Long time no see, I have been away from the DD section for a while, but I have not been "Idling" in the project dept.

After getting my feet wet in watercooling recently, I decided to give "Chilled" water a try, since regular ice is pretty inexpensive and safer than dry ice, a pefect low buck way to raise your bench scores!

I recently went to visit my buddy and Apex staff member Digital World in Ohio, and this is what happens when modding skills are combined with OC'ing madness!



Digi was looking in the freezer during initial testing, and found he was out of ice, so he grabbed a handfull of popsicle sticks and couldn't stop laughing as he fed them into the "Aquarium" resivour we found in the garage earlier



Having the radiator completely submerged in water is the key to "Chillin" properly with this type of set up, several other forum members coincidently enough have also been working on similar projects and found it out the hardway.

It did cool the water rather nicely, but it was realy just testing the proof of concept at that point... I went to the store later and grabbed a 30LB bag of ice for 4$ and got serious with da Benchmarking!


Compare that to the idle temps I was getting with a Zally 7700 ALCU at stock below, you can see it was well worth the effort!




EDIT: Please be patient, I have alot more pics/benchmarks coming that need to be resized still!

Attached Thumbnails

     

 

Hey that is a pretty cool idea when the Popsicle sticks cool down you could just put them back in the freezer or eat them , i wonder could you use those freezer blocks that are filled with liquid i can not remember the proper name of them i do know they come in different sizes and would probably be a little cheaper then buying ice and would probably stay cooler longer.

I am working on Rev.2 that usues a larger res and frozen 2 litres, I just have a few more kinks too work out!

Put some beer in it!

Fill the lines and aquarium with rubbing alcohol and put some dice in the aquarium.

See now your giving me idea, looks accross room, hmmm, it sounds like its raining in here, gotta love submersable pumps


Ill have me my own threadsoon, but its got chocalate in mine, soon you will see

way to go "Solid" !
awsome idea about putting in frozen blocks into the water.will save me buying ice all the time.
will give the chilly-bin ice packs(you just keep refreezing them) a go.
when i first tried mine i got 11c.dont how because now i am always getting 15c no matter what i do or how long i leave the water to chill down.still - with no fans and 15c idle - its gotta be good for ya!

hey "Capt" - can you really run isopropylene alcohol through the lines instead of water?

Are you moven the water? In the Aquarium that is....Creating a flow pattern through the rad would improve the chill effect.

Quote: Originally Posted by Lokie Are you moven the water? In the Aquarium that is....Creating a flow pattern through the rad would improve the chill effect.

That and a hefty dose of salt. Salt should drops the temps 8 or 9 degrees F.

I've always thought something like an old fashion ice cream maker would make the perfect low tech chiller design.

Quote: Originally Posted by keepaf1 way to go "Solid" ! awsome idea about putting in frozen blocks into the water.will save me buying ice all the time. will give the chilly-bin ice packs(you just keep refreezing them) a go. when i first tried mine i got 11c.dont how because now i am always getting 15c no matter what i do or how long i leave the water to chill down.still - with no fans and 15c idle - its gotta be good for ya! hey "Capt" - can you really run isopropylene alcohol through the lines instead of water?

yea it wont freeze.

Very nice! I always love to see your sub-zero OC's!!

Quote: Originally Posted by AntiM That and a hefty dose of salt. Salt should drops the temps 8 or 9 degrees F. I've always thought something like an old fashion ice cream maker would make the perfect low tech chiller design.

Aaah the "freezing mixture" I'm with you on the ice cream maker - that's a damn good idea!

... now if only i didn't love ice cream so much I'd be all for trying it out!

Quote: Originally Posted by Lokie Are you moven the water? In the Aquarium that is....Creating a flow pattern through the rad would improve the chill effect.

Not exactly, I did notice by "Agitiating" the Aquarium by lifting the rad and res up and down that the temps drop rather nicely...

Digi commented "It looks like your whacking off your PC"

I definately need to find a better solution, last night I finally remebered I have a "Special" fan that I have that can run submerged, I will be adding it for Rev.3

I will post some results and pics from Rev.2 later tonight

EDIT: AntiM, I thought of using salt also, but won't that be corrosive/hard on the hardware? I leave the cap off the res, so it circulates in there, it is not "Sealed" though I suppose I could try it that way.

Not enough to worry about for the time you plan on using it. 2.5 to 25 microns per year with constant exposure, less with a bit of nickel in the copper alloy. The brass...even less. Just rinse it off when your done benching.

The salt trick was used by mythbusters for cooling warm beer to perfect temps in the shortest time, but the ice melts in a faster time, and you get about 60% of the time you could have and only get a near 10F drop, which can work nice, but the time lost can effect benchys, and after i record a bit more temps i should be adding to our chilling squad of OCers

Heheh pretty fun project, Necro! I submitted the URL to Digg and /. The fact that you can "recharge" the popsicle sticks by re-freezing them is pretty cool.

Feel free to give it a Digg!

http://digg.com/mods/Popsicle_Powered_Watercooling!_!_!

the salt would definately work if you have the res submerged in another glass container... or any other liquid besides salt water would work too, could you put another mineral with a lower freezing point? could you put some dry ice in that piece?......................... like have super cold liquid on the outside and then just water on the inside... or alcohol if the normal coolant freezes...