DICE Chiller/Heat Exchanger
 

Before stepping into the LN2/DICE Sub-Zero world I've decided to experiment with a little DIY DICE Chiller/Heat Exchanger just for fun.

Why, you may ask. Well, for fun :). I had some extra fittings, spare home depot tubing, some stuff from the kitchen (shhh, hope the wife don't find out), scrap insulation from work and want to put them to good use. Also, through the use of QDC's, this little project could be a cheap and easy way to tap into sub-ambient/sub-zero temps for a few fun OCing hours then return to ambient water cooling on the fly.

My normal loop:
Res>Pump>Rad>CPU>GPU>Res

Dice Chiller Loop:
Res>Pump>Heat Exchanger>CPU>GPU>Res

I'll explain a little more in the next post. Need to get my pictures together.

OCM :thumbsup:

So here we go.....

20' of Copper tubing, dual pass hand coiled to fit into a 1gal cooler. The lid will not be used.

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02194.jpg

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02199.jpg

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Insulated the cooler with 1" thick neoprene.

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02242.jpg


Test setup: Swiftech 355, 3/8 tubing, PSU, Kitchen Digital Thermometer, Cooper Coil, and Insulated Cooler.
Cooling Medium in Loop: 75% Anti-Freeze/25% DI Water
Liquid in 1gal Cooler (Heat-Exchanger): 3 Bottles of 91% Alcohol/1lbs of Dry Ice

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02813.jpg


Only heat being dumped into the loop is coming from the pump. This is only a Cooling Medium/Pump test to see if it will freeze at sub-zero temps or if the pump will stop operating.

Ambient Temp before starting pump

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02798.jpg


After 3 min of starting pump:

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02808.jpg

At this point temperature in the cooler is way below -50C. Cheap kitchen thermometer stopped working around -50C. Pump kept spinning but quit pumping. Liquid in the lines froze. Looks like the loop is way too effective of such a small heat load. Also, Liquid in loop needs some work.

After this test I tied strait anti-freeze but the little pump couldn't keep up because it got too thick.

Then tried 50% Anti-freeze/50% Alcohol and again the pump still issues pumping.

So finally I tried something a little different before I called it quits for the day.

Cooling Medium in Loop: 100% DI-Water
Liquid in 1gal Cooler (Heat-Exchanger): Tap Water/Ice from the freezer/1lbs of Dry Ice

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02822.jpg


This test was a success. The rig was able to maintain 0-1C for one hour with 1lbs of dry ice in the cooler before I had to drop in another 1lbs. The DI-Water in the loop did not freeze since it was just above freezing. Pump had no issues pumping. Held 0-1C for 3 hours dropping 1lbs of Dry Ice in the cooler once an hour.

Now, I do understand that adding the heat load of a CPU and two GPU cores will increase temps above 0c. Hence the reason for me first testing Alcohol/DICE. I'll like to run the Alcohol/DICE test again with a better cooling medium but am pretty sure the pump will not keep up.

What do you all think? Suggestions?

OCM :thumbsup:

Subscribed! :D

dice is co2....i wonder how cold you'll get your fluids to....

Updated Post.

I don't fear the frost ;)

Looks like the best DICE bucket I've ever seeen ;)

Did you find the insulation locally?

Cool plan....way different than I had imagined.:thumbsup:

My question is why use the reservoir? To try to get all the air out?

I would say your pump is working much harder than it has to with the tubes going through the top. If your feed line, at least, came out the side(below the water level) there would be no air in the feed line to fight with. I found that air was one of the biggest obstacles. The other big obstacle was my waterblocks design. It's made for the fluid to pass very slowly and I had to open it up.

Dice or I mean nice! :D Keep the pics and updates coming.

Thanks. Got the insulation from work, pulled it from a pile of scrap.


