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Ask Slashdot: What Would Happen If You Were To Put a Computer Inside a Fridge?
dryriver writes: This is not asking what would happen if you were to place your iMac inside your kitchen fridge. Rather, what if a computer casing for a high-powered graphics workstation with multiple CPUs and GPUs, lets say, worked just like a small fridge or freezer, cooling your hardware down without using any CPU fans or liquid cooling and similar. How much would such a fridge-casing cost to make and buy, how much electricity would it consume, how much bigger would it be than a normal PC casing, and would it be a practical solution to the problem of keeping high-powered computer hardware cool for extended periods of time? Bonus question: Is such a thing as a fridge-casing or "Fridgeputer" sold anywhere on the world market right now? Linus Tech Tips tackled this question in a video a couple of years ago, titled "PC Build in a Fridge - Does it Work?"
When you cool a volume of air you squeeze all the water out of it. The water condenses on the computer components, and your computer breaks.
I suppose as long as you dehydrated the inside first and kept several moisture absorption packs in there it would be ok.
Honestly water cooling is going to be better bang for the buck. you're just going to do an inefficient job of what the ambient air does fine to normal functional components.
bend like the reed
https://what-if.xkcd.com/155/
A fridge is an efficient machine for a smaller amount of work. A fridge works via a compressor motor that isn't on all the time which actually generates more external heat than it internally cools when used inside a room. Compressor motors as such are not designed for continuous operation but even if they were compressors are not designed to remove that much generated heat continuously. such a compressor would be huge and likely many times the size of the space it was trying to cool and would require an order of magnitude more power to operate and hence the room it operated in would be like an oven.
The reason a fridge is efficient for cooling food is that that box is insulated and so the compressor does not need to be on most of the time.
What would happen is: water would condense on the every surface in the computer after every time you opened the case. And you know how well moisture plays with electronics.
After opening and closing the case, you would need to run the fridge case in a dehumidification mode for several hours before turning the computer on in order to reduce the humidity below the cooled computer's dew point.
In addition to this problem, the contraction and expansion from when the computer runs and stops (stopping the fridge with it) would quickly wiggle stuff out of its socket and create cracks on the boards.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Before doing anything, it is a good idea to think about what you are trying to accomplish. If you are interested in overclocking, there are plenty of sites that explain how to focus on that.
If you are trying to make your hardware "more reliable", or "perform better" then cooling is unlikely to accomplish much. Cold machine rooms were useful 30 years ago, but today they mostly exist out of misguided superstition that they provide some benefit. Modern CPUs and memory are built to run fairly hot. HDDs are actually more reliable at the hot end of their operating range. SDDs benefit from being cooler, but you can accomplish that with better airflow rather than colder temps.
There is a reason that most big tech companies run "hot" datacenters today, with ambient temps of 40C / 105F or higher. The AC savings far outweigh the negligible performance/reliability issues.
Yeah it's far more complicated than that. The refrigeration cycle is quite involved, especially if it's efficient.
Closed-loop tubing, contains compressor, condenser coil, expansion valve, evaporator coil. Sometimes the cycle changes-state between gaseous and liquid, while in others the state of the refrigerant remains gaseous.
As compressor works, refrigerant is sucked-in and compressed. This generates heat. The hot refrigerant is piped into the condenser coil, where while still under-pressure it's cooled, usually with a fan forcing air across the coil. The still-under-pressure refrigerant is now piped to the expansion valve where the pressure drops, right as it dumps into the evaporator coil. When matter expands it cools, so the expansion process as pressure drops chills the coil itself, and another fan blows air across the evaporator, taking the air in the vicinity and cooling it as that air supplies heat to warm-up the coil, and thus the refrigerant. The now lukewarm or tepid refrigerant, under low pressure, is sucked back into the compressor to repeat the cycle.
