Extreme cooling for extreme weather (formerly "Vapochill Case Cooler")

[joseangel]

Hi guys,

Have you tried this cooling solution. I says it would work with your current air-stream based cooling solution but keeping inside-case temperatures very low.

http://www.vapochill.com/main/page.asp?sideid=402

Could you please have a look and tell me your opinion. Do you think it worths the 1700? is is priced at?

Thanks

 

[Goatsan]

unless you plan on getting the maximum over clock, it still might not be worth it to me, considering all the stuff you have to do to stop condensation.

 

[joseangel]

I have to say I am not doing any OC t the moment but it is certainly planned on the near future. Not extreme OC but enough to get the performance I feel I paid for.

The issue here is that I am living in Spain. That is extremely high summer temperature. The termometer could go as high as 35ºC - 40ºC so inside case air-flow temperature is not low enough to cool down anything.

About condensation, it says somewhere behind that hyperlink that the Case Cooler dries the air to prevent it. In fact, that was one of the issues that worried me since I never used "special" cooling solutions (Ummmm, that could be why my PC never lasts more than a year).

I guessed the compressor used on VapoChill Case Cooler is the same as the one used on CPU Cooler so I wanted to know if any of you could give an idea of how noisy it is. An above anything else, if condensation is really an issue with this solution.

If you heard of any other cooling system that could help me survive here in Hell, please tell me. Please.

 

[slaves123]

joseangel te aseguro que no vale 1700 euros, es un buen sistema, no lo dudo, sin embargo me parece que el precio esta un poco fuera de orbita, en todo caso deberias pensar en un sistema de referigeracion por agua o un peltier, que puede constarte 200 euros, que no es algo barato, sin embargo es mucho mas barato que los 1700 euros que cuesta el vapochill, no tiene ningun sentido, te diria que por nada del mundo lo compres, por esa plata podes comprar un aire acondicionado y dirigirlo directamnete al CPU, aunque no lo recomiendo... espero que te halla servido, un saludo desde argentina

 

[joseangel]

A mi tambien me parece caro, pero no he sido capaz de encontrar nada más que baje la temperatura de toda la caja. Para la CPU, el north-bridge y la tarjeta de video hay soluciones de agua y peltier, incluso para la RAM puedes ponerle disipadores y un ventilador. Pero ¿qué hacer con los discos duros? ¿Y con los reguladores de tension, los famosos MOSFET?

Tenia pensado poner el peltier de thermaltake para la CPU y montarmela con agua para cpu, vga y nb, pero no se que hacer. Algo de disipadores en RAM, supongo, y llorar para que los discos esten frios y duren más.

En fin, que con el calor de aqui dudo que pueda nunca overclockear mi sistema. Me han sugerido incluso en algunos sitios que underclockee el sistema, asi que no te digo nada de la alegria que tengo.

Sigo en un mar de dudas, pero muchas gracias por tu ayuda.

 

[ToxicWaste]

translate to English, por favor.

 

[joseangel]

Here follows the best translation I can do:

joseangel I assure you that it does not be worth 1700 euro. It is a good system, no doubt on it, nevertheless it seems that the price is a little out of orbit. In any case you should think about water-cooling or a peltier. That can cost around 200 euro. That is not somewhat cheap, but it is far cheaper that the 1700 euro that costs the vapochill. I would never recommend you buying it, for that money can buy an air conditioned and to direct it straight onto the CPU, although i do not recommend doing so.... I hope that has been usefull. Greetings from Argentina

And here follows my own post translated:

It looks expensive to me too, but I have not been able to find anything more to lower the temperature of all the box. For the CPU, the north-bridge and the video card there are solutions based on water and peltier, even for the RAM you can use passive heat-sinks and a fan. But, what to do with the hard disks? And with the voltage regulators, the famous MOSFET?

I intend to use a peltier from Thermaltake on the CPU and tweak it with water-cooling for cpu, vga and nb, but at the moment I do not know what to do. I guess, passive heatsinks on RAM, and to cry so that the disks be cold and they last longer.

In short, that with the heat of here I doubt that I would ever be able to overclock my system. Some even suggested me in some places that underclock the system. That makes me feel really happy.

I'm still swimming in an ocean of doubts, but many thanks by your aid.

Hope this clarifies the posts properly. If there is anythiong you do not understand, please do not hesitate to post again and I will try to explain it all. But, please, be patient, my english is not my best.

Regards,

Jose Angel

PD: By the way do you know about any alternative to cool down inside case airflow?

 

[ToxicWaste]

Thanks for the translations. I agree, the vapochill is expensive and probably only worth it in extreme situations.

