Airtight Case

[Frozendeath]

Hey all,

I wanted to share my latest creation, thanks to what I have learned from the great XS community. This has been done before, by a number of members here at XS, I take no credit for coming up with this idea, but I wanted to show my version of this often neglected design.

The Airtight Case :thumbsup:

So I modified a window airconditioner and turned it into a chiller last summer. Since then I have been fighting, struggling, and wasting lots of time fighting the dreaded CONDENSATION

But now, thanks to this, condensation is a thing of the past...

I am condensation free running at -20ish res temps, chilling the gpu / cpu and the case itself. CPU temp reads -10c, gpu temp (6800gt) is broken, a cool 256C and Case ambient temps hover at -2C

On with the pics. Here we have the Entire Case

And again

Homemade err "Custom" GPU Block

Cables going out and standard cable plugs no tricks here

[Frozendeath]

Next we have the seal around the tubes

The Water Block notice the suspicious lack of insulation

A radiator inside the box ??!?!?! in a Chiller loop Yes. pumping -10 C liquid through it, and then blowing air over it helps overcome the heat buildup from having a sealed box.... infact as I mentioned before, the onboard temp sensor reads -2C ambient, and my GPU ambient reads 5C before erroring up to 120C... point being I actually need to insulate the outside of the box lol. More on that later.

Silica Gel need to keep the air in here dry, airtight boxes only work when there is no moisture in the air (just to clarify that)

The outter cable seal yes thats our good friend Hot Glue

[DocGolem]

Not so much of a "case", but it works!

That looks amazing. Great ideas with the cables and the hot glue and the radiator inside the case to dissipate the heat generated by the motherboard.

Now, you have to figure out how to get a CD drive working from within there.

Looks great.

[Frozendeath]

Outside of the tubes Silicone Seal this time, -20C was a bit to low for hot glue to handle long term

The whole thing all sealed up


Semi-transparent makes it easy to see what the hell is going on in there if problems arise (none yet though)

You can see my chiller in the background in this shot neighbors still think its an AC unit

Not much to say about this but its got the half in half out thing going on heh




So there we have it. Now I bet you are asking ... where are the Xtreme Benches and whatnot. Well I have not have time to do many yet. 2 reasons, first I have been testing this carefully to ensure it actually works. And for the record it does, 6+ hours on daily for a week now, no condensation at all. I have primed for 4 hours, and the case temp rose to a horrid 1C So I would say it works.

The other thing is my 6800gt thinks its too hot and clocks down so far I feel like I am benching a geforce 2. So I need to flash the bios as discussed in many threads here on XS.

I will post again soon with more actual results. Until then, thanks again to this community. Everyone here rocks, I never even dreamed about this stuff before I came here... now I live for it.

-edit

Hardware specs:

3.2 E C0 (14 multi option) at 4.1ghz (thats before this mod, hope to get more)

1gb ocz pc3700eb (have yet to find max timings and speeds)

6800gt that should work great with a bios that doesnt thermal throttle

2 x 74gb raptors raided, I think they like sitting in -1C ambient air

PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI .... This thing overvolts when cold ..... outside the box the 12volt rail was 12.2 ...... inside its at 12.9 this is measured with a DMM, and I have not touched the pots. The other rails went up as well, but not as much. I guess the de-rating curve works the other way when temps drop lol

[[XC] moddolicous]

That a really cool case. I might want to try that now. I have a couple parts lying around.

[trance565]

lol, gj, tho, i must say, i dun think its completley air tight until u whip out the seranwrap, and wrap the edges of the lid

[(sin)morpheus]

A nice big long strip of the handy man's secret weapon duct tape works better than seran wrap for sealing the lid. I bet the box starts sweating when the temp inside is -2.
Also, try using seal string or something like it as a sort of weather stripping before you put the duct tape strip on, it works quite well.

[notoriousformula]

Nice Frozendeath, very nice!

[Frozendeath]

Yes, its not a 100% seal yet, as I was testing I needed to open it a lot, but now that I know it works, tape along with some spring clamps should hold it

And sin, yes it gets all wet and condensed water starts running onto my desk. I have a sheet of 1inch thick foam insulation, I need to cut that to the proper size and glue it to the box.