The res will be not be on the chiller. It will be part of my ordinary loop. When I want to use the little Dice Chiller, I'll just disconnect my rads via QDC's and throw the chiller in the loop. Thats the plan for now, or at least till I can find a good deal on a pot. ;)


Thanks ;)

Its nice and thick, might be good for socket insulation with the F1, if cut out just right.

dude that setup is sweet bro!

Sounds like a great plan to me.:thumbsup: I'm very interested to hear how it works out. I want to see how far you can get that 965BE. Mine runs like a champ @ 4.5GHz/1.5v if kept very cold.

Get me some measurement and I'll cut you out a piece if you want. I still have a little left.

Thanks Bro!

I think my main problem is going to be finding a coolant that can keep up being cooled by Alcohol/DICE. Water/DICE is not an issues. I should be able to run sub-ambient no problem but sub-zero will take some serious thinking.

dose that thermaltake shit work?
that's what i have used in the past..
idk.. i have never taken it down sub zero with it..

After doing a little reading, looks like Alcohol freeze around -89C.

(3) 16oz bottles of 91% Alcohol mixed in with 1# of Dry Ice made for a very thick Alcohol paste. Temps must have topped out close to -80C. Unfortunately my crappy kitchen thermometer wigged out at -50C.

Hmmm, I need to do more thinking........

Straight antifreeze is good to -84 Celsius.

You just need to not be asking your pump to fight through vapor-lock as well as pump viscous fluid. You probably would need to mod out the water-block a little too, but that's easy. If you can make it gravity fed and put the pump near the end of the return line that takes a lot of strain off the pump......Mine anyways. :)

If methanol wasn't so corrosive to o-rings and highly flammable I would give it a try . Not sure about its ability to pick up heat though. It freeze at -97C. I have quite a bit of experience with methanol injection in high compression engines but I wouldn't really want to run it in a computer in my house. :ohcrap:

I still don't think that DDC pump will handle straigt anti-freeze for too long. Mine was pumping but got really hot and flow slowed way way down. And this is with no waterblocks in the loop.

hmmm didn't know that!
learned a lot here

I've seen acetone used in chillers, but it eats through stuff pretty quick.

.......not to mention the flammable issues......

Yeah, wouldn't want to end up like Pedro.

http://www.fni.com/~dononeal/Pedro.jpg

When are you planning to go after it again?

I was thinking maybe straight Jack Daniel's for coolant... :)

Whenever. I'm still waiting for my MB to get back from RMA. Also waiting to hear back from Chew* for a backup board. In the meanwhile I have more than enough time to experiment. Why do you ask?

Everclear may be a better choice :)

:rofl
well... we are at where Jack Daniels made! :thumbsup:

Like I said if you can make it gravity fed and reduce the amount of necessary lift to return the coolant, your pump will not be working nearly as hard.

My $25 (non-submersed)submersible harbor freight fountain pump pumps 70% antifreeze @ -40C very slowly, but effectively.......and stays nice and chilly in it's 6-pack cooler. But it WILL NOT work if there is air in the lines, and I don't think it would work as well if I hadn't modded the block.

And you definitely don't want to end up like Pedro.:shock:

Ok, using this resource as a base I found out a couple of interesting things that can help out my testing.

http://www.ashland.com/pdfs/technica...sh%20Point.pdf

(Color coded to make things a little easier on the eyes)
Liquid in the Cooler
Liquid in the Loop

90% Alcohol / 10% Water: Freezes @ -57C
70% Ethylene Glycol / 30% Water: Freezes @ -64C

The Alcohol / DICE in my cooler was pretty much a frozen paste and the anti-freeze in the loop ended up as a frozen slush. So the above specs do make some sense in my real world tests.

90% Alcohol / 10% Water: Freezes @ -57C
50% Methanol / 50% Water: Freezes @ -54C
60% Methanol / 40% Water: Freezes @ -71C

Methanol / Water may be worthy of a test run. Just need to make sure I have a fire extinguisher ready :)

I could also test a lower grade Alcohol which would raise the freezing point. That would help keep the cooling medium from freezing and still be sub-zero.