As an alternative, there are ducting kits out there that will allow you to take air from the outside straight to your cpu, ensuring it is getting the coolest possible air, since the ambient case temp can't warm up the air first.

Beyond that, just having lots a well placed fans. All cases have one or two front intake and one or two rear exhaust fans. Plus you can add them to the side of your case (usually as intake blowing on CPU and/or on VGA card)... I have two in my case side, on top of CPU and one over VGA, so I doubled up. Plus there can be some benefit to putting an exhaust fan on top of the case (often called a blow hole).

 

[joseangel]

I think I did not explain my problem properly.

Outside case air is too warm. Outside it is summer (not now, of course) and in Spain that means temperatures up to 40ºC. That will not cool down anything even with a direct incoming air flow. Think about it like if I am living on a desert and no air conditioner is available.

See now where the issue comes from? Did I explain it properly now?

 

[ToxicWaste]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy a window mounting a/c unit for your room, then to buy a Vapochill? Then, both you and your PC get to cool down...

 

[joseangel]

Not allowed by house owner.

 

[Overkast]

Jose Angel, you say your computers usually don't last more than a year or so. Is that because the CPU itself is dying due to overheating? Or is it other hardware components in computer that fail instead?

 

[slaves123]

So... and writing in english jose... if you can't use an air conditioning system.... I recomend you a peltier for the CPU, and that's it, you needn't more. reallly, if you have a very new VGA perhaps water cooling... but I really don't think so... the rest of the component don't matter, the HDD are not so critical... you can put a HDD fan if you wish... the rest will be OK, good luck

Suerte, y manteneme informado por favor

 

[joseangel]

Thanks God that yearly failure is not the whole PC. I had actually a CPU burn out and two hard disks that stopped working.

The CPU did get burnt because I overclocked it slightly on winter. Then summer season came and the CPU got too hot. I guess my motherboard did not behave properly (it is 5 years old by now) when the CPU overheated because it was supposed to power down. It did not. By that time (two-three years ago) my CPU model was much cheaper so it actually was not so bad.

I never could guess HDD failed because of overheating, but I have been reading for a while now about overclocking and I beleieve I have learnt that overclocking overheats all system periferals (including HDD) so they last less. These failures happened before the CPU meltdown (;D) that made me worry about heat and start reading a bit further than what I did to overclock my CPU that bit. I know, that was my fault.

I never had a mem burned out but I have seen it failing from overheating. Just lowered clock speed on summer and everything got back to normal.

By now I just have to remmember that my PC need adjustments every spring. The real issue comes from my need of a new PC. I am planning on what to get and what to do to it, but from my bas experience with heat, I am very worried about burning a 300$ CPU. You know, I would feel kind of stupid loosing that much money because of rising FSB from 200 to may be 230. Nice performance improvement at a high cost, don't you think. You would say then: "ok, do not overclock". That would do the job, but also leave me thinking I am so stupid that cannot get a bit more from the equipment I paid for as everyone other does. So I thougt I could find a way to keep things cold inside and avoid any damage from overclocking (or even extreme rare summer temperature).

 

[joseangel]

Actually I thoug about a new cooling system that could dissipate heat even when air temperature is very high.

Think of using peltier on CPU, VGA, NB, SB, Mem sticks and HDD surface. All of them controlled and feed from a home made PCI card (I could do the electronic/electrical design and code a driver). That would put a cold plate over everything that needs to be cold and (this is what I find interesting) upper plate (the hot plate) is actually hotter than it would be by normal heat conduction.

That hot plate is actually far hotter than air because of peltier effect. That means that a heatsink over it would become hotter than normal and would actually be a fine heat dissipator trying to lower its temperature down to air temperature. That lets the peltier to get the cold plate coldder and the hot plate hotter (again above air temperature).

Chage the HS+fan system with wattercooling like this: http://www.zerofanzone.co.uk/

And there we go

What do you think about it? Does really the hot plate of a peltier get hotter than 40ºC? I know it could go as far as I want just pushing more current into the peltier unit, but I meant without producing any condensation on cold plate.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: joseangel
Not allowed by house owner.

OMG i seriously can't imagine living at 40C with no AC.

 

[joseangel]

Lucky you.

 

[boardsportsrule]

ok, that is 1700 euro,i think thatis about 2000...whoah ok now for 2000 lets see what i can figure out here... get

1) 2X dual 120mm fan RAD's(150 us MAX)
2) 2X mcw-50T(one for NB[needs mod to fit], one for GPU)(120 max)
3) DD-4 pelt(70 max)
4)8X 120mm fan(80 max)
5)2X meanwell psu's(250 max)
6)fan controller(25 max)
7)random things(60 max)
8)new bigger case(150)
9)pump(70)
10)tubing(15)
11)shipping(100)
12) dram coolers( totally worthles POS's..do no help even in 45C weather)(30 shipped

SOO lets see thats 150+120+70+80+250+25+60+150+70+15+100+30=1100 ISH...so for just about half the price you get a kickass system..and let me tell ya..tha setup would kickass...lol!!!