The refrigeration cycle cools-off the evaporator coil so much that it condenses water out of the air. This requires a means to get the condensed water off of the coil and out of the area. Sometimes it's as simple as designing the coil to sit at a particular angle such that it drains into a pan and then into a drip-tube, other times it may be necessary to have a sump pump to get the water out of the building.
There's generally not a lot of need to make a system this complicated for consumer equipment cooling. Datacenters and other electronics facilities that have commercial or industrial cooling end up using giant room refrigerators and throw-in humidity controls along with the cooling loop, and the actual equipment to be cooled usually uses simple forced air, albeit to a noisy and ridiculous scale at times. This is so that the cooling of the equipment doesn't drop in temp to the point that it causes condensation on the equipment.
Fancy consumer-grade cooling that uses a liquid configuration is best set up to cool the equipment down to just above ambient temps. If liquid is cycled through a loop then the goal should be to bring the temp down at the end of the radiator far enough to be slightly warmer than ambient, but not below.
When I was designing my shop air compressor system I had problems with water condensating out of the air, and being emitted at the impact gun when using it. Since I also wanted to be able to paint this obviously wouldn't do. I ended up putting an automotive air conditioning condenser coil between the pump-head and the tank, and I put an automatic purge-valve on the tank, such that the hot air out of the compressor pump comes down to just above ambient, the air in the tubing expands and condenses-out the water, and the water is purged.
If I were designing a liquid cooling setup for a computer I'd probably use an automotive transmission cooler with a large, slow fan blowing across it, with the coolant configured in a closed-loop with probably a small pump cycling it through the heatsink on the processor, then out to the transmission cooler acting as a radiator, then back through the pump, repeat. The large, slow fan should help move air over the surface of the transmission cooler quietly, while the fairly quiet little pump keeps everything moving. If needed have the post-radiator coolant deposit into a sump that is then the point from which the pump draws.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
look. this isn't a widely used idea because it is stupid. most of the time you could use it only for the cpu if it was cheaper to overclock a cheap chip than to buy a more expensive chip. most people who come up with this idea don't actually know what a fridge does, so they abstract the fridge into a magic box. after you look what a fridge does, this seems less ideal. after you look at the benefits you get from going from ambient 23 celsius to 3 celsius, it seems even more stupid. after you look at what it takes to proof it against condensation and ice, it starts to look even more stupid.
but back to the dorm fridges. lets say your fridge has an efficiency of 50%. lets say your pc consumers 400 watts of power in gaming. your fridge has to be consuming 800 watts while you play and NOT MANY FRIDGES CAN DO THAT - your typical fridge cannot cope with a constant heat load that big - it will be running full time and STILL the temperature inside the insulated box will keep going up.
in addition your electricity bill will go up so much that you would be better off buying a better gpu anyways, even if you had an industrial freezer with enough btu to keep your rig cool.
in addition, you would have to dump the heat outside. so really you would be better off just buying an aircon unit in the first place and using that to cool water and use that to cool your pc components if you want to go extreme - or just pipe the aircon unit into the box - because THAT IS THE CHEAPEST WAY to buy enough capacity that can handle the heat load from the computer.
and really it's not worth it now, there was a time when you would get gains enough to be kind of worth it(dollarwise), but not nowadays.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
>>I don't think you are supposed to keep food in the same freezer you have your computer.
you're not supposed to put a computer in a fridge.
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I service a few accts that are abattoirs, numerous pc's and printers that live at 0C ,( 32F). All work is done situ, if a big job is required, the units get pulled out, left unplugged for 2 days, work is then performed, units go back in, unplugged for a day, then fired back up when acclimated. Humidity and condensation are the killers, the PC's need power supplies every few years, the big printers last 3-4 years before rust finally takes it toll. Cold air is supposed to be dry, but with the amount of people ingressing/egressing makes it a cold, humid environment, I can't say I recommend it :(
The computer heater would win, and the refrigerator/freezer would just stay warm. In fact, it would overheat because the fridge would be insulated and trap all the heat inside.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/155/
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