I think the overall heatload should go down once the box is not exposed to room temperature air.

[ferrari_freak]

How long for benchies? Great job!

Usama aka Ferrari Freak

[CNCL]

Very interesting! Any pictures of the chiller?

[Frozendeath]

Sure, here are some pics

I'm sorry I cant show you more inside detail as its hanging in my window but its a homemade res (1 inch thick foam sheeting silicone sealed together to keep it water tight) with the evap submersed in it and the tubes are just pushed apart to opposite ends of the box.

anyway here we are:


Front of unit



Control Panel


Resevior (cant show the inside as the camera wont properly get there with the unit in the window) here is the design:

Top down view

Notice the coolant is forced through the evap atleast twice, this greatly improved my pull down time, 25C to - 15 c in only 10 mins, max low LOAD temp of -32C normally in mid neg 20's. The temp varies depending on season, 90F outside condensor temp in summer, or 15F condensor temp in winter

Best real life res view



The pump (350gph)

silicone sealed the entire front to prevent possible cracking, then pipe wrapped it for good measure

Pump has been wired into the systems controls as shown above, that one knob can do:

Pump only, just runs pump, nice for a quick startup as it acts like a normal water loop heat is transfered into the res

Chill only, pump does not run, just gets the res liquid super cold super fast

Pump and chill, the main use chill the res, flip over to this and boot the comp

Benches coming soon...

[mcnbns]

Awesome setup! Coolest chiller systems I've seen. I hope to build my own chiller this summer, and this is definitely an inspiring thread.

[tiborrr]

Insane! I'm in the middle of constructing my water chiller, i think i'll go for your idea and built myself condensation proof case (no need to silicone the motherboard - no problems at RMAs :P).

[caLume]

very cool thing

[MaxxxRacer]

amazing setup u got there. cant wait for some results...

[tiborrr]

You got me so inspired i'm constructing my own airtight box right now

[Frozendeath]

Nice Tiborrr, Airtight is the way to go. Benches Coming tomorrow after work.... finally

[Frozendeath]

First round of benches:

System specs:
p4c800E-D vdroop and vdimm modded
1gb OCZ pc3700 EB ram @ 3.01v
3.2E C0 @ 1.5v (droop mod overvolts at idle)
BFG 6800 GT @ stock everything due to bios cold bug (will fix asap, this weekend I hope)

I do not think I have found my true max, 260fsb needed 1.45vcore, this needed 1.5vcore, not sure what the highest safe voltage for a pressy is, but I think this was a good first run.

On with the benches, all 2d at this time as my GT is at stock as mentioned above.

CPUZ validation link




Ram in depth (not totally tweaked yet, won't go over 253 fsb 1:1 @ 3.1v so 5:4 for now)


Super pi, windows xp, not tweaked or anything, just closed some programs and gave pi realtime status:


Sandra Stuff, yes that mem bandwidth is low


More soon, 3d benches when my GT stops throttling below 15C
Any benches you want to see, I will try to do requests. I know these are no where near world records lol but this is a crappy pressy at -20C totally uninsulated

I am strongly considering a dothan and adapter, hell with no insulation needed that would be a super easy upgrade and I could run my mem 1:1.

[tiborrr]

Very nice indeed, like the temperatures a lot. Just one more question. How big is your water chilled reservoir (in litres/galons).

Thumbs up! 8)

[Frozendeath]

The whole loop holds just under 1.5 gallons of liquid. I feel its enough to keeep temps stable, but not so much that it takes 2 hours to get cold

[tiborrr]

That's about 6.5-6.7 litres. Sweet! I'm planning 10 litres tank. The whole thing will be on an modified computer board (pc case on top, cooling system on the bootom) with wheelies to make transportation easier

[ilkkahy]

Hah. I have been thinking sometimes this same project if i get to compressors some day but i guess it wasnt so original idea as i thought

Put some silicagel bags in there to kill every last bit of humidity.

I would place only mobo&stuff in it to insolation but i realize it requires quite a job to get all cables from there properly.

[tiborrr]

Why woun't you put your HDD and PSU aswell? They would sure be grateful

[(sin)morpheus]

Yeah, his air is just warm enough that they won't have issues.