too bad at all. Hope it ends up that pretty when it's done


Gray

[aslanwas]

@Red M: When finished i want one of that too, nice modelleing, waiting to see the original! Very nice thx for sharing!

[Red M]

Hi guys thanks for the comments.

I decided to go with the large res because of my idea of using multiple boot modes, basically when you boot you'll have a selection of states as 90% of games probably wont require its full power (damn console curse!) I'd like to have the controller mimic a KB over the USB allowing it to adjust voltages and clocks on boot ether via a MB with multiple bios saves (or what ever they call the bios these days) ie hold '1' to boot with settings stored in slot 1, hold '2' for 2 etc. I've seen a few out there that do that but failing that it can automatically navigate through the bios and make the necessary changes. With more and more GFX cards having the VID controlled voltages that shouldn't be too hard to adjust ether however clocks might be a bit trickier. The main res temp can then be held at a lower or higher temp to suit, decreasing/increasing the regularity that the compressor would need to cycle, all in all reducing power consumption and heat output when necessary by using the large water mass as a temperature battery of sorts. That will of course all come after the basic setup is running.

I am curious what you guys would recommend for building a custom res? Looking for something that can sustain -40c temps just to be safe and with a clear top for ease of checking up on the water/internals, I assume stainless would be fine for the main body (shouldn't corrode with the copper) and was thinking about polycarbonate for the top but I'm not sure if that would get too brittle at the screw points causing cracks, tempered glass was another idea but I really have no idea how glass behaves at those temps?

I picked up a compressor a few years back as I could get it through one of my old jobs at trade prices knowing I'd eventually get round to building something with it, at the time I foresaw direct phase but thats obviously changed, it should be suitable none the less. Its a Matsua (that name always cracks me up)/Elektronika MP14FB that'll be running r404a (picked up a tank of that too), while I haven't heard one myself I did find one person somewhere that mentioned it wasn't too noisy so fingers crossed on that one. There might be a little space for sound absorber but we'll see.

The condensers I'll strip out of a old dehum I've got lying around, sadly I already stripped one down when I was living with my folks but recently found out they thought it was trash and biffed it. So that should cover a good chunk of the expenses (still allot to come though )

The current dimensions stand at 1000(W)x360(H)x400(D)mm thats edge to edge so including the overhang and curvy front etc.

I'll definitely move the cap tube into the suction, I wasn't sure if it would make a difference but sounds like its worth while.

The modeling was done with SolidWorks and the renders with PhotoView360. I just started using them last year, had previously used AutoCAD but find SW much better particularly for the things I do, though I believe its more in competition with Autodesks Inventor rather then AutoCAD which I haven't used. PhotoViews both a blessing and a curse as it makes lovely renders (caustics are not so flash but I think its a fairly young bit of software) however just as I'm getting bored of modeling I throw what I've done into PV360, see the results and want to keep going, I loose many hours due to that.

The goal is to get it looking as close to the renders as possible, so time and money are secondary which is why I'm only hoping to get it going (maybe done) over the next year, it will be very Dependant on whether I can get some/enough part time work throughout the year and still have the spare time to work on it. In saying that it is very high up on my priority list, especially now I've got my cars WOF + rego off my back next thing will be hitting the visa and then I can start spending but at least it gives me a bit of planning time

Heres a nice top view of the main cabin;



Off topic but out of interest here are a couple of renders of a RC chopper I did for uni last year (mechanically functional too, trimmed down from their original 6000x4000 res );