The intro maybe long... u can skip it if u want

The intro
So...i salvaged an old fridge, it originated from my dad's restaurant where the fridge was rusted quite seriously. one day it starts tripping the power, due to the old age of the fridge he decided not to call the technician instead

I requested those guys from the fridge repairing shop to send that old fridge to my house while they bring in the new fridge. By the way that old crap was a domestic fridge, i din took a pic of it as i the chances of breaking one of those old copper tubings. It even lost its wiring diagram, great...now i gotta find out which is which by testing it manually.

Found out that the defrosting timer was the culprit, wired things up directly to the mains...moment of truth........"zeeenng"....the compressor shook a lil....OMG...its still working.
Went to the front, strip of the alu cover plate.....the cooling coil was giving a fog effect like those cryo tanks but way less in size and volume .
Thats when my imagination flew sky high


Heres what i've done so far,
stripped the cooling system out, easy?? no, the catch is strip it off its casing or wateva u call it without puncturing the tubes
(Theres a 3 star rating on the fridge door, dunno wth izit though)

Attach it upright to my window's iron rods(hot side outside my room)
Cut some corners of the glass for the cooling coil's tubing with a glass cutter
Made a box out of polystyrene to house the cooling coil
Fixed pipes to the box
Installed a centrifugal aka blower fan(picked up for RM40 from a car AC technician from his pile of AC junks)


Heres the completed poly box, insulated the copper tubes with nitrile foam tube, 80mm pvc pipe attached along with the blower fan.





Tht fan is really strong at full force...i have difficulty opening my eyes when direct to my face during testing.
(this is a stupid way to test a blower, it could pick up a lose screw or rock or should the blades give up and shatter. it would launch it straight to my face)
During the cleaning, i noticed the carbon brushes are almost worn out. Got myself a pair of new carbon brush for RM10

For those who want to get replacement brushes
They have most shapes and sizes, else fails, they can reshape/resize one to the exact match on the spot, Soldering service provided too.
Great Eastern Carbon, located at jln loke yew. Next to the cemetary. If u live outside kl, u can PM me
I notice someone's Dremel is dead due to a worn out carbon brush


3 speed fan controller, off..slow...medium...full.
The 80mm pipe was cut offed at the top and siliconed to the base of the poly box, i did this to duplicate as much as possible to the way it cools in the fridge, drawing air at the bottom while a fan is at the top sucking. Manufacturer have reasons of doing so...so its best to keep it the way it was



The piping....top cold air, bottom hot air. Class O 80MM PVC pipe, RM28/piece so far used up oni 1, gonna need 30ft more
Its cheaper to buy one whole piece than buying seperate. I wonder how low can i bring the air temp before the pipe starts condensing lots of water. Sry bout the cacings, not tied up yet





The entire rig is gonna be covered up in poly as well to keep the room's heat out and prevent condensation. Im planning to lay a layer of alu foil on the inside of the poly to create a farraday cage and to prevent statics, i think the poly is pretty good at getting static build up.
But i'll not cool it past dewpoint, the coldest i'll planned to go its 8'C cause HDD min temp is 5'C.
PSU is gonna be excluded from the luxury of air-cond cooling
ROMs, yes. a large block of poly will be attached to the tray. it'll be shaped to taper in from outside in with matching shape on the faceplate to limit thermal exchange, moisture and cold air flowing out.

The cold air its gonna come in in between the psu and router



As far as i reached now, the exhaust or suction hole, a pipe will be attached to the bottom. The hole was made by drilling a ring of holes and a gentle nudging with a chipper. reason it was made this way was to make the sharp pin like ends so that when i push the pipe in, it'll grip the pipe, pulling it back out will just make the pins dig deeper into the pipe. it'll save a lot of work to attach the pipe to the casing, just push in, and it'll stay there.


