Overclock.net banner

Skyl3r's Chill Build Log

10K views 113 replies 14 participants last post by  Skyl3r 
#1 ·
Skyl3r's Chillbox Build Log

Introduction

Hello everyone! I'm excited to share with you all my first attempt at making a chillbox. I started last night and I'll be continuing today and on throughout the weekend until it's done. I'm hoping some of the more experienced among you will be able to give me suggestions and pointers as I go.

Post 1 - Design Phase

The AC Unit

To do this, I'll be using a 12,000 BTU AC I picked up for $50. If it works well and I don't break anything in the process, I may purchase a 15,000BTU.


The first step was to rip all the housings off and take off (read as "destroy") the fan.


After this, I plugged it in and got it to turn the compressor on by breathing on the temperature probe. I may end up attaching this to the condenser; which seems to be a reasonable bet for a constant source of >60C


Good news! It's cold!

The Cabinet

This is my design for the cabinet I want to put it in. The bottom shelf will probably be vented so I can get some airflow over the condenser.
The left side of the middle shelf will be the chillbox. It will be 4" thick expanded polystyrene on all sides except for the front. which will be open. It will have gasket adhered to all edges of the polystyrene which will come in contact with gasket on the cabinet door when closed. The board going up the middle is for a locking mechanism to ensure a solid seal on the gaskets when the door is closed as well as to prevent an interested person from trying to open it while it's cold.

The hole on the bottom of the second shelf is for the silicone tubing to run through (It may be moved more towards the center). The hole on the wall in the middle of the second shelf is for all wiring to escape through. The right half will be for the PSU, SSD, temperature monitors, etc.

The top shelf is for my stereo receiver and record player
smile.gif
I'll probably shorten it a little bit, as it's really just obnoxiously and unnecessarily tall as is. But anyways, I'll have to decide what kind of wood I want to use then make it down to home depot tomorrow or saturday to pick up Gorilla glue, epoxy, screws and the wood.
Please feel free to give suggestions before I shoot myself in the foot
smile.gif




Other Parts

So, today I went ahead and ordered more parts to continue my build. I already have waterblocks for my CPU and GPU's and a 360mm radiator, which I think will be adequate for chilling the chillbox. I ordered a temperature sensor with LCD display to monitor the temperature in the chillbox and an inline temperature sensor with LCD display to monitor the temperature of the coolant.

I also ordered some barbed hose fittings and a bunch of silicone tubing. I'm gonna do clear cheap tubing up to the chillbox from the radiator, then some nicer looking primoflex tubing for the components.

While typing this I found Silverstone's PSU extension cables with white sleeves. Man would that look sick with my build. I'm using an MSI XPower x370, Crucial Ballistix Sport LT (The white ones). The other benefit is I can leave the wires stuck in there and still swap PSU's.

The Computer

I'll be testing first empty, then with an old athlon board to verify it's working and won't damage the board. The system going in there will be:
  • MSI XPower x370
  • Ryzen 1800x
  • Crucial Ballistix Sport LT
  • Crossfire Fury X's
Just received confirmation on my XPower x370 and 1800x. Both should be here by Saturday
smile.gif
 
See less See more
7
#2 ·
Post 2 - First Day Building


And so it begins...


I will continue to update as I build
biggrin.gif


Update 1:

I spread some gorilla glue on the insulation tiles (expanded polystyrene) and sandwiched them together. I am using cinder blocks to hold them tight.


I ripped the saw horses out and, took some measurements and started sawing away.



Came back in and whoo! The UPS guy showed up!
Still more on the way, but my inline temperature sensor, fittings and primoflex hosing showed up.


Update 2:

Well, I've discovered I'm not a carpenter. But no matter! Onwards!


Update 3:

Drills dead, so time for a little break. I screwed up a measurement and have like.. .a whole inch of overhang on that shelf.. Not sure what to do about it yet.
 
#3 ·
Post 3 - Second Day Building

Okay, Day 2!

In the following picture, you see that shelf two is complete and I have put in the wall separating the chillbox from the controls box (this is what I will call where the PSU, SSD and temperature monitoring equipment will be stored.
I was test fitting the insulation. It's hard (for me) to get a perfect fit. I'm thinking I'll gorilla glue it together, then go back over it with expanding foam and sand the expanding foam down. I think that will create a pretty good seal.



In addition, my second temperature sensor has arrived!
 
