water cooler radiator in a mini fridge....would it work??

Im by no means an expert in watercooling, but you may find it more practical to put the resevoir in there instead.

My reason for this is the heat from the radiator would be quite substantial and since the fridge has no where to exhaust, it would have to constantly be on in order to keep the hot air from building. I don't think it would be too long before your fridge kicked out.

Again im only hypothesizing here.

Why risk burning up or drowning your system to save $100?

what if you forgot to move it when the heat turned on 8O

I am also not an expert, but I think condensation build-up in the fridge is a problem for what your proposing. I would not recommend it. You could build your own watercooled system and place the radiator in any number of chilled locations. My computer room gets really warm so I have a window unit air-conditioner just for that room. I thought about mounting the radiator from a watercooled rig in front of the vents, If you wanted to take you rig for LAN gaming, drop the radiator in a cooler of Ice, along with your beverage of choice. Never done this, but seems reasonable to me.

A lot of radiators have fans attached to them... still think it's a good idea to drop them in a cooler of ice?

Wouldn't you actually get condensation buildup on the block if the water is cool enough? You would probably need to keep an eye on the cpu block for something similar to that.

I think it's a bad idea, and here's why.

First of all, do not confuse temperature and heat.

A car engine generates a lot of heat, but its
temperature is maintained by a very efficient
radiator positioned at the front of car,
to intake cooler air.

A refrigerator lowers the interior temperature
rather slowly, removing only small amounts of
heat from the contents during small intervals
of time, e.g. 5-10 seconds.

If your CPU generates more heat than the
refrigerator can dissipate, your water-cooled
radiator will overcome the maximum rate of
cooling of which the refrigerator is capable.

Just because the interior of a refrigerator is
cold e.g. 34 degrees F. does NOT mean
that the refrigerator can cool its contents rapidly.


A better experiment would be to situate your
computer on the floor of a room with an
air conditioner. If your radiator is placed
at or near the floor, where cold air congregates,
the fan on that radiator will flush it with
cold ambient air, and the warmer exhaust
air will rise naturally (because hot air rises).

The most important variable, under these
conditions, would then be the speed of the
fan on your radiator, just as an increase
in a car's speed necessarily results in
an increase in the velocity of cooler air
entering the car's radiator, causing that
radiator to exhaust hot air faster.


This solution solves several problems at once:
there is no condensation to worry about;
the radiator is guaranteed an unlimited supply
of fresh cold air, as long as the AC's thermostat
is operating correctly; the radiator's
warmer exhaust air will rise to the ceiling,
where it will not recycle back into the radiator;
and, the user(s) are guaranteed a comfortable
air-conditioned environment at or near 72 degrees F.

At that point, it would be ideal to have a way
of exhausting the warmer air that congregates
at the ceiling of this room where your computer
is situated. In our hotel, we have a window AC
unit next to the main outside door, and there
is a ceiling fan in the bathroom that exhausts
moist air to the outside.

This "flow-through" setup quite effectively
cools the P4 workstation which we use to
access the Internet for several hours every day:
our Northwood core rarely goes above 80 degrees F.,
with stock air-cooling.


So, use the KISS principle in engineering:
Keep It Simple, Sally!! aka Occam's Razor:
the simplest solution is always the best solution.


If your experiment fails, you've also ruined
a perfectly good refrigerator. NOT GOOD!!


I hope this helps.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/

Joeman42,

That may work at extending the life of the mini-fridges cooling unit. But bear in mind that it will still need to run alot more than if it were just cooling soda's or food. And on top of that having multiple rad's will slow your flow rate considerably. So you will need either a powerful pump (like a AC pond pump) or multiple pumps.

Also you will need to protect your system from condensation on the return line from the mini fridge. This is due to the fact that the coolant will be below ambient air temps, and will cause condensation to collect. In order to protect your system you will need to wrap the lines and either coat the mobo with polyeurothane or buy something similar to this kit:
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/ [...] 30c367s525
It will protect your board and cpu from condensation.

Plus by wraping your lines and procting you motherboard you will have the added advantage of insulating your nice cool liquid from the outside air temps. Thus giving yourself more headroom for overclocking.

-ouch1

Shadow has spoken................... LOL

Being a mod here would be a nightmare. Peeps post mindlessly, no idea about forums, they get googled here. It's again the Radio Shack of info, lots of peeps in the door, they leave and never come back. But a good retail start. "OMG, I need to find a place with informed salespersons.

You and me (questionable you) work them to places they get what they need. I don't come here to work my post count, I come here to help and put them on the path. Most find a better path. My forums are soo busy to go back 3 years would be a Whaaa?

Shadow,

I do know it has been dead for 3 years, but Joeman asked so I gave him a little more info to work with. I think he may be onto something this time around. He is planning on not using the firdge to do a majority of the cooling. He want to just use the fridge to bring toe coolant down to sub ambient temps after dumping most of the heat via other rad's. Which depending on the amount of coolant and air temps it ia feasible.

-ouch1

Sorry to beat this "dead horse", but I had this idea several years ago while attempting to OC a P2 300......never tried it though....

Today, I'm thinking about it all over again, but rather than a small fridge I'm considering using a window A/C unit instead....My idea is to disassemble the unit, remove the cooling coils, submerge them into an ice chest filled with antifreeze then dunk my radiator into the fluid.....The way I see it, the A/C unit should provide MORE than enough cooling power for a 180 watt CPU allowing for better overclocking......