Water Cooling: (Virtually) Unlimited Cooling Capacity

[koalana]

What about an inverter deep freeze frost free freezer as a starter.  Drill, fan, wizbang at that

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[what@3]

well unless you plan on heat-sinking the inside of this deep freezer ( not cost effective ) your freezer will be unable to evacuate the heat fast enough ( even w/ a hole and fan ). This is mainly due the fact that a freezer is by design and extremely efficient insulated container.

I hope there is no mention peltier junctions!!!

[sturle]

IMO -Watercooling seems pointless unless you are getting your heat outside

No, it isn't.  A water cooled system with a decent radiator can be almost inaudible.

[Smalleyster]

Waaay back in the day I earned my machinist/mechanic cert by mostly working on industrial pumps and heat exchangers and here's how I see it.

You guys are absolutely on the right track with many great ideas, the ones that pop out to me are:

1) Use Vacum pumps, that way any leaks suck air into the hoses/tubes instead of squirting liquid on your circuit boards.

2) Use automotive hoses, radiators and coolants. cheap, easy to get and efficient in the temperature ranges we are fiddling with.

3) Have the output from the GPU's as close to and then wrap around your hot water heater

4) Liquid filled (water) tank in the ground is an excellent heat exchanger, but you have to work out the engineering of how big the tank is and how many feet of coiled tube inside it you have. Interesting week long test project.

5) Big industrial fan blowing on automotive radiators will probably be almost as efficient as the tank in ground but will chew up more electricity.

Biggest design headache, how to produce cheap/efficient connectors to the GPU's, I'm thinking J-B Weld. I've molded some really strange stuff out of it and it never breaks.

Love this thread guys!

[UrbanAdventurer]

IMO -Watercooling seems pointless unless you are getting your heat outside

No, it isn't.  A water cooled system with a decent radiator can be almost inaudible.

Plus, it keeps your room cooler so you use less A/C.

[what@3]

IMO -Watercooling seems pointless unless you are getting your heat outside

No, it isn't.  A water cooled system with a decent radiator can be almost inaudible.

I think you may be missing my point.

Granted the act of quickly removing heat from a gpu has its benefits, however those beninfits are just as quickly lost by raising the temperature of the air in the room containing the radiator, so as the room temp climbs the air that you're blowing over the radiator also rises causing the delta to decrease. To me having the a/c kick on a few extra times is not a very good solution.

I am aware of the audible benefits of water cooling, my htpc is water cooled, thus silent

[what@3]

IMO -Watercooling seems pointless unless you are getting your heat outside

No, it isn't.  A water cooled system with a decent radiator can be almost inaudible.

Plus, it keeps your room cooler so you use less A/C.

wait what??

That is assuming your plumbing your radiator outside the house correct? B/c last I check all logical cooling methods involves some sort of medium to convey heat away from the point of origin, be it standard heat sink or fluid ( air being a fluid of course ).

so if your gpu runs at 147 F and its 100 F on a bad day shedding 47 deg really isn't much of a stretch w/ enough decent radiator.

[Bikerbum]

You're right!
But i'm still gonna come up with some idea to use this heat!

Here is one.

I have connected my boiler as well.  An old boiler is used for temporary heat storage, and water is circulated through a heat exchanger mounted on the input to the boiler in my house.  When there is a temperature difference between cooling water going in to the heat exchanger and coming out of it, indicating that heat is consumed (hot water used), a pump switches on to force more water through the heat exchanger.  The water is pre heated by my miner before it enters the boiler.  I'm installing floor heating in my living room as well now.  The old floor is almost out, and I expect to build the new floor next week.

That's an excellant setup. Thanks for the pics. I'll be scrounging materials for my setup. Thanks, Bikerbum

[sturle]

IMO -Watercooling seems pointless unless you are getting your heat outside

No, it isn't.  A water cooled system with a decent radiator can be almost inaudible.

I think you may be missing my point.

Granted the act of quickly removing heat from a gpu has its benefits, however those beninfits are just as quickly lost by raising the temperature of the air in the room containing the radiator, so as the room temp climbs the air that you're blowing over the radiator also rises causing the delta to decrease. To me having the a/c kick on a few extra times is not a very good solution.

Why would anyone who use A/C place the radiator indoors?  That would be incredibly stupid.  You can get a lot of tubing for a few dollars.  A crane to switch between an indoor and outdoor radiator doesn't cost much either, in case you need heating on cold days.

Electronics use less power when it runs colder, btw.  My computer use about 5% less power on water cooling than it did on fans due to lower chip temperatures.  That's 5% less heat.

[Ahimoth]

I myself have two of my three Mining rigs watercooled with the radiator outside the house. I have a total of 8 Radeon HD 6950's in the loop, and they are currently running at 57c (134f) when it is 38c (100f) outside. I use far less electricity to cool the room they are in now, and as a bonus, I am now able to run the cards at 1,000mhz instead of the max of about 880mhz I was able to do on air. The watercooling equipment pays for itself in a little over a month and a half in my situation because of the increased hashrate, and the reduced A/C cost. Basically each waterblock costs me $50, and I spent maybe $100 more on plumbing, pump, and radiator. Price to watercool 8 GPU's: $500; Savings in elec: $200/mo (I live in a high $ and hot area); Additional hashrate= $70/mo;

So in 1.8 months, it has paid for itself, *and* made my office a whole lot quieter and comfortable.

BTW, I am using the swiftech mcw82 waterblocks. Not the Best out there, but definitely great when you consider it's price.

I also have a pool and have considered using the pool water with a water-water heat exchanger instead of the air-water radiator, but currently it does not seem worth it to run all the extra plumbing, and the larger pump required to move water through that long of a pipe run.

[mb300sd]

I can't afford water blocks for my mining GPU, but my CPU has been water cooled for more than a year. I used to use a submersible fountain pump and run hoses out to the pool... Virtually unlimited heat capacity.

[tristian1980]

I keep my PC next to the windows so it gets the proper cooling.