#4 ·
Okay, I'll give a quick update while I wait for my car battery to charge so I can go to work.

I've decided my best bet is to gorilla glue the rigid insulation, then wrap the outside in HVAC/foil tape.
So I've ordered a few more parts.
  • tubing insulation + zip ties to go over the tubes and pipes on the window AC.
  • A reciprocating saw to cut out the holes in the wood for components and wires to go through.
  • Foil Tape as mentioned above
  • Foam insulation tape to try to create a seal with the door... It's much cheaper than gasket, so I'm hoping it will work.
  • Hinges for the air tight door
  • A sliding bolt to lock the air tight door up. I'm not sure if I'll need two... hopefully not..
  • A PSU jumper. My build will use two PSU's so I can bring the pump and fans on before the motherboard. So the jumper will cause the PSU to come on when I kick the switch for the AC to come on.
I have enough supplies to keep me busy for now; and honestly this keeps getting more and more expensive, so I'm gonna hold off on purchasing any new supplies until the end of the month or so.
 
#5 ·
Day 3 of Building

Still waiting on a number of parts to ship. I know I said I wouldn't order anything else... but I needed propylene glycol and silicone sealant.
PG is expensive... I'm gonna do a 50/50 blend with 5 gallons. I can say I didn't expect to spend that much on coolant.

I got the cooler today along with piping insulation and foam tape and other goodies.
I went ahead and cut the cooler and fit the evap inside. It fits well. (I know, I'm gonna have to clean it off...)



I also started gluing the rigid insulation pieces together for the chillbox.

As I mentioned previously, once the box is constructed, I will wrap it in foil tape and go over each edge with silicone.

Update
I haven't been able to spend the kind of time I'd like to spend on this project for the last few days. Late nights at work
smile.gif

But, I've got almost all the parts now. Still waiting on another pump and mineral oil; and I'll need a longer display cable. Thinking about using USB C...
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by thomasj90 View Post

Subbed! looks cool dude cant wait for more pics
Thanks
smile.gif


Day 4 of Building

I finished gluing on all the sides of the chillbox and wrapped it in foil tape and went over the edge with insulation tape stuff. That's to form a seal when the door closes on it. I think it will work well; we'll see.


I'll be going over all edges with silicone to ensure a seal; as there's some gaps right now
rolleyes.gif

But, on the plus side, it's all coming together! Hoping to be able to bring it down to temperature tomorrow!

Oh and my motherboard came in. The excitement is building!


EDIT:
I went ahead and tossed the chillbox into the shelf to make sure it would fit and everything. It does, but I'm gonna have to make a modification to get the door to close over it. There will have to be an extension where the door hinges to so that it is out a little bit. All in all, I really like how it's coming along though.

 
#8 ·
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neokolzia View Post

subbed can't wait to see where you get with a Chillbox'd ryzen
Thanks! Me too!
I thought it wasn't getting cold enough and I was concerned with how hot the compressor and condenser were getting, so I had a buddy who's an HVAC tech look at it and he said they should definitely not be getting that hot and he saw frost building on the capillary tubes and said that is a sign of blockage which would explain why the condenser and compressor are getting so hot.

So, looks like I'll be out to buy a new AC. I'm running a test with the current one now to see how fast it gets down to temps. From starting at 23C after 10 minutes it's down to 18C in the chillbox and my GPU's are idling at 15C.
I'm excited to see how much quicker it would be with a good working AC.

Timeline:

0 Minutes - 23C Chillbox
10 Minutes - 18C Chillbox / 15C GPU
15 Minutes - 16C Chillbox / 12C GPU
20 Minutes - 14C Chillbox / 10C GPU
25 minutes - 13C Chillbox / 9C GPU
30 Minutes - 11C Chillbox / 7C GPU

Seems to be interestingly linear.

(My room is up to 29C now
devil.gif
)

 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BackwoodsNC View Post

subbed!
Glad to see you here
smile.gif
I learned a lot from reading about your builds.

Milestone / Important Info

Well, I'm at an important point in the chillbox process here. It's now no longer "can I make it work", but instead "what's the best way to make it work". I want to take a minute to discuss things I've learned during this process and highlight some of what I view to be often overlooked facts when starting a project like this.

