# Daily Chiller Build



## Gungho

Hey just got it in the mail it looks great. Got it all setup and pretty much answered the majority of the questions by just doing it.

Here is pics of it as it is. 

https://imgur.com/a/SZsFCf3

I figured out how to jump the compressor if anyone is interested to know. It was the brown wire (compressor) with the red wire(ac2). This allowed me to go sub zero by keeping the compressor running 24/7. Ill probably rig it to a switch so i can go back to the automated 15c-20c temps that the mainboard manages. Funny thing is that the hailea mainboard is in the chiller despite it being an active aqua chiller.

I of course at this point ran into a huuuuge issue with condensation and will need to build a chillbox. In fact the issue presented itself immediately when i went down below dew point. The gpu blacked out my screen. Once everything dried off it worked okay but dont even think about doing this without insulation. I didnt last more than 20 minutes. 

So here is pretty much the last problem to my project. VRMs. Anyone with a chillbox know if hot vrms will stress and raise the temp of the freezer? I went with this one.

Ausranvik 48-Quart portable freezer car refrigerator car fridge - 12V/24V DC and 110V AC https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DNXYMLL/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tau_TaE4EbJ2NMH3W

I might need to go with a motherboard with a waterblock on the vrms. Can anyone help please? I will be drilling holes into the freezer and have no experience. Worst case i puncture a copper tube and spew refrigeration into the atmosphere. Best case is too good to let up. Imagine daily sub zero with no condensation. *drools.


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## !!GoNe^BuCk^W!lD!!

Nice, any updates?
I would suggest insulate the crap out of it. 
I have not looked at any Z490 mobo's, but with the highend 16phase VRM's, the 12 phase on Aorus Master, and 8 phase? on Asus Maximus XI Apex on Z390 don't really produce any heat with a overclocked 9900k. Good place to check out is Actually Hardcore Overclocking on youtube with his PCB breakdowns of mobo's and vid cards. He has alot of Z490 boards on there. Although I shall warn you, they are lengthy.

I have been very interested in going sub 0 on my 9900k, but my VRM temps are holding me back with this crappy board.
I was honestly surprised LTT used a 1/10th HP, wish they did more then 20sec load runs.... 
For years I've looked into sub 0 cooling. I just never decided on what way I wanted to go about it...
Hack up a old window AC unit? custom build a chiller with a proper heat exchange? or just phase change/cascade.... 

Then these aquarium chillers came along and they look very interesting in terms of size and cooling and price.. But there's no real data of them being used on PC's.. like is 1/10th HP enough to keep my 9900k around 0-10c while its putting off 300w of heat? What about adding video card/s with another 300+w of heat? would a 1/4hp do better? 1/2 hp? Is that just too much heat for them to dissipate with thermal transfer rate of water/coolant and/or waterblocks and/or the chillers cold side heat exchanger? even the 1+hp? What style of heat exchangers do they have?
I have too many questions...


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## Gungho

!!GoNe^BuCk^W!lD!! said:


> Nice, any updates?
> I would suggest insulate the crap out of it.
> I have not looked at any Z490 mobo's, but with the highend 16phase VRM's, the 12 phase on Aorus Master, and 8 phase? on Asus Maximus XI Apex on Z390 don't really produce any heat with a overclocked 9900k. Good place to check out is Actually Hardcore Overclocking on youtube with his PCB breakdowns of mobo's and vid cards. He has alot of Z490 boards on there. Although I shall warn you, they are lengthy.
> 
> I have been very interested in going sub 0 on my 9900k, but my VRM temps are holding me back with this crappy board.
> I was honestly surprised LTT used a 1/10th HP, wish they did more then 20sec load runs....
> For years I've looked into sub 0 cooling. I just never decided on what way I wanted to go about it...
> Hack up a old window AC unit? custom build a chiller with a proper heat exchange? or just phase change/cascade....
> 
> Then these aquarium chillers came along and they look very interesting in terms of size and cooling and price.. But there's no real data of them being used on PC's.. like is 1/10th HP enough to keep my 9900k around 0-10c while its putting off 300w of heat? What about adding video card/s with another 300+w of heat? would a 1/4hp do better? 1/2 hp? Is that just too much heat for them to dissipate with thermal transfer rate of water/coolant and/or waterblocks and/or the chillers cold side heat exchanger? even the 1+hp? What style of heat exchangers do they have?
> I have too many questions...



Hey no problem man. It was a success although with one failure and a few hurdles. Firstly as with any water cooling setup, be extremely careful with leaks. I didn't tighten my hoseclamps on the fittings well enough and antifreeze gushed out quenching my mobo. It completely bricked my motherboard. Wouldn't post or nothing D: . Luckily it was under amazon's 30 day period so they sent me a replacement. Of course this could happen with any normal ambient water cooling setup. I feel antifreeze dries slower and leaves a residue. I'd recommend washing it in the dishwasher with the cmos battery out to clean away the gunk before powering on(and don't forget to dry it lol) after a spill.

