Nearly Frozen Loop :D

[Birk]

so its -46 with the windchill outside right now and i decided to play with some cooling using the crisp air...........

got my idle temps to 0c (took less then 60 seconds) but at this point my rad started to crackle and my pump started to struggle.... AAAAAAHHHHH. The tubes got tight and air bubbles started to form in the rez.

Probably shouldn't have done that haha.

hit P95 and under load here are my temps.

[Birk]

tempted to try antifreeze in the lines but not sure im ready to venture into this form of water cooling quite yet. at least not without a spare rad and pump handy

[lowfat]

FYI windchill would have no affect on loop temperature. Just skin.

Did you just take the whole rig outside?

[Birk]

yea i know bout the windchill evaporation stuff, its -36 without if that matters, and I just ran my rad close to the window, its off now incase of condensation and i'll leak test it again in the morning.

[jumpload]

at least not without a spare rad and pump handy

+1

man i wish i had a 2nd water cooling setup too, id join ya in your experiments.
that is to say fridge freezer to water rad to system setup.
iv bin temped many times to do it.

could maybe use a type of oil to replace stock coolant but it would really have to be very light,hemmm that trash the cooling system and be a pain to get out of their in the after math or could use ethanol that has a freezing point of -114 degrees Celsius.
pump wouldn't like that and its fuel,if it leaks well you know,freaking burn down the house with that setup :D

Id just take one of my older computers {Pentium 4}that i don't care about anymore and over volt it suicide overclock stile and "try" and kill the world record just for fun ;)
though i dout id come anywhere close to liquid nitrogen people.

one things for shore freon based cooling kits are like $700 last i checked and its over kill,and one of the big problems that ends up happening is condensation.

[Notagiant]

-40C Antifreeze should do the trick. Stay away from mineral oils unless you know that your pump can handle the higher viscosities at the lower temperatures. Also, as mentioned in a thread a few weeks back, condensation is NOT cool. :)


But yeah, sometimes it pays to be a Canadian winter-lover!

[Arinoth]

Well before switching to antifreeze, see if it ionizes at all like water (which is why of course you use distalled, aka non-ionized water).

[gingerbee]

mix a good anti-freeze with distilled water and your fine like toyota anit-freeze is wicked for this

[Dead Things]

Yup - don't get a pre-mix. Get concentrated and use with distilled. You may find this thread inspiring to some degree: Cold weather benching with water



Also...

Originally Posted by jumpload

that is to say fridge freezer to water rad to system setup.
iv bin temped many times to do it.

Generally not a good idea since most fridges aren't designed to handle such a strong heat load. An overclocked i7 can dump as much as 300w of heat. You'd most likely end up turning the freezer into a mini-sauna and then it would actually heat your water instead of cooling it.

edit - Oh, and by the way - that little MCP-655 you see is currently in its third year of cold-weather benching. It can handle it.