Ambient Argument

[POGE]

Can you get below ambient temperatures with air cooling? I know this isnt possible but a friend of mine just won't believe me.

It is impossible to get the thing being cooled to go below the temperature of the air your using to cool with. If that happened, the thing that was being cooled would start cooling the air, and to cool the air, it would need to be generating heat that is lower than ambient temperatures. We all know that processors put out heat, not cold. Generating energy from no source is impossible.

 

[Polaris573]

Physical impossibility. Your air cooling system would have to be 100% efficient to even get a modern processor/video card down to ambient temperature let alone below ambient. While we are at it, having a 100% efficient cooling system is also impossible.

 

[g12rxz]

haha, thats hilarious. although you already know this, maybe you can print out and repeat our jargon to your friend. Ambient temperature is the lowest temeprature you can cool off your rig to, even if you have water cooling, because the radiator itself is air cooled... i wish i could get my rig cooled down to my ambient temp, but thats not happening . maybe though hes confused, cause the ambient temp can be higher than room temperature, and mabye in some way shape or form you try to mod some silly contraption to utilize that.. you could get lower than the ambient temp, at least the one that your motherboard reports inside your case...

 

[POGE]

Thanks guys, he believes me now.

 

[CjStaal]

Actually with water cooling you can get below ambient but that has alot to do with dew points and humidity and wetbulb drybulb temps and windchill from the fan

 

[stealthfighter]

Put your PC in a bucket of liquid nitrogen, that will get it below ambiant!! lol

 

[g12rxz]

the liquid nitrogen would BE the ambient

 

[cdawall]

i honestly sit at a little below the ambient in my room 25C @ startup and idle room sits @ 80F (26.6C) top that

 

[Alec§taar]

Can you get below ambient temperatures with air cooling? I know this isnt possible but a friend of mine just won't believe me.

WELL, assuming I understood your initial post & its constraints earlier, properly?

Do you have an Air Conditioner??

(From there??? Oh, I think you KNOW where I am leading to... because, it's SURE/CERTAIN to lower your ambient temps)...



Especially if you run a makeshift duct from the A/C output ports directly into the side of your case... lol!

Hey - It'd MOST LIKELY work (edit: providing it can generate temps lower than the surrounding ambient temp. wherever he is, currently)!

Plus? It'd fit the definition/constraints here: It'd be PURE 'air cooling', solely as well.

(Think about it, I have & have mentioned it here before on these forums! I am considering trying it here for the heck of it!)

* If your pal is "hitting upon this", he is demonstrating the ability (imo, @ least) to "think outside the box" (literally here, using an A/C unit, & figureatively as well)...

This is not original thought, & has been going on in mainframe/midrange computer rooms ("the magic toyshops" as I call them) for decades now...

APK

P.S.=> Right now, the ONLY thing making me hesitate is increased utility costs involved for running the A/C is all...

A big "little thing to worry about" imo @ least!

Plus, fall's coming soon, temps are already dropping & all that - so, nothing a little patience won't cure with time... apk

 

[Frogger]

Plus, fall's coming soon, temps are already dropping & all that - so, nothing a little patience won't cure with time... apk

Open the window... insert window fan... Close heat vents.... put on woolly long johns... when it's 20 below outside it will run cooler

 

[mandelore]

Thermo electric couples 4TW chilly -7C boot, +13C load

 

[Sasqui]

Can you get below ambient temperatures with air cooling? I know this isnt possible but a friend of mine just won't believe me.

Even if you are using closed passive phase change (heatpipe), I do not beleive it is possible (but I do not claim to be a thermodynamics expert). Based on current technology and the laws of thermodynamics, the ONLY time such a thing works is when the evaporator side of the heatpipe (CPU) is warmer than the condensor (fin area).

Heat ALWAYS moves from warm to cold (unless you add energy by "pumping" the heat, such as an with an air-conditioner.)

Here's a picture of the Alaskan pipeline in Fairbanks, AK. (120 mi south of the arctic circle!)

The strange double top protrusions are the aluminum fins on condensors of giant passive phase change heatpipes - they are there to keep the Perm-Frost permanent (or the pipeline would sink into the ground - a bad thing). Now seeing that it's close to 90 deg in that picture, how the hell would that work??? - Well, it so happens that the average yearly air temperature is well below the temperature of permafrost, and in the warmer months, the heatpipe simply does nothing (nothing cold enough to condense on). In the colder months, it kicks in and cools the permafrost below it's normal temperature.

A few things I don't know: How deep is it to the permafrost or how far down the cool end of the heatpipe actually goes.

 

[infrared]

i honestly sit at a little below the ambient in my room 25C @ startup and idle room sits @ 80F (26.6C) top that

Then your temp sensor's reading wrong on your cpu.

 

[mandelore]

Yeah, what Sasqui said, the only way to get below ambient is to use a heat pump, which is exactly what a TEC is, solid state heat pump, you have to be using energy to activly remove the heat from the source. Otherwise the heatsink will reach a temperature where it is at thermal saturation point, & where the thermal gradient between the heatsink and the surrrounding air starts to balance out and you inturn get a reduced transmission of heat from the heatsink to the atmosphere, and therefore a limit to your cooling potential.

I think that makes sense, tho I may have had a temporary annurism,

 

[Sasqui]

Then your temp sensor's reading wrong on your cpu.

Bingo. I have the same problem on my rig. The koolance water block sensor reading says 25c and the BIOS is reporting the CPU at 13c. "Impossible Holmes, simply impossible!"

Perhaps Abit has figured out how to move cold to hot with no additional energy supplied. Hell, poltergeists do it.

 

[cdawall]

Then your temp sensor's reading wrong on your cpu.

the case does which is 100% possible b/c it sits in a corner and i took temp readings at my desk so it is prob. about equal

 

[mandelore]

I had a problem with my old Gigabyte board, where the bios reported temperatures always 10C below the actual, i just ignored it and stuck with software monitoring

 

[cdawall]

hey do you think i could get one of those alaska heat exchangers for my cpu

 

[mandelore]

hey do you think i could get one of those alaska heat exchangers for my cpu

hehehe, just move over there and stick your motherboard onto it

 

[cdawall]

hehehe, just move over there and stick your motherboard onto it

lol

 

[Alec§taar]

An old post I did, about keeping computers cool (some humor on this note, sort of)

So, think you've got awesome cooling & a powerful computer?

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=13249

QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"But it is hard to keep a secret when it is a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky."

* An "oldie but a goodie" about Super-Cooling computers...

APK

P.S.=> Now THAT? That's 'radical'... GOOGLE did well on that one, imo! apk

 

[Frogger]

I would say the humor is in the article"Behind the curtain of secrecy, the two buildings here — and a third that Google has a permit to build — will probably house tens of thousands of inexpensive processors and disks, held together with Velcro tape in a Google practice that makes for easy swapping of components" lol