[Plooto]

I thought that I look into having my radiator outside my house seeing as I have a convenient window that I could use for something like this. I want to know what I would need to consider. I don't actually plan on building this for another year or two though. I did a quick drawing on Google SketchUp:



EDIT: Sorry for bad paint writing lol

 

[bakageta]

You'll need a stronger pump than typically used for water cooling to handle the extra head, something like the various Iwaki pumps are often recommended if you're placing it very far outside, a strong 655 can work if it's not that far. If your outdoor temperature gets much below freezing, you'll want to insulate your motherboard against condensation (especially if you're in a mid- to high-humidity climate), and if it gets seriously cold you may want to run a partial anti-freeze mixture. I'd recommend Tygon Norprene tubing here, it's slightly better than average for insulation (though you probably still want to insulate the tubing, and definitely the components).

IMO, it's not really worth it. I'd run the radiator in front of the window, and open the window partially to get cool air without exposing the rad to the elements. Since your water temp shouldn't be drastically below ambient, condensation is less of a problem, so insulation isn't really needed then.

 

[Plooto]

Ok thanks

 

[Tsumi]

Why you're doing this is one of the big questions you need to answer. If you're doing it to keep your room cool, then you want to be blowing air out of the window, not in. Actually, that's the only reason I can see why you would want to do outdoor. If you wanted to heat up your room, you would just have it inside the home circulating hot air instead of bringing air from outside in.

Also, where do you live, and what is the weather like generally? It would be a cool project to do. One other person who said he was doing something similar, said he lived in climates where it would drop below 0 C. A remedy for that is a temp sensor. When the water temperature is above a certain level, the fans would switch on. When it's below a certain level, they'll turn off, so you don't need to worry about condensation/freezing. Of course, this would also mean you're leaving your computer on 24/7.

 

[AzN1337c0d3r]

You don't mention your climate or your setup, but here is my experience with throwing radiators out the window like you suggest.

Here in Texas it's constantly hitting over 100F outside the house so you can imagine it would not be wise for me to dump the 1 kW of heat generated by my mining rig into my room.

I run a single MCP35X across ApogeeXT, 3 EK 7970 blocks, MCR420-QP radiator and 40 feet of 3/8 ID tubing out the window and the flowrate is still acceptable.

40 feet of tubing really has pretty low restrictions compared to something like a CPU block.

Of course the above only really works as a 24/7 setup if you're trying to cool the room by exhausting the air. If you're trying to heat up the room you'll have to worry about additional elements like rain.

 

[Plooto]

I live in London, outside is almost always colder than inside of my house. Temps range from 0 to 25 degrees Celsius so I doubt the water would freeze or anything. As you can hopefully see in the drawing the window is right next to my pc and I think my roof goes over the window so it wouldn't be in constant contact with the rain. I could easily build a wooden or aluminium box to shield the radiator in my school's DT work place.

 

[Plooto]

It definitely wouldn't be 40 feet, I'm only estimating but the distance from the wall of my house to my pc is only like 5 feet. Plus the grommets on the back of my case should be pretty helpful. Another thing I'm considering is have a separate case just for rads on a shelf. Someoe has already does it in the water cooling club if you wanna see. I thought that the distance out the window would be less that to a shelf (possibly?)

 

[Tsumi]

There's two reason to do an outdoor radiator setup. Well, actually 3, but two main ones.

1. To prevent your computer from heating up your room.

2. To get sub-ambient cooling since outside is colder than inside.

3. For the hell of it

If you don't care about it heating up your room, you can do the separate case with the radiators in them.

Otherwise, if you go with outdoors, definitely protect the radiator somehow, if only just to keep the animals out.

 

[Rognin]

Click the ROG-BOX in my sig, I have two. One for winter the other for summer. The summer version can easily dissipate 1400w at 10c deltas...

 

[Plooto]

Could you post a Core Temp screenshot?

 

[Rognin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plooto

Could you post a Core Temp screenshot?

Well Yes I could, but only in 13 days... I work on a camp up north and I'm on days off for R&R right now (21 days of work with 7 days off).

When I get back up north I'll post some core temps. But I have a chiller working in tandem with the rad box. So my temps won't reflect water temps (8-17c water).

 

[Carniflex]

Insulate the cooler than roomtemp components and you are good to go. As far as I understand you dont need nothing too fancy - some padding around CPU socket and tubing (and GPU blocks if you use them) and you are all shiny. Would suggest running a car antifreeze mixture with low enough freezing point to avoid issues during winter and also, it would be good idea to have some little valves in your loop, so if you need to upgrade you can just switch off the outside loop without having to drain it.

I have actually been thinking about goin geothermal eventually

Dig an hole until you hit the water and dump couple of rads in the water. Down there is pretty constant ~4C around the year. Around here the water is only approx 2 meters down, so the hole can be made easily with an shovel. Eventually that is

I'm still in the process of assembling my first water loop so will see how this goes for a start before I get all fancy with geothermal stuff.

 

[superericla]

One problem you may run into is the water running in from outside being below the dew point inside, causing condensation that could potentially short-circuit your motherboard or other components.

 

[Rognin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by superericla

One problem you may run into is the water running in from outside being below the dew point inside, causing condensation that could potentially short-circuit your motherboard or other components.

