Alternate liquid cooling

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Butterball

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My buddy is using water cooling using the open bucket method and i was wondering if there would be any change if instead of H2O he used beer if there would be any major change in cooling?:chef:
 
From http://www.supercool.se/pages/calculate.html :

TO COOL DOWN
Cooling effect (Pc = W) required to cool down within a given time (t = s):


where
c = specific heat of object (Ws/g °C)

m = mass in grams (g)

DeltaT = temperature difference (°C)

Example: To calculate the effect required to cool 5 l of beer (m = 5,000 g) from 20°C (which is also ambient temperature) down to 5°C (Delta T = 15°) in 2 hrs (t = 7,200 s).

Beer is mostly water, thus c = 1 cal/g = 4.18 Ws/g °C.

But if I find you or your buddy wasting good beer I will be round your house with a lynch mob quicker than you can say "The beers are on me". :evil:
kaboom_spawn.gif

With beer being brewed in a process that involves sugar amounst other things I think the density of the beer would be significantly different from that of H2O. It will probably be slightly more difficult to cool, and probably also not draw the heat out of the water block as efficiently...
 
How about liquid nitrogen? I haven't heard alot about it, but also that it might be good for it. You can basically put any liquid into a water cooling block, as long as it's as viscous as water itself.
Would it be any good for cooling?
Also, what kind of cooling liquid do they use for nuclear reactors and such?
I think that basically any liquid that heats up and cools down fast and is a good conductor of heat would be excellent.
 
Originally posted by Vehementi
How about liquid nitrogen? I haven't heard alot about it, but also that it might be good for it. You can basically put any liquid into a water cooling block, as long as it's as viscous as water itself.
Would it be any good for cooling?
Also, what kind of cooling liquid do they use for nuclear reactors and such?
I think that basically any liquid that heats up and cools down fast and is a good conductor of heat would be excellent.
Liquid Nitrogen would be excellent for cooling, problem is you have to keep it cool enough to be liquid or you have to have it under enough pressure to be liquid. If you wanted it for long term cooling .
As for what they use to cool nuclear reactors - they use water, its cheap and they have room for large quantities of it.

As for using beer there are some downsides:
1. Not drinkable unless you like hot beer with all the carbonation gone.
2. More expensive than water.
3. An open bucket of beer starts to smell bad after a day or so.
4. If you spilled any of it it gets sticky.
 
The problem with Liquid Nitrogen is that unless you let it boil inside the "waterblock" it's not going to cool as efficiently as water. That's because nitrogen doesn't have as high a heat capacity as water so it can't transport as much heat as water.

And if you do let it boil, then it will get very expensive very fast.
 
Another problem with beer... The sedimentation that'll most likely happen in the reservoir... Hot water can carry more sugar than cool water, so when hot beer meets cool beer, it'll dump some of it's sugar++, thus leaving it at the bottom of the reservoir... This will lead to clogging of the tubes (as you should draw fresh water from the bottom rather than the top...

And when the beer stops flowing fast enough.... 'nough said...


As for LN2..
Posted by Mr.Garibaldi:
But if you're want max cooling pre-built, you should either try KryoTech or VapoChill... Those use nitrogen, which gives you much better temps than any watersetup ever will...
But you pay the premium for them too...

They use a nice little compressor, which transforms the nitrogen back to liquid..

You can offcourse do it yourself, but unless you're willing to risk the entire setup, I'd leave it to the pro's...!

.02$
 
ok, so...how about antifreeze? i figure it good enough for me car how about my computer?(proper mixture of water and antifreeze of coarse)
 
wow, talk about reviving an old thread.

anyways, using antifreeze probably wouldn't do much for you. the 3 main purposes of antifreeze in a car is to:

1. Keep the water from boiling
2. Keep the water from freezing
3. keep mold/organics from growing.

while it is true that you can get more out of the water by using "water wetter " this is only true in a closed loop system.

if you are using an open bucket, then a coolant aid would hurt the performance, as you cool the water via evaporation, that would be hindered by the additive
 
*shrugs* i found this post via google as it was the first link on my search.....i am trying to find a better cooling system for my computer so as to hopefully keep it down to a more comfortable level for me....(i prefer hovering between 107 and 111 F) and all i really have found is just some water cooling.......................just i dun have a lot of money so i don't know what to do...
 
water cooling isn't exactly cheap, but you can get some great cooling, and very quite too. basically there are 2 methods

closed loop
open loop (aka open bucket)

Closed loop:
sealed system, set it up, and let it run.

little -> no maitinace, unless it springs a leak.

system temp is a little over ambient temp


Open loop/bucket
open loop, usually done with a 5 gallon bucket, some long tubes, and a fountain pump (toss in a water-block for good measure;) )

have to fill with water to replace what has evaporated (3-4 days = about 1.5-2 gallons, in my experience)

usually at, or below ambient temp
 
hmm.....what other meathods of cooling are there besides water? and well of coarse the basic fan and heat sync combo...
 
