I see, and their is a great amount of logic in that. But I believe both I and Me have thought about that, I just don't think the fridge was going to do it being a passive cooler. We thought better to use the pros of the fridge case and install the water cooling elements in the freezer area and actually leave the fridge area off, on on the warmest setting. Now the freezer we could leave at just a little bit lower than room temperature, somehting cold enough for beer, but not too drastic. We felt that the ability of running this cold water would work better than the actual fridge cooling abilities. WE are mostly utalizing the design of a fridge not it cooling properties. Now the freezer should be just about large enough to fit the water pump and water tank, and I'm hoping a 6 pack of beer. Now I've looked at several forums and no one completed this succesfully yet, Actually I don't think any one has tried yet. But I'd like to be part of the first forum who can accomplish this task. Though whoever desides to be the guinne pig will spend a small chunk of change.

Have you got a fridge you can experiment with? We should start off by working out just how much heat a fridge can get rid of!

If you've got 2 or 3 100watt light bulbs (incancescent, not flourescant!) - power off the fridge untill it warms up, shove the bulbs in the freezer, with a thermometer, and power the whole lot up: keep a close eye on it - if the fridge heats up inside, that's the end of this idea. if it can actullay get rid of those 200w to 300w of heat, we're in business!!!

Be sure to mount the lights so they don't melt anything plastic: they get whacking hot.

be very sure to watch the temps - 300 watts in an airtight compartment is going to burn up fast if the fridge can't move the heat out fast enough!!!!!

You could try a mass of boillng water if you're scared of burning anything; regular readings and mathematics is needed after that tho.

Fridge cooling is either "on" or "off" - no inbetween - your thermostat settings merely switch the compressor on or off to keep the temp within range - picking any setting should make no difference to you if you're using the fridge compressor to cool anything: chances are the PC heat is going to keep it all warmer than whatever setting you pick, so it will never turn off anyohow... and of course... if it *does* turn off; I hope you PC can cope with all cooling suddenly ceasing until the thermostat tells the fridge to kick back in :-)

Another downside I just thought of: when a fridge *does* kick in (or out) - you get a huge spike of back-emf (my home fridge causes my UPS to beep every time this happens).

ok, so frige fropbably need to stay off and leave it up to the water cooling in the freezer, which should do the job any way on its own. Also I'm thinking to save some space and avoid some heat the PSU should be mounted on the outside of the fridge.
How much heat would the pc create then, that may be easier to keep cool. And as before we still have room for a six pack.

the fridge will only be used to house the PC to eliminate the noise and dust, it will not be turned on to cool the PC in any way. the freezer section will only be small so the cooling pump should be more than sufficient for the water cooling system and the odd six pack of beer

one note my dad seems to reckon that fridge freezer combos are all cooled by the the freezer so is not insulated against heat - after inspecting my fridge freezer combo i found that the underside of the freezer box to be around 5C so this may be the case although there are no signs of condensation this may cause problems

the freezer pump will have to be wired to stay on permanently at the right level to keep the water temp constant if possible but the temp from the water and the lowest setting on the freezer should keep it fairly even

the freezer would have to be brought down to temperature with the water pumping before the PC is turned on and once the PC is on i'd probably leave it on permanently

mounting the PSU externally would remove alot of heat from the setup so would be a good idea, mounting the components could be done by using an old case with the side missing or by making up some sort of frame. with the PSU outside the case the main heat makers will be the CPU and GPU ich will probably make around 200W of heat under full load plus the other components your probably looking at around 350W of heat coming from all of the coponents but not all wil be able to be cooled by the water cooling setup so a quiet 120mm fan as an exhaust and maybe one as an intake should be able to cope with this.

Had hoped to eliminate all noise, but 1 fan does not sound like too much of a sacrafice. I still have two questions before I believe this thing is buildable. Will installing an exaust remove the vaccum like seal of the fridge??
Also, no one has determined the best way to mount optical drives. I think they are going to have to be in the door so as to eliminate the need to open the case. Also if we never turn off the pc we do not need to worry about the power button, though it would be cool to mount on on the door as well, say a fighter jet toggle or something. I also do think we have gotten farther with this idea than any other forum, Ive checked, they all stop at condensation, --- we are stopped at keeping the beer TOO cold

I've got an eBay "watch" set up on "wine fridge" so if anything repsectably priced turns up anywhere I can drive to (or with cheap shipping) - I'll grab it and start doing some experiments :-)

http://search.ebay.com/wine-fridge-...Q2CQ20refri*Q29

I found some dude who had his frige cooling his PC (the CPU ran at -4 degrees C !!!) - the way he got around the problem of the thermostat kicking in and out was to have a huge bucket of antifreeze in the freezer, which of course maintains its low temp while the fridge compressor is idle.

It's already been done, sort of. Pricey though.


Take a look here

Where do the beers go though?!

Ah, erm, we're working on that....

does that cool all of the components or just the CPU ? also how loud is it?



yes having the fan will stop the fridge from being air tight but with a good air filter there shouldnt be too much dust inside, how about sitting the bottom of the PSU nice and tight onto a hole in the top of the fridge with the fan on the bottom to act as an exhaust aswell as cool the PSU ?

the drives could be mounted in a drive cage from an old case that is fixed to the back of the door, the power switch could be mounted next to them. we still need to work out how to get all of the connectors to the outside, im pretty sure you could mount ports on the side of the fridge that have a short cable on them to connect to all of the important plugs kinda like th front USB ports on cases, if you get what i mean



one of those small fridges that only costs about £30 would be good for experiments, i'll check the local sainsburys for one - also the little fridges can heat things to 65C which could be good for making a coffee the morning after