You can easily fix that with a cheap dehumidifier. Well, depends... I can't but maybe you can. My water can hit -20c easily. But if it oesn't get too too cold, a small dehumidifier in a closed room where the puter is can easily control dew and condensation.

LINKY

 

[Ganf]

I wouldn't suggest using common car antifreeze in copper radiators. It corrodes copper pretty quick if the copper is exposed to air after having been in contact with antifreeze. Bubbles finding their way in and out of your radiator could eat a hole in some of the weak points in a few months.

There are plenty of non-automotive antifreezes out there though, and even some food-safe options. I would recommend one of those so you can work on your loop and eat donuts in a peaceful state of mind.

Just be sure to call the manufacturer and ask if their product has any reaction to copper, nickel, aluminum, acrylic, and anything else that might be in your loop. They never list that stuff on the bottle, they just assume their product is only going to be used for the single thing it was designed for.

Freezing is only an issue if you get below -20c I would think, but rog is calling me a liar. He probably has some pretty good flow rates on his setup. The faster the water is moving, the less of an issue freezing becomes.

Hey rog, didn't mindchill build you a rheostat that controls for dewpoint temperatures? He may have another customer if my memory isn't being dysfunctional about this.

 

[Rognin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ganf

I wouldn't suggest using common car antifreeze in copper radiators. It corrodes copper pretty quick if the copper is exposed to air after having been in contact with antifreeze. Bubbles finding their way in and out of your radiator could eat a hole in some of the weak points in a few months.
There are plenty of non-automotive antifreezes out there though, and even some food-safe options. I would recommend one of those so you can work on your loop and eat donuts in a peaceful state of mind.

Just be sure to call the manufacturer and ask if their product has any reaction to copper, nickel, aluminum, acrylic, and anything else that might be in your loop. They never list that stuff on the bottle, they just assume their product is only going to be used for the single thing it was designed for.
Freezing is only an issue if you get below -20c I would think, but rog is calling me a liar. He probably has some pretty good flow rates on his setup. The faster the water is moving, the less of an issue freezing becomes.
Hey rog, didn't mindchill build you a rheostat that controls for dewpoint temperatures? He may have another customer if my memory isn't being dysfunctional about this.

lol, nah, I use DTX from Mayhems (Glycol with anti-corrosives and anti-bacterial additives). I use a 60-40 mix in winter for my V1.0 and a 80-20 in summer/fall/spring for V2.0. And yeah with the RD-20 the flow is spectacular, I'd be curious to see when the water would start to gel up with high flow rates and at what temps (I havn't tested it, I just tried to avoid it... =P). I know that with the v2.0 starts to show signs of high viscosity at -5 and below, but no ice formation in the reservoirs. The lowest I was able to see was -8c as I started these projects when winter was finishing. I'll have to wait until Nov to start seeing the results I'm looking for.

And yeah I have two of his controllers, but in the process purchasing some other ones from Mindchill (should work even better).

 

[Carniflex]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ganf

I wouldn't suggest using common car antifreeze in copper radiators. It corrodes copper pretty quick if the copper is exposed to air after having been in contact with antifreeze. Bubbles finding their way in and out of your radiator could eat a hole in some of the weak points in a few months.

That is incorrect. Common car antifreeze is 50-50 mixture of distilled water and monoethyleneglycerol which has corrosion preventive properties, particularly against galvanic corrosion. It is also somewhat worse cooling liquid than pure distilled bcos ethyleneglycerol has worse properties in this regard than water.

If you are using car antifreeze and your copper is corroding you have some other issues somewhere and it would corrode even faster without that car antifreeze. Unless your "common car antifreeze" is something particularly vicious and not that common.

 

[Ganf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carniflex

That is incorrect. Common car antifreeze is 50-50 mixture of distilled water and monoethyleneglycerol which has corrosion preventive properties, particularly against galvanic corrosion. It is also somewhat worse cooling liquid than pure distilled bcos ethyleneglycerol has worse properties in this regard than water.
If you are using car antifreeze and your copper is corroding you have some other issues somewhere and it would corrode even faster without that car antifreeze. Unless your "common car antifreeze" is something particularly vicious and not that common.

"Common car antifreeze" Never comes into contact with copper because the radiators are aluminum, actually. So it does prevent corrosion in automotive radiators.

The real problem isn't contact with antifreeze, as I stated clearly in my first post. It's when the antifreeze is allowed to evaporate on the surface of the copper. So long as your lines stay 100% purged of air, it wouldn't cause any corrosion. But can anyone guarantee they don't develop bubbles in their radiator on their PC?

At the very least, you would have a massive mess when you went to flush your rad, so why not just use something that doesn't cause that?

Edit: And I realize that some vehicles use copper radiators for heater and AC cores. I'm about to use one for a GPU radiator actually. But if you look inside you'll notice they're coated, either with some sort of treatment or brass.

You're more than welcome to wipe some antifreeze on a piece of clean copper and allow it to evaporate if you don't believe me. Probably more effective than me taking pictures anyways. And I hate cameras...

 

[Plooto]

This or outdoor thing? This seems easier for me.

 

[Plooto]

There seems to be a risk of Mechanical Damage and Metal Corrosion according to that dew point thing, though it will be fine for some months.