Your helpful comments are needed as i might be heading for some mistakes i yet to know. Such as galvanic corrosion i din thought of, the cooling coils has some plastic wrapper around the copper, while fins are alu, the copper will sooner or later corrode the fins, counter measures taken though

This post has been edited by radioactive: Jul 23 2007, 01:50 AM

WAH.. im amazed.. hardcore modding eh.. you even think about the dew point temperature.. but still it's a risk if it really goes below the dew point, imagine the consequences that it'll bring to your CPU.. condensate formed around the board and circuit!! (and i don't know what will happen next)

But nevertheless, this is indeed a great idea of modding, and since you've thought about it, i think control the temp is crucial part.. will keep track in your thread hehe.. *thumbs up bro*

This post has been edited by nicholas_1213: Jul 6 2007, 07:12 AM

this is excellent man....

next round pls put in larger pix (800*600).

You should just directly mod it to phase change

yea...all close up...but to be safe, i'll try to seal it as tight as possible,
i found out that the roms are actually quite strong if u make it just right, the point where the magnetic clamp starts to lock the disc.
i hope it'l be strong enuff to make airtight. none the less, i'l put a water sensor near the roms. i think i made one with those hobby kits they sell at jln pasar...now where did i place it

U missed the galvanic corrosion out, in the cooling coils, there are copper and alu parts, I removed a plastic wrapping thinking it was useless only to find myself re-opening the poly box and cover it back with some silicone when i read some article regarding corrosion.

i use ayam brand psu, so its cheaper to replace one than the long term cost of maintaining one. the compressor runs at around 200watts, nothing near a 1000watt range of a 1hp AC. It makes me question the cooling capacity of the unit. So is better to exlude

I won't run it fanless, the only fans tht'll run will be the proc hsf and psu. the poly should dampen out the noise generating by the hsf and hdd seeking noise

ok...will do next time.

muahaha.... cool freezer mods..... dude, your using the small freezer or the big one for kitchen use?

hey guys.. have you all thought about those silicon spray (those water repellant stuff)? i wonder if it can help water-proof the entire internal system..

just a thought..

why not salvage those parts and build a phase change cooling system.....temps can easily go down to -30C. Fridge definately have a compressor (obviously), a condensor and a filter. All you need is a teflon hose or better still use copper hose and a selfmade evaporator. And with all this, voila....u have a ultimate cooling system.

I dun have welding torch and the refrigration gas cost around rm300 per tank, and theres hardly any AC technicians out there having the patience or willingness to do tht. they rather take tht back and bring it back tomolo with a rm200 bill.

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Added on July 6, 2007, 10:13 pmalready decided that looong time ago. somewhere in december 2005. if u guys remember the mega atx worklog which was grounded due to lack of parts and funds. waterblocks were not so easy to obtain back then, i waited for few months, the blocks din reach the supplier and my college is starting too so i abandoned it.

I built a rack out of 1/2 inch L shape iron rods. then i bolted it to the wall. so it was permanent from then onwards.

This post has been edited by radioactive: Jul 6 2007, 10:13 PM

There's no water in the system. How the hell is galvanic corrosion gonna happen then without an ionic solvent? With nothing to dissolve the aluminium ions, they're going nowhere even with the difference in electrode potentials causing the aluminium to ionise easily.

let me give a rough estimation....u have a fridge....so that means u have a condensor, a compressor, and a filter/dryer puls a cap tube.so u need to buy:

1) Map gas + head = RM100
2) copper block = RM20
3) copper pipes = RM100 (max)
4) r22 refridgarent = RM85
5) some insulation materials = RM50(max)

Thats about it.....plus it looks a lot more neater than having so many pipes running around ur room. and it is movable. Well, you could have ask around as i am willing to guide you along the way. There is also no worries about corrosion. Perfect...period.

This post has been edited by extremeocer: Jul 7 2007, 01:28 AM

refrigeration 101

i hope this helps had this for quite sometime now although i didnt find it any use to me hope it helps u in your modding best of lucks


i also found this interesting website something like your mod asetek

This post has been edited by psyduck united: Jul 7 2007, 02:09 AM

yup read thru....its explains refrgeration cooling but not really onto phase change cooling....

But nevertheless, the refrigerants page is very helpful though missing a few gasses like r410a or r1150...but it was still very informative.