Mining in the refrigerator?

[Gomeler]

My best idea would be to have a water cooled rig and have the reservoir in the fridge/freezer (obviously use anti-freeze if using a freezer). This would dramatically drop temps without killing the fridge/freezer. This would eliminate most of the condensation problems.

sounds like a great idea

Not a great idea. The condensers on refrigerators are typically designed to reject the heat from a compressor that is working to cool food from room temperature to ~35-40F. Food does not continuously radiate heat like your reservoir would and would increase the duty cycle of the refrigerator. This will once again gradually overheat the system and destroy the compressor.

This is all not an issue if you are using a refrigerator like a walk-in refrigerator that is designed to handle large changes in load and/or run continuously.

[AzN1337c0d3r]

Refrigerator compressors aren't designed to dissipate even 100W continuous. You'll blow out the compressor.

[Desolator]

Doesn't overclocking reduce overall rig lifetime tho? I'd think that attaining 10% greater hashes for 75% the lifetime may not be worth it..

Burn that sucker up!  ASICs are coming out, lol.

[quasarbtc]

You may want to use some of these Peltier units :

http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/en/product/182620/HighTech-Peltier-element-QuickCool-Max-heating-power-270-W

Perhaps power the refrigerator with the waste heat of the miners?

[420]

You may want to use some of these Peltier units :

http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/en/product/182620/HighTech-Peltier-element-QuickCool-Max-heating-power-270-W

Perhaps power the refrigerator with the waste heat of the miners?

how

[Fjordbit]

Do anyone here know of anybody trying liquid Nitrogen on a graphics card?

This guy did.

[quasarbtc]

You may want to use some of these Peltier units :

http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/en/product/182620/HighTech-Peltier-element-QuickCool-Max-heating-power-270-W

Perhaps power the refrigerator with the waste heat of the miners?

how

A peltier junction, or simply the thermoelectric effect, works both ways - can drive a temperature differential with an applied voltage or generate a voltage from a temperature differential. Mining equipment is hot relative to ambient. You'd likely need a lot of miners or a very small refrigerator.

[Mad7Scientist]

You may want to use some of these Peltier units :

http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/en/product/182620/HighTech-Peltier-element-QuickCool-Max-heating-power-270-W

Perhaps power the refrigerator with the waste heat of the miners?

how

How? That's exactly the problem. That's the whole purpose of a power plant: to take heat from a reactor or fuel (coal) fire or other source and convert it in to mechanical energy.

[Korbman]

Among other problems already noted...putting a rig in the freezer would not only heat up the freezer, but it's also subject to quite a bit of water and humidity...both of which don't quite get along with electronics.

[Desolator]

If there was a cheap way to efficiently turn heat directly into power, they'd have implemented it by now.  The best system is like 3% efficient or something and it's generally about 10 years behind solar technology.

[matauc12]

You gotta remember, colder is not better. IIRC, the optimal ambient temp/humidity even in a data center is 68F/45%. Run those AC's at 68F, and you're good.

That is not true. Computers run better and better the colder they are. I have a competition PC with a tri-head cascade running -95c on the CPU and both GPUs. The only problem is condensation which starts at roughly 10c CORE temperatures at normal ambient. If the ambient and core temperatures have a low temperature delta, it can be as low as you want. You can easily fight condensation with proper hardware insulation (easily for ez
Experienced people though).

Although. That is very inneffective for mining. Any cooling assisted by a compressor (direct cooling, ac, water chilling) will be extremely inneficient energy wise once below high heat thresholds (is ambient over roughly 35c)

[crazyates]

You gotta remember, colder is not better. IIRC, the optimal ambient temp/humidity even in a data center is 68F/45%. Run those AC's at 68F, and you're good.

That is not true. Computers run better and better the colder they are. I have a competition PC with a tri-head cascade running -95c on the CPU and both GPUs. The only problem is condensation which starts at roughly 10c CORE temperatures at normal ambient. If the ambient and core temperatures have a low temperature delta, it can be as low as you want. You can easily fight condensation with proper hardware insulation (easily for ez
Experienced people though).

Although. That is very inneffective for mining. Any cooling assisted by a compressor (direct cooling, ac, water chilling) will be extremely inneficient energy wise once below high heat thresholds (is ambient over roughly 35c)

That's really great and all, but I mentioned data center ambient temps, not extreme OCing competition temps. Data centers have to run 24/7. There is no way we're going to be mining at -95C.

[Mobius]

You might want to look at submerging the rig in a mineral oil bath and using a radiator to extract/transfer the heat to the outside or other purpose.

[stevegee58]

Actually if you dig a hole in the ground and go down a couple of feet it's like 50 degrees year-round (at least at my latitude).
Just stick the whole thing in a metal box and bury it with the cables coming out of the ground.  That's free!

[mufa23]

Actually if you dig a hole in the ground and go down a couple of feet it's like 50 degrees year-round (at least at my latitude).
Just stick the whole thing in a metal box and bury it with the cables coming out of the ground.  That's free!

No, that's a horrible idea... The soil would work as insulation. Everything would burn out within a few days. You would need air tunnels underground to pull the air out, cool it, and send it back. Simply burying a mining rig won't work.

[matauc12]

Actually if you dig a hole in the ground and go down a couple of feet it's like 50 degrees year-round (at least at my latitude).
Just stick the whole thing in a metal box and bury it with the cables coming out of the ground.  That's free!

its called geothermy, and its more than a couple feet. But other than that it is an extremely economical way to cool a PC (and a house obviously). But simply burrying something would be ineffective. You need to have a circulation over a great area so the process is usually done with something similar to a well. Although the running cost is extremely cheap, the initial cost for a geothermic setup is roughly 30k

[matauc12]

You gotta remember, colder is not better. IIRC, the optimal ambient temp/humidity even in a data center is 68F/45%. Run those AC's at 68F, and you're good.

That is not true. Computers run better and better the colder they are. I have a competition PC with a tri-head cascade running -95c on the CPU and both GPUs. The only problem is condensation which starts at roughly 10c CORE temperatures at normal ambient. If the ambient and core temperatures have a low temperature delta, it can be as low as you want. You can easily fight condensation with proper hardware insulation (easily for ez
Experienced people though).

Although. That is very inneffective for mining. Any cooling assisted by a compressor (direct cooling, ac, water chilling) will be extremely inneficient energy wise once below high heat thresholds (is ambient over roughly 35c)

That's really great and all, but I mentioned data center ambient temps, not extreme OCing competition temps. Data centers have to run 24/7. There is no way we're going to be mining at -95C.

I was merely targetting the "colder is not better" , because it seemed like you meant "PC's don't run better the colder they are". But I understand it could have meant "colder is not efficiently better as well". Which I also stated.

[melmo]

This wouldn't make much of a difference because you would still be dumping the majority of the heat into the fridge/freezer.

My best idea would be to have a water cooled rig and have the reservoir in the fridge/freezer (obviously use anti-freeze if using a freezer). This would dramatically drop temps without killing the fridge/freezer. This would eliminate most of the condensation problems.

[Unacceptable]

ooo,How about a chest with "dry ice" 

Condensation may still be a factor 

[matauc12]

ooo,How about a chest with "dry ice" 

Condensation may still be a factor 

direct cooling with dry ice does need insulation. Boxing dry ice to create a low temps box would not, but would be extremely expensive to run 24/7. So does direct contact.