Looking for ways to test exotic (self made) CPU coolers without actually using a real CPU

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Gunzar

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Jun 19, 2013
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10,510
Hello everybody,

My subject line pretty much sums it up. I recently got into trying to design and build my own CPU coolers with my own tools and materials. I've been interested in cooling for years now and I finally decided to try to make my own cooling solutions. However, my cooling solutions are nothing at all like what's on the market today and my ideas are very exotic. I really can't tell before testing them if they'll be nearly as effective as what's already on the market or not; I can make some educated estimates, but like I said, it's nothing like what's on the market today and I really feel the need to test my designs before I know if they're actually reliable or not.

I was wanting to make and test a few of these designs, but after making a 3D model of a cooler that I wanted to try to make for a CPU, I realized that in order to test this that I would need to put it on a CPU. However.. The only CPU's that I have around are all costly i7's and I don't really want to test my first exotic cooling solution on my $300+ CPU! I thought about ordering some cheap CPU's like maybe some Pentiums or Celerons... however, I then realize that my tests wouldn't be accurate, because if I use a Pentium for example, it has less cores and is (generally speaking) cooler than an i7 under load, and in the end I want to be putting my cooler on something that produces as much heat as an i7. Also, as all of my computers are in use most of the time I would need to buy other new hardware such as RAM, a PSU, and a motherboard. Overall, I feel like this would be a very costly and ineffective way to test a cooler, and as I would be testing lots of design ideas I have over the next few months/years, it's more or less inevitable that I kill the processor and have to buy a new one.

Now that all of that's been said.. I can get to my actual question and the main point of this entire thread. I was wondering if there was a cheap and easy way to emulate CPU temperatures under load, without actually buying a new CPU and investing in a new test system. I'm not 100% opposed to the idea of buying a new system, but it seems to me like it might be easy to get some ceramic and make it into the shape and size of a processor, and then maybe get a controllable heat element and try to simulate CPU heat temperatures without spending a fortune. Would something like this be possible? I want to be able to easily monitor temperatures, and I would also like the results to be similar to what I would get on an actual processor if possible. And obviously if I overheat a piece of ceramic or don't cool it properly, it won't have fatal effects on the ceramic like it would with a processor, and if it somehow did, it would be much cheaper to replace. Since I'm thinking of testing multiple designs, all of which being extremely different from what's on the market today, something like this would be invaluable to me and I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to do this? Or do I need to simply accept the fact that trying to build my own coolers is going to potentially be very costly?

Sorry for the really long post but I wanted to make everything crystal clear and help everyone understand specifically what it is I'm trying to do. I felt that way I would get the most help with the topic. Thanks to anyone who takes a look and tries to help out. I know it's not really talked about much but that's why I decided to make a thread about it here.

Thanks again!
 
Solution
DarkSable
1) Buy an OLD cpu. They'll run a lot hotter, and will be cheap.

2) Why not just get a heat coil with a temperature sensor - basically what you're saying without the pain of dealing with ceramic? Or better yet, why not get a peltier cooler? They're often used to chill watercooling components, and the 'hot' side is usually cooled with... a standard CPU cooler. :)

The only trouble I can think of with them is that if they're cooled too effectively, the cold side doesn't chill nearly as much, but if you're not actually cooling anything with it, it doesn't matter. They'll also be the cheapest option by far.

EDIT: And if by any chance you have a background in thermodynamics and do manage to come up with an awesome, efficient CPU...
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DarkSable

DarkSable

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Sep 27, 2012
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1) Buy an OLD cpu. They'll run a lot hotter, and will be cheap.

2) Why not just get a heat coil with a temperature sensor - basically what you're saying without the pain of dealing with ceramic? Or better yet, why not get a peltier cooler? They're often used to chill watercooling components, and the 'hot' side is usually cooled with... a standard CPU cooler. :)

The only trouble I can think of with them is that if they're cooled too effectively, the cold side doesn't chill nearly as much, but if you're not actually cooling anything with it, it doesn't matter. They'll also be the cheapest option by far.

