heat exchanger?

[nicolaus corelius]

ok i have built a custom watercooling system that basicly consists of a waterblock, a pump, and a 3.5 liter bottle.
i wanted to hook up my system to a standart watercooler to cool off the water to do extreme cooling (15-25C).
i was thinking this. should i just connect the reservoir part of the watercooler to the system or actually had two cirtuits. and run a heat exchanger between the watercooler water and the other circuit. i am saying this cuz this one guy on a website said that he ran a heat exchanger through between the two circuits.

http://www.water-cooling.com/articles/chiller/chiller.php

Chiller on the Cheap: So what is a chiller? It is essentially a closed loop liquid cooling system, except that instead of an air cooled radiator to shed the heat, the coolant is instead run through a heat exchanger, with the other side cooled by a refrigeration system. This forms another closed loop system, lowering the coolant loop well below ambient temperature (typically down to near 0ºC). If you think this sounds more complicated and expensive than a commercial liquid cooling system, read on:

[flanzig1]

Probably would want to run a heat exchanger so that you can keep the water in the computer loop clean.

[Med]

Don't forget that if you cool down the water too much, condensation will form on the outside of the water lines, and potentially drip onto something critical.

[nicolaus corelius]

any other opinions.
the "two circuit" solution would only complicate the design. so i wanna know if i really need the heat exchanger.

[figarowa]

it might be easy to go with a pelltier system, although condensation is always a problem, when you try to cool a system below abient temps

[nicolaus corelius]

you mean a peltier waterblock or a peltier cooler inplace of the watercooler?
i cant do the first case, because i already have a waterblock n stuff

[figarowa]

the peltier would go directly on the die of the cpu, with proper condensation insulation of course, but the water cooling is then used to cool the peltier block. one side of the peltier gets hot, the other gets extremely cold, and watercooling is the only way to keep the unit from over heating. Watercooling by itself would be the easiest, however with the peltier you can chill the chip close to 0 degrees F.

[David M]

Nicolaus,
I would not connect your system to anything which could possibly bring the coolant temperature below that of the dewpoint of the air in the room. It's just not worth the risk of condensation dripping onto something critical. The difference in heat removal between water 10C to 20C cooler is not worth the risk. Your not going to get any more significant overclocking to make it worthwhile. Let me try to explain why.

A water coolant block removes heat over 20 times more effectively than an air HSF. Dropping the temp of the coolant won't make much difference at all in heat removal. I have a watercooled FX-57 (using regular watercooling) overclocked from 2.8GHz up to 3.1 GHz and I never see my CPU temperature rise above 49C. This is for a CPU that is using well over 100 watts at this speed. The idle temp ranges around 38C depending on room temperature. CPU temperature is not the only factor in overclocking and once the CPU temp is not a factor, which it is not for me, then you have to deal with other factors relating to system stability like RAM speed and heat buildup elsewhere. Using standard watercooling to overclock your CPU, other factors will become a limitation long before CPU temperature becomes an overclocking limitation. I would try standard watercooling first, deal with those other factors and if in the process you ever get to the point where the other factors are no longer an issue and your core temperature is the only factor left in increasing your CPU clock speed, THEN use the water cooler to drop your coolant temperature and therefore your core temperature. Your kinda jumping ahead of yourself here and putting your components at risk from condensation damage before you really need to.

Have you taken any measures to keep condensation off your components?

Please don't take this as criticism....just trying to present you my opinion.

[nicolaus corelius]

let me say first that condensation wont be much of a problem cuz the watercooler has a regulator on it so the temps are not gonna go below dew.
secondarily i already have the cooler. but i dont a radiator, so it would be cheaper for me to just stick the hoses into the watercooler.
i understand your point that with standart watercooling the temps are not gonna be a big limitation for overclocking. thats true. but in my situation it seems that the watercooler would be a cheaper solution. so what im asking here is whether the watercooler is, from an engineering point of view, a viable solution.
you are welcome to make any comments and ideas:)

[David M]

If you have a cooler then you dont need a radiator...right? (The cooler has the radiator).

[nicolaus corelius]

yes, the cooler is pretty much the substitute of the radiator