70% Alcohol / 30% Water: Freezes @ -29C
50% Ethylene Glycol / 50% Water: Freezes @ -34C

Might run the latter test today....or tomorrow.

OCM :thumbsup:

Success!!

Went out and got 4lbs of DICE, 1Gal Preston Anti-Freeze, 3 bottles of 70% Alcohol and 1 bottle of 90% Alcohol.

Made a 50% Anti-Freeze / 50% Di-Water Mix for the loop. Dropped 3 bottles of 70% Alcohol in the cooler. Added 2lbs of DICE slowly bring down temps. Kicked on the pump and watched the magic happen.

Within 20 min of slowly adding DICE to the Alcohol temps dropped from 25C to -20.5C. Ran at -20C for an hour then added a bottle of 90% Alcohol to the cooler along with some more DICE (which brought up the alcohol content in cooler from 70% to 75%). Within 5 min temps in the loop dropped from -20C to -25C. So far I've been holding -25 for 4 hours. I'll keep everything running till I run out of DICE.

No problems slushing in the loop and also no pumping problems.

Next I'll shot for -30C by adjusting my Alcohol/Water mix.

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02854.jpg

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02867.jpg

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02874.jpg

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http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02886.jpg

http://i464.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/DSC02899.jpg

Thank you for reading,
OCM :thumbsup:

Grats Freezius Maximus, now just need a system to abuse and your transition to the dark side will be complete "saberfight:

You sick bastard!!

I love it :D !!!!

you can get 99% at the grocery or wallyworld. (not always the later, might only get the 2 pint containers at wally world for cheap...)
Hit more stores if it aint at yours...

Great work dude! :clapping: One question....can you reuse the alcohol from the mix or is that used and done with? I never played with DICE yet.

Should have my motherboard back from RMA sometime next week. Then :ohcrap:

Recycled the Alcohol. Poured it into an empty plastic gallon jug. Used the funnel, coffee filter method to keep it clean.


99% Alcohol may be to concentrated for my 50/50 anti-freeze mix since the Alcohol will freeze around -73C and 50/50 around -34C. Looks like 78% Alcohol will be the sweat spot. So far my Alcohol is at 75% rendering me a temp of -25C. Hopefully 78%-80% will get me 30C. Right where I want to be with this little ghetto fabulous rig. ;)

OCM :thumbsup:

Well, looks like this little fun experiment is over.

Picked up a F1 EE pot off sno.lcn :good: No more tip toeing for me.

OCM :thumbsup:

Awesome...I just got mine in the mail today. Did you buy new or used?

Used and abused. $130 Shipped from GA to HI.

Ahhhhh...I paid $141 shipped from Puerto Rico. I'm going to try to recondition it so it's all shiny and maybe get all new insulation too, only for looks...the insulation on it is good I'm sure.

Congratulations bro! :thumbsup:

EDIT: here is a sneak peek............definitely looks like it has seen some use. And it seems I may have lost a nut and a little black spacer because the hardware was double bagged, but the inside bag had a hole in it.

Nice deal off sno, welcome to the rest of your life bro ;)
Congrats bro, exciting times ahead for you :D

Thanks.
I guess it's shiny enough, but I'm pissed about losing that hardware. EDIT: I found a little black spacer thing very similar that works perfect....maybe the one I lost?

I'll get 4 new matching nuts, np. Must be you tighten them down until the black things touch, huh?

The black spring back stops (if you wanna call them that) don't need to be touching each other when you tighten down the nuts. That would be exceptionally too tight and likely the board wouldnt boot because the pin contact would be messed up. Snug is good enough. Take a look thru some of the sub-zero posts and you'll see how much tension is being used generally.

I screwed 1 down that far and nearly needed pliers to remove it, so I was thinking that may be a little tight.

Probably have to bring home some DICE on Friday.

How much should I get so I have enough to play for at least 6-8 hours? And what will I need to go with it and how much?:)

Thanks!