The other day I was thinking about a watercooling setup and I got it in my head that I should build an open bucket setup using a small refrigderator as my res. This way the wayer would stay cool and not evaporate so I would have to fill it every few days. Now one of my dilemnas I came across was is a 3 1/2 gallon fridge that cools to 40F or a 5 gallon that cools to 44F best. The water block would only go to the CPU and it would go to a radiator on the way back to the res to get rid of some of the heat that would be built up. Another thing I plan is to have the res above the case, with the water going into the top of the res from the radiator while the water leaves the res near the bottom, this serves a dual purpose, one is to create a syphon if the pump fails while in operation and two is that the water that comes in will have more time to cool. I was thinking that an Eheim 1250 would be a good pump but do you have any recommendations around here?
 
Sounds like a good setup as long as you close the reservoir so that it doesn't get any outside air...

If you don't, you'll have to add some algea killer and that might not be so good for your radiator/block.

The Eheim should do very well, just make sure you buy the pump only, and not do as me and buy one with filters for an aquarium. (Or else you'll have to mod the pump a bit to attach a hose)
It could be a bit overkill though... It's specs says it'll push 317 gallons per hour, meaning that the water won't stay in the fridge/res for long. You could actually end up with the water gradually getting hotter and hotter with the fridge having little effect.

I suggest you do the math to calculate how long the water will stay in the rest with the Eheim 1250 and see if it might be long enough for the fridge to have any effect or not.

You could make a minature bong cooler with the fridge as the res in the bottom as it'd cool much better, but you'd have the problem of algea and dust collecting in the bottom, not to mention the fact that you'll need to add water regularly since the drop will bleed off a bit of water.
It'll also increase humidity, and should thus be placed a bit away from the case...

Sorry if I got a bit carried away, but I planned to build a bong cooler two years ago (or so), but never got started since I went a bit overboard (needing a hole in the wall amongst other things)...
 
Originally posted by Tvhawk
hmm.....what other meathods of cooling are there besides water? and well of coarse the basic fan and heat sync combo...

(I guess you've read my old post about phase change cooling earlier in the thread)

Not really another method of cooling, but adding a peltier element will lower the temps of your cpu and if the water setup is correct shouldn't add much to your water temp...


As for adding anti-freeze, if you have an open loop system, it will pay of to use some sort of anti-bacterial compound as otherwise you'll have a lot of algea after a while.
Just make sure it doens't contain copper if you use aluminium block/radiater or vice versa. (the react to eachother and after a while the water will eat it's way through the block/rad!)
WaterWetter can work if you're using a bong system though as long as the drop is high enough (but it won't increase cooling much)...
 
Here is a nice example of a bong cooler, and here is what seems like a good guide to bong cooling.

There was a very large and informative thread about this at the [H]ard|Forum, but it seems it's gone. :(

The point is that you use a long PVC pipe/tube with a "y" split part near the bottom. The pipe ends into either an external reservoir or a small internal one (by plugging the tube a bit under the "y").
On the top of the tube you have a showerhead to create small droplets.

This will create a "radiator" which'll cool the water to a little below ambient.

The large diameter and heigth on the PVC the better the cooling, but it gives more evaporation. (You'll also need a larger showerhead)

To increase cooling someone thought to add a fan at the "y" to increase the time the water drops stay airborne (thus increasing the cooling effect), I seem to recall a 80mm fan was the most popular choice, but it has to fit the PVC pipe.


This again gave the problem of water being blown out of the top of the pipe (not a GoodThing), so someone came up with the idea to add scotch pad on the top of the bong. But depending on the fan it might not be enough, so you could end up using 3-7 pads to keep the water in.

Watch this space for the next installment of "History of the Bong coolers" ;) :D
 
never seen/heard of this before, but it looks to be pretty popular..

I never knew there was such thing as cheap water cooling :D Too bad its half gh3tt0
 
Hehe, yeah, it became all the rage when it was discovered.

And here is a real ghetto looking bong...

The page I'm linking to shows how people started adding meshes to increase the cooling effect of the bong by letting the water stay in the air longer.

One went all out and added aluminium meshes connected to a peltier element to maximise the effect, but then he had to cool the peltier too meaning still noisy. (And the bong isn't noiseless, since you'll have the sound of the water falling)

I seem to recall that the best was to use soap holders in plastic (thin plastic wire which is twined together into a flat cylinder) as the plastic didn't transmit much heat and collected water drops without creating too big drops when it fell further down (the smaller the drops, the better the cooling).

Then there were a whole lot of different ideas on how to create a reservoir which'd fill itself up/what to do if all the water suddenly disappeared.


One guy created a minature version of the bong to keep inside his case, to get rid of the ghetto look, and it worked very well.
But I can't remember how he got rid of the humidity problem which an open system is bound to have.

Oh, well. I'm sorry but that's all I remember right now, most of the threads where it was discussed is gone now (
athlonmp.gif
@ [H]ard|Forum), and I've deleted all the plans I had for creating my own system (which incorporated most of the best ideas)...

But if anyone else feels like filling in the gaps, be my guest :)

[EDIT]
Oh, and if you want to learn how to build one, take a look at Overclockers.com and look for bong/tower/nuclear cooling (under watercooling). They've removed some of the long guides (or at least I couldn't find them), but the ones still there does show what you need...
[/EDIT]
 
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