Thread: Another Cooling idea from a dreamer...

Wow that's a long post...

Originally Posted by evandude

and as for the suggestion of pumping AC into the computer directly instead of water cooling:

well, in that case there's two concerns:
1) the radiator and water combination are probably more efficient than the CPU heatsink and fan... since the water cooling is reasonably efficient, and the radiator can be significantly larger than a CPU heatsink.

Perhaps so, but like I said before, water cooling in a closed, warm environment (like your trunk) doesn't do jack. When the ambient air rises that much, the water cooling is not going to do anything at all, regardless of how efficient it is. You could increase the size of the reservoir, the size of the pump and the hoses, and even the radiator and fans. If the radiator doesn't have anywhere to dump the heat -- because the trunk/room is too hot, then it will little by little start removing less and less heat from the CPU.

Even if your CPU is 100-120°F, the inside of the trunk is what? the same or hotter on a hot summer day? At that point the radiator is hot, the air in the trunk is hot and the "coolant" in the reservoir is hot. Not much heat can be dissipated in there without getting some part of the loop out of there.

2) condensation. if you've ever had your AC on full blast on a hot day and had one of the vents aimed toward a window, you probably know about this. hot CPU heatsink + cold air is a recipe for condensation. Therefore, you can isolate it by cooling the radiator instead. (which could be away from the PC, where condensation wouldn't matter)

Good point, but unless you run arctic temps inside your cabin, I don't think (IMO, obviously) that you'll have to worry about condensation. What I'm talking about is ducting air from the cabin into the trunk... or even directly onto the HSF to keep it cool (chipset and video be damned! ). If you blast AC directly onto the mobo, then you might have a problem -- if you like running the AC at 50° full blast or something, but otherwise I think it might be ok.

Now we just need a guinea pig.

Originally Posted by evandude

I'd be more worried about running the tubes through the engine bay though. even if they aren't too close to the engine, it gets pretty hot in there, and if 6 or so feet (firewall to bumper vent to firewall) of the tubing was exposed to that heat, you'd be losing a lot of efficiency... perhaps if you ran them way off to one side, and put some form of insulation on them...

Or mount the radiator like you would an intercooler, under the main radiator, and pipe outside of the engine bay -- weld it or bolt it onto the underbody somehow. But then you'd have to worry about debris from the road...

I still think the car has a perfectly good cooling system that's just DYING to get used... and you don't have to worry about maintaining two cooling systems (the car's plus the computer's)...

With the peltier devices, they use ALOT of power and create condensation, so in the long run you need to have watercooling for the PC, or its quite pointless.

As for watercooling, you could run 2 pipes from back to the front of the car, this actually has been done with amps, and it worked, cant remember how the guy hooked the radiator up tho

Depending on the system you are running the bigger pump you will need but I think a small one will do provide you dont overclock the cpu

Now an idea is to put watercooling on your system, run the pipes to the front then use air con to cool the rad that should work fine hehe

I started this thread to talk about making a cooling system similiar to a cars ac system........It has nothing to do with liquid cooling. i mentioned it as the lever that got me thinking of using a very very small refridgeration system. I know about liquid cooling and thats not what im looking for. im looking for information and ideas on how to make the compressor, condensor, ect ect.

Drop a Prometeia case in your car, and basta. Oh wait... you'll end with heat from the cpu, plus heat from the compressor (100% efficiency is a myth)....