After installing everything, it worked perfectly. I would highly recommend giving it a try if you have the money and time. It wasn't an exorbant amount of money especially since you'll be paying high prices for normal ambient water cooling setup. The next few problems i encountered which wasn't a big deal was my freezer was it wasn't big enough. I have limited space in my office so for normal people I'd recommend getting the dimensions of their motherboard and get a very large freezer to house everything. Keep in mind that hoses, GPUs, wires, and ssds will be everywhere so provide enough room where you can move any parts around and troubleshoot. I barely had enough space with my amazon freezer. Lastly was after drilling holes into the lid/cover, the gaps between the wires and hoses would leak cold air and water droplets would condense on the top and drip down into the freezer. Luckily, I had plenty of silica beads but i found the best solution to this was straight up insulation spray a/c foam that you can buy at any a/c store. Once it hardens it completely seals the gaps between the wires and still is easily able to be broken with your fingers/nails. 

Next issue, not really an issue(because we all knew this before hand) was all the tubing on the outside of the unit needed to be 100% insulated with some armaflex and or neoprene(pm me for any of the links to these products). Armaflex was insanely cheap. I got like 12 feet of it at my a/c store for a few dollars. Don't buy the massive amount on amazon because they are charging you an arm and a leg and give you waaay too long of an amount. Any metal surface on the pump condenses. Even now i have condensation build up in areas i didn't fully cover. 

So as for temps and performance? It didn't live up to the specification. I mean the aquarium chiller from Active aqua is not really 1/2 hp and is not really the btu they specified. If i were to do this again with an off the shelf chiller, I would recommend penguin glycol chillers. Active aqua didn't live up to the specification but I did get subzero temps out of it and it definitely hit the clock speeds I wanted to to hit. I got 5.5ghz All core on my 10900k with the fluid around -6C. Temps for benchmarking are great because there is only the load from the CPU to deal with. However, you will need to factor in the GPU when your talking about daily performance or gaming performance. At gaming load the chiller could only hold temps at about 6C-7C which at 5.4GHZ was barely stable for gaming. I could disable hyperthreading(which you might want to do since most games don't utilize hyperthreading) and get 5.6ghz but in the end i just decided to keep hyperthreading on. 

Here are some pics of the setup and let me know if you have any other questions.

https://media.discordapp.net/attach...9115929075850/image0.jpg?width=902&height=677

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/310975587730587648/733740836688494602/20200717_134318.jpg


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## !!GoNe^BuCk^W!lD!!

Thanks for the reply. 
Those temps don't seem too bad. Do you know what style heat exchanger that chiller has? plate heat exchanger?
How high does your CPU temps go when you go with a full load?

After I made that last post and checking out some chiller build logs, I bought some old cheap 775 CPU's and a couple mobo's off FleEbay to add to my 775 stuff I already have. 
Next week I'll shred a window AC and see what it can do with the 775 stuff. Eventually I think I'll do a custom chiller just for benching. First I need to recover from my upgrades from the past month or 2...


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## Thanh Nguyen

U dont need a chiller to get 5.3ghz for a 10900k. Just delete it and put a cooper ihs on. I have 2 sp63 10900k and they all can do 5.3ghz but hit 86c-90c during r20. I delided it and put a cooper ihs on with liquid metal also on ihs and the temp is down to 70c-75c. If u want cooler, go with direct die cool. My sp94 with stock ihs and lm on ihs and water block hit 75c-80c at 1.305v load during r20. With a direct die, it runs at 54c-60c. Now I run it at 5.5ghz at 4.1v and it stays around 70c during r20.


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## tgass

You can put a radiator inside the case/freezer so the cold water from the chiller helps to keep the temps inside the case/freezer down and not kill it's compressor.

Here, take a look at the solution Orthelo implemented. 

https://www.overclock.net/forum/133...b-zero-liquid-chillbox-club.html#post23348122


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## tcclaviger

Orthello has possibly the most elegant solution for a chillbox I have seen, and I'm basing mine around his.

First thing about chill box - Radiator is first item on loop, to stay the coldest and freeze the moisture there exclusively.

Pumps are an issue - You need a high head pressure pump for 24/7 subzero to compensate for the viscosity gain, a MCP35x2 will do, but will die eventually, I believe he went through 3 of them. Further you need a pump which can either survive condensation or insulate the pump perfectly. As I recall his solution was 2xPMP-500s in an oil bath, precludes any condensation on pumps and provides the required pressure. I believe he said 1 would have been enough.

Just finishing up my new build now going to a chiller for 24/7, dew point + 1c for the moment until I finish my airtight box to put the case in for chillbox work.

For those wondering how to size your dew point chiller, look at BTU of the compressor, multiply your expected heat load in watts by 3.42 for BTU. Ill put mine below as an example:

3900x - 200 watts = 684 BTU
2080ti - 400 watts = 1368 BTU
RAM - 40 watts = 136 BTU
VRM - 15 watts = 51 BTU
SSD - 7 watts = 24 BTU
Dual D5s - 50 watts = 171 BTU

So total 2434 BTU. This gets you a rough idea of output at worst case, not many things push a cpu and gpu fully at the same time, so it'll almost never hit that output. Every size up you go in chiller, you'll be reducing cycle time on the chiller, so a 2400 BTU chiller could handle mine, but it'd be working near 100% of the time to keep up at max heat load. 