It's easy to think that the hardest part might be figuring out what AC will cool your components, or figuring out how you're gonna make the chillbox air tight. Well, at this point I don't think those are the actual problems anymore. Instead, the biggest problems I am having are as follows:

1. AC's are LOUD. I have roommates. They are not a fan of the amount of noise my computer can now put off.
2. AC's dump heat into the room. I'm not talking about raising the temperature a couple degrees. I mean, my room gets up to 85-90F when this has been running for a couple hours.
3. AC's are big. Coolers are big. Chillboxes are big. Half of my room is now obstructed with huge, hideous looking contraptions.

But, remember one thing: Skyl3r is not a quitter. To conquer these things I've come up with a plan. I will be relocating the AC and reservoir outside in an insulated/locked box. I'm dumping the whole shelf idea. It was a bad idea and it took moving this monstrosity into my room to figure that out. What I want to do now is with the AC/Res relocated, I can now make a minimally sized chillbox. I'm thinking of designing a coffee table chillbox. It'll have the benefits of requiring less material which will enable me to use nicer wood, not taking up half of the room and being functional apart from its job as a chillbox.

EDIT:
Forgot to mention, I'm 4.2GHz stable in the chillbox at 0C
smile.gif

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/11978902

I'll grab a passmark CPU test tonight. I ran one yesterday and forgot to save it...
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by chimico9 View Post

I'd like to see some pictures of that "monstrosity" ...
biggrin.gif

also to make your description even more real
biggrin.gif
thumb.gif
Haha, I've been debating whether to embarrass myself or not by posting them... But since you asked so nicely, I'll take the shot to my pride
biggrin.gif


Sorry for the bad image angle here, the lighting with my camera was making it hard to get a good shot. But basically, you'll see two insulated hoses running straight up towards the chillbox. That cooler has 6 gallons of coolant. It's 50/50 Dexcool and distilled water.


This is just a for fun shot. The temperature on the right is the temp in the chillbox and the left is ambient temp (my room)


Perhaps now you'll see why I want to rebuild it with nicer wood and better planned


I don't have a picture with me of the full thing, but trust me when I say, this thing is BIG. It takes up like... half of my room. I think something like a desk chillbox or a coffee table chillbox with the phase change taking place elsewhere is the way to go.

Also, something else interesting that I forgot to mention before was that I had the fan for the condenser on backwards when I first put it in there. The condenser was getting really hot which my guess is caused it to run less efficiently until it drew enough power to blow the circuit on its own. I have my PC on a separate circuit. So uh.. make sure to put the condenser fan on right
thumb.gif
 
#16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neokolzia View Post

What kinda volts are you pumping in to see 4.2 and 4.3's?
I'll have to go home and check, but IIRC:
4.2GHz was 1.5125v
4.3GHz was 1.5500v

I might be able to get by on lower, but I haven't played with it enough to find out yet.

Edit:
For stable 4.2 I'm using 1.55v

So, my HVAC friend said if I can build a chiller, he'll vacuum pump it and charge it with R404A for me. I think I'm gonna do this. I've been doing a lot of research and it doesn't seem to be almost the same cost as buying a new 12000BTU AC.

I talked to one of my overclocking roommates (digman on this forum) and we found an idea that we both liked - centralized phase change cooling. We both wanted to go phase change and we both don't want the units in our rooms. So; we're going to build a custom unit, fill it up on R404A and relocate it to the attic and run lines down to my room and his room.

With our combined budgets, we should be able to make a better project for less. Hopefully this is something kinda new
biggrin.gif
 
#17 ·
Well, back for another update. Me and my roommate, @DigMan, have agreed to and confirmed we will be doing a joint project starting next month. To get a quick idea, I'll describe the outline below.

We will be getting a compressor probably on eBay that can handle R-404a. We'll also order capillary tube on ebay. I have to do some more math, but it's looking like 5' 6" @ 0.064" will be a proper amount with the compressor we are looking at. DigMan has an A coil we will be using for the evaporator which will be submerged in coolant as well as a car radiator we will use for the condenser. The phase change unit will be located in the attic with two reservoirs equivalent to 24 gallons of coolant (230lbs). This amount of coolant is being used to give us a sizeable buffer for benchmarking during which time the phase change unit will not be able to maintain low temps with the extra heat load.

A Raspberry Pi will be used as a monitoring device. It will have several temperature sensors for:
1. Coolant temperature
2. Outdoor temperature
3. Ambient temperature

As well as a flow meter. And relays to control pumps and compressor.