EDIT: And if by any chance you have a background in thermodynamics and do manage to come up with an awesome, efficient CPU cooler that fits in a tiny space, well... I love small form factor computers, so... ;p
 
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Gunzar

Honorable
Jun 19, 2013
10
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10,510


The idea about buying an old processor isn't a bad idea. However, wouldn't I need older hardware to run it on as well? All of my computers are DDR3-based and use an LGA 1150 socket. That's the problem I see with that, though it is a very good potential option, so I will consider it.

And as far as using a heat coil alone without dealing with the ceramic, do you think this is a viable option? The reason I was thinking about going with ceramic is because I wanted to use a heat coil or other heating element to heat the ceramic, which would be the right size and shape to correctly fit my coolers. If I used a heat coil, it wouldn't be the proper form factor and I would be attempting to cool something that wouldn't exactly fit my cooler.

As for peltier cooling, were you simply recommending that I try to use that in some way? Peltier coolers were actually a big inspiration in a few of my cooling ideas and I love the idea of using heat pumps in some way. I might use it in some designs later, but for now I just want to focus on the design that I have modeled and am ready to test.

I could see maybe mixing both of your solutions and adding to it a little bit. A heat coil may suffice for the first part of testing, and that'll just give me very general results. Even if it doesn't fit my cooler correctly, it could be used just to verify that my cooler is doing its job at a more basic level before I move it on to using an older CPU, like you suggested. That'd be good for some basic temperature monitoring and testing on a cheap piece of hardware. Then if that passes as well, I'll just move it onto one of my i7's and test it more thoroughly there.

Thanks for your help and the reply! I'm not going to mark this as "answered" yet, I'll leave it open for a few more hours and see if some other people can come up with some other solutions. I would still really like to see some way to semi-accurately emulate CPU temperatures and fit the form factor of a CPU without having to use a real CPU. However if I can't find a solution like that, your ideas helped me and I'll do what I suggested above with mixing the ideas together.

Oh, and my cooling solutions are going to generally be for performance with big computers meant for gaming and other intense tasks like editing video and such, but I may look into HTPC / small form factor cooling in the near future.
 
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DarkSable

DarkSable

Judicious
Sep 27, 2012
8,890
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You would need older hardware to run it on as well, but it should be picked up for fairly cheap - you would still want to use DDR3, but you could easily get away with 2GB of ram, whatever spare cruddy hard drive you had laying around, integrated graphics, and any semi-decent $60 power supply. Considering how you're messing with coolers and swapping them around, you'd probably want it to be on a test bench. So yeah, it's an option, and probably the best one to get close-to-life results, especially since it will also let you test mounting solutions and pressures, but that might come down the road.


I got what your intent was with the heat coil - I was just saying that ceramic is probably going to be a pain to work with, and you could just use a plate of aluminium to get the same effect. Remember that you actually don't want even heat dispersion, since processors have very definite hot spots.


As for the Peltier coolers, I may not have phrased my idea well enough, because I'm going to try again, since I feel it's the best option for this.
1) Peltier coolers have a cold side (thus why they're called coolers), but in order for that side to get cold, the OTHER side has to get hot... but you can't get it too hot, which is why you see Peltier coolers attached to watercooling loops with custom water blocks and 212 EVOs on the other side.
2) Instead of thinking of it as a cooler, think of it as an object with a hot side and a cold side.
3) You can take advantage of this by using the HOT side as a simulation for a processor - it would give you much easier voltage control than a heat element, and would save you time and (most likely) money.
4) In order for the cold side to get cold, the hot side has to have something dissipating its heat, but there is no such restriction on the cold side... so you can freely ignore it and just focus on its benefits as a great processor-simulator.

Anyways, I'm just throwing some ideas out there that might or might not be effective - I think your best bet would be to run it on a Peltier cooler for $60 and see just how much heat you can dissipate (since you can get a wide range of peltier coolers), before moving it to either old hardware or your i7 if you're secure in its abilities, to play around with how to mount it and such.

Best of luck, and I'm happy to help you bounce around any more ideas you have.

(Yeah, I figured as much, but SFF isn't as much of a restriction as you might think - I have a custom rig that fits a completely watercooled, overclocked i5, 670, and four hard drives in one tower the size of a shoebox, and two 280mm radiators plus the pump and reservoir plus exaust fans in another tower the same size.)
 
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