For a chillbox, the bigger the capacity better, and adjust reservoir to suite. Find an R22 based unit if possible.

If you happen to have a large chiller in comparison to heat load like I do, rather than relying on the relatively small reservoir it has internally, a good way to reduce cycle time of the chiller is to use a reservoir to provide a buffer. Too big a reservoir paired with too small a chiller will result in it running nearly non-stop as it will be incapable of drawing the water down to target temperature.

This is the build, just finished last night. For freezing work I'll putting a 360 in the front, with fans exhausting to ensure moisture is blown away from the delicates. There's a transition time obviously when it won't be ice yet.

No insulation/grease/Vaseline, I love chillboxes.

Unlike Orthello, I will be using all panel connectors, so the USB/DP/HDMI/Power/Network will not pass through a hold, but, instead a sealed connector. Hoses will be bulkeaded through. I'll be building using MDF, then R5 Foam, then another layer of MDF for a 5 sided box and double pane polycarbonate for the view side. Big enough to Chuck the whole Lancool II inside rather than make the box the case.

Reservoir, pumps and chiller will go in the attic, running 24/7 to keep it cold at all times.

Just a small update:
50f doesn't cause condensation, dry air and 71 ambient.
Just 50f water allowed me to basically sweep all benchmarks for 3600xt, well worth the effort, also, is phenomenal not hearing my PC. D5s turned down to 2000 RPM and ML-120s at 800, whisper quiet (quieter actually lol).


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## Gungho

Hey everyone. Thank you for the replies. just thought id update you all on how everything is going and what you may face if you go through a similar route. Firstly, the build was working flawlessly all this time. It was really a journey and you really get what you put into it. Murphys law what can go wrong will go wrong really applied itself time and time again.

Heres what i found out. Samsung Bdie RAM does not like the cold. Ram that have Stable XMP profiles are not stable at cold temperatures. So it being in my freezer wouldnt let me push advertised clocks. Make sure whatever ram you are putting in there can handle the cold because mine couldn’t. I tried corsair Rbg bdie 3600 mhz 8x4(youll find it on amazon). Worked fine for a month or two. Now it only runs at jedec. I also tried team bdie 4500mhz ram kit. It is nice fast ram but i had to downclock it down to 3600 to get it 100% stable due to the cold. I was recommended crucial rev.e ram found on the max 4400 series and am in the process of sourcing the RAM. It apparently scales well with the cold and i should be able to have better luck there.

Secondly, the chillbox is probably one of the most important aspect of the build. Today my freezer 12v power adapter exploded and failed. I should be able to replace it and all is good. Computer is fine too but get a good size and quality chillbox. 


Third: id recommend getting a custom chiller to really push the temps. I have someone on the overclockers discord building me a custom one. He works in hvac industry and is experienced. I am expecting temps down to -30 c hopefully. Should be here soon. Ill update back to yall about it. There are comments about btu but please note btu is usually measured at a certain temp. Usually its at 72 degrees Farenheit. As Evap temps drop, efficiency and btu drops so just know that you'll need even higher btu to get the subzero temps you want and that the heat load put out under load(gpu and cpu during gaming) will exceed how much heat your chiller can take out at a given temperature. This is why id say skip the aquarium chillers if you want subzero. Their btu specs dont live up to its name and some mods need to be done to bring temps down subzero. Id recommend at least minimum a glycol chiller.

Finally: my freezer had holes cut into it to feed the wires going to the motherboard and the tubing. Make sure you 100% seal it or else moisture and condensation will get down into your freezer. I used spray and hardening ac foam you can buy at any ac shop. I used a hydrometer to measure my humidity and got it right around 43% using silica beads on the internet. When i had leakage, humidity hit 90% at one point which raises your dew point. Condensation kills pcs. My gpu is starting to artifact, i think its failing. But more than likely its because of my first early mistakes with condensation. I was feeling ambitious and pushed below my dew point without a chill box. The gpu blacked out but recovered. It still runs and is “ under warranty.” 

I feel my practices now make it pretty safe. Also get a ek leak tester For your loop. I think its more important with a glycol based solution like antifreeze. As i mentioned before antifreeze sticks to your mobo and you might need multiple washes in the dish washing machine to clean out. Oh and the comment on pumps. I havent had an issue yet but know i will down in the -30 territory. I was told iwaki pumps are good at subzero. Will be switching to that soon.


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## Thanh Nguyen

How do you guys solve a problem when the water temp rises when a chiller ia off after it hit the set temp? I set at 20c and when the chiller is off, water temp skyrocket.


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## Thanh Nguyen

@Gungho how do you wire the chiller to make the compressor keep running?


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