The RPi will host a web server (currently battling over LAMP or Node.js
smile.gif
) with graphical metrics for these things as well as the ability to act as a thermostat and disable/enable specific pumps during service time.
 
#18 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyl3r View Post

Well, back for another update. Me and my roommate, @DigMan, have agreed to and confirmed we will be doing a joint project starting next month. To get a quick idea, I'll describe the outline below.

We will be getting a compressor probably on eBay that can handle R-404a. We'll also order capillary tube on ebay. I have to do some more math, but it's looking like 5' 6" @ 0.064" will be a proper amount with the compressor we are looking at. DigMan has an A coil we will be using for the evaporator which will be submerged in coolant as well as a car radiator we will use for the condenser. The phase change unit will be located in the attic with two reservoirs equivalent to 24 gallons of coolant (230lbs). This amount of coolant is being used to give us a sizeable buffer for benchmarking during which time the phase change unit will not be able to maintain low temps with the extra heat load.

A Raspberry Pi will be used as a monitoring device. It will have several temperature sensors for:
1. Coolant temperature
2. Outdoor temperature
3. Ambient temperature

As well as a flow meter. And relays to control pumps and compressor.

The RPi will host a web server (currently battling over LAMP or Node.js
smile.gif
) with graphical metrics for these things as well as the ability to act as a thermostat and disable/enable specific pumps during service time.
Great project and undertaking. Moving it out of your area of operation will definitely help with noise and heat. I'm assuming you live somewhere where you don't have a ton of humidity? I'd be worried about the lines sweating.
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by MunneY View Post

Great project and undertaking. Moving it out of your area of operation will definitely help with noise and heat. I'm assuming you live somewhere where you don't have a ton of humidity? I'd be worried about the lines sweating.
Yeah, I could probably live with the size of the chillbox I made right now but my room seriously gets to 30c and it's loud; so I'll be really happy to have the chiller located elsewhere
biggrin.gif


I live in Ohio, so we get every kind of weather you can imagine. This is a very good point you bring up. Our current plan is to insulate the lines to the best of our ability and keep a close eye on it until we're comfortable that it's not going to continuously drip water on the insides of our walls.
 
#20 ·
You re compressor and cond are still getting hot one due to condenser cool being compacted but mainly having no cond fan motor. Also compressor running hot can be due to being low on refrigerant. Probably why would work best is a glycol type system which is what is used for beer system. That way you don't need evaporator fans and it won't freeze over.
 
#22 ·
Subbed. I wonder if you can air-insulate the liquid tubing with a larger vinyl or plastic tubing, so any condensation happens in between and you can run it down into a drain.
 
#23 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by emsj86 View Post

You re compressor and cond are still getting hot one due to condenser cool being compacted but mainly having no cond fan motor. Also compressor running hot can be due to being low on refrigerant. Probably why would work best is a glycol type system which is what is used for beer system. That way you don't need evaporator fans and it won't freeze over.
I may not be understanding correctly, so feel free to correct me if I'm going off in the wrong direction here
smile.gif

Since starting planning the new phase change unit, I've got a much better understanding of how AC's and phase change units in general work. This is making what the HVAC guy told me make sense.

My understanding of the problem I am having with my current AC unit is:

1. Blockage in the caps is causing them to freeze over (thus the frost I see, pictured below)
2. That in turn is starving the compressor which is causing it to heat up.

If this is correct, the problem was likely already there with the AC before I bought it. I did get it used, afterall.



Quote:
Originally Posted by mouacyk View Post

Subbed. I wonder if you can air-insulate the liquid tubing with a larger vinyl or plastic tubing, so any condensation happens in between and you can run it down into a drain.
Very interesting idea. I bet that might turn out to be safer than pipe insulation.
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by chimico9 View Post

how much will be the height difference pc<->reservior ?
None for my roommate, but around 8-9ft for me.
My understanding is that since the coolant is traveling down just as much as it's traveling up, the height shouldn't really matter so much as the distance of the run.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chimico9 View Post

beware of the pressure, it's possible that compression fittings will not hold and also vga fullcover
I'm sort of confused as to where all the extra pressure is coming from?
If we choose our pumps well, shouldn't the pressure be the same as if it was just a little custom water loop? The pressure just needs to scale with the length of the run and the number of waterblocks. But the psi at any given point should still be the same, right?
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top