 

[boardsportsrule]

oh yeah, dont forget the SB( zalman passive....10 shipped...) and the zalman hdd cooler(30?) both need fans for good cooling(10) so bam...lookit that!!

 

[joseangel]

I do not understand what you mean. As I said, my englush is not my best and you are using too many acronyms (?) and take too many words out. I see there is a list of components I could use, but I do not know if you are makeing a serius suggestion or just teasing me.

Going one step further on what I previusly suggested (Peltier+watercooling) here is what I found at
SwiftTech we site. They have systems for CPU and GPU. The embedded Peltier unit does not have a temperature sensor so the use of a voltage regulator is senseless.

Before you ask, that voltage control from temperature is the way Thermaltake Subzero4G does avoid condensation. That is, when cold plate is too cold compared to ambient temperature is when condensation can occur. Avoiding that helps prevent condensation.

Some other watter cooling elements found make think I am not the only one worried about this. For example, a hard disk block, a GPU block, and some others from Innovatek. The only missing is the memory block, the south bridge and mosfets blocks. No peltier units attached, but things need time to come.

I know this thread looks kind of stupid now, but can you think of any other way to get the PC cooled down efficiently with minimum noise and 40ºC weather? If you can, please tell me.

From what I found I could say soon there would be more intelligent Peltier+Watter systems like Thermaltake's. I hope they would provide me with a cheaper and better solution.

Thanks for your help guys. I'll keep looking for the best way to do this and keep you updated if you want me to do so.

Regards,

Jose Angel

 

[boardsportsrule]

ok jose, ill get a whole thing for ya, and write it in my best english ...ill get back to ya!!!i love spending other ppl's money

 

[boardsportsrule]

btw, that was a serisou list...thats what u should get, about half the price and everyhting is nice and cool

 

[boardsportsrule]

btw, that was a serisou list...thats what u should get, about half the price and everyhting is nice and cool

 

[joseangel]

That fine. Thanks. I'll love to hear your suggestions on how to spend my money. Actually the PC I'll buy would be quite expensive (I want it to last a few years) so a high performance cooling system shouldn't be an issue.

From your suggestion I guess you are a fan fan. Wouldn't that be too noisy? I mean, I would like to be able to sleep while my PC is running in the same room. That is why I looked at water instead of air when I thought of something+peltier. I suppose using fans is not as bad since no (good) PS comes fanless and no UPS is fanless or even includes low noise fans. Don't you think my peltier+water freak would do the job? To be honest I am absolutely new to water cooling (and peltiers, of course) and I do not even know the temperatures that would keep my components happy. Looks like CPU prefers 0ºC, as do memory, GPU, GPU memory and north bridge. Hard disks and mosfet around 20ºC. If I am right, while weather temperature is around 40ºC, I need a peltier on each of them to let hotplate rise above weather temp and let the cooling system do its job (air or water, does not matter). Do you agree? If I do not keep hotplate above weather temperature then the heatsink would transfer heat INTO the chips!!! Of course, until the chips burn out or get so hot that the heat transfer becomes stable.

On (kind of) extreme weather conditions, the only way to let heat transfer work the right way is using peltier. Do you agree with that?

By the way, If we keep on this for a while I will as you many questions. I not only want to get a nice system, but also learning enough to understand what I am doing and what to do if anything goes wrong. So please, be patient and tell me when you get bored of my questions or myself.

Thanks for your help and interest.

 

[joseangel]

Buff. I have been doing a few calculations on peltier units from Melcor Thermoelectrics (with their AZTEC software) and it is almost impossible to pump so much heat at these conditions. Just for the CPU (heat transfer of around 100w, CPU temperature 20ºC and ambient temperature of 40ºC) I would need 5 peltier units cascaded (each 3'3 milimeters thick) and a total amount of 30A of current!!! :disgust:

100w is not that much for an slightly overclocked CPU and an error margin of 20%. 20ºC is not that low for a CPU and 40ºC is the only thing I cannot change (but with air conditioning). I guess in winter (0ºC) it would work fine but not in summer.

By the way, all I have learnt about peltier comes from: http://www.peltier-info.com/info.html. Thanks to those behind that web site.

Regards,

Jose Angel

PS: I finally surrender. So many peltier units and such power requirements would lead the project even above the Vapochill Case cooler price. I've just realized I COULD NOT HAVE A NEW PC!!!!!