Building Your Own Air Chiller

Several people have taken the time from their busy day to submit the how-to make an air chiller story that's currently running on OCMod.com. Me, I think that if I open my case the magic pixie dust that runs my computer will fly out, and my bad hardware karma will ruin my machine, but hey, maybe you'll have better luck then I.

Comments

??!!YOU CLOSE YOUR MACHINE!!??

[emil]

No self-respecting geek would run a piece of computer equipment with all the cover components installed!

Re:hmm...

[Life Blood]

I haven't looked at the design, but in general your going to get condensation where the air is cooled, not where the cool air is pumped. When the air temp drops in the chiller section it will cause any water above and beyond the new lower temps saturation level to condense out. Provided the system is designed well though, this condensation should remain in the chiller section and should be gone by the time the cold air exits the chiller unit. As the air warms up passing through the case it will actually get drier in relative humidity terms and so less likely to cause condensation. So the condensation should be at a minimum as you can keep the two separate. For a real world example, notice that the condensation in air conditioners comes out the back of the unit while the cold air exits the front.

Why can't you people just use regular fans?

[atrowe]

There is no need for fancy coolers or super large heatsinks in personal computers as a properly clocked processor works fine with stock cooling solutions. Overclocking is a dangerous and immoral way to improve performance, and should be avoided at all costs. Overclocking processors wastes electricity, can damage components, and provides only a modest performance gain with a high risk factor. Both AMD and Intel have warned that overclocking will void your warranty and cause irreversible harm to a computer. However, the risks of overclocking don't stop at hardware damage. It is a well known fact that overclocking processors can cause unreliable and erratic performance. This can lead to corrupted data, and if the overclocked machine is connected to a network or the Internet, it can cause unexpected problems for innocent users who have properly clocked machines.

Some users overclock their computers so that they can run SETI@home or other distributed clients faster. This irresponsible behavior can not only damage that user's computer, but can provide flawed data that could possible ruin the entire distributed project. Please, I urge you, don't follow the herd, don't overclock your computer. If performance is that important to you, go with the reliable solution and buy a faster machine.