Solid state AC

[Aluvus]

Originally posted by: futuristicmonkey
Buy a used mini-fridge.
Open the door.
....
Coolness

That will make the room warmer, because of the power wasted by the fridge.

 

[cker]

You could feed air from a SMALL peltier into your PC, and exhaust the heated air. To accomplish this, you'll need to use some ducting (I'm thinkng cardboard and duct tape). Don't forget an air filter, since if you're running a stream of air you'll need something to keep out dust. But this might cool off the air just for the PC, just consider Peltiers are not magic cool-panels, they're heat exchangers. You still have to do something with the heat you pull from the cold side of the Peltier. The simplest, cheapest, and probably best solution is to just not run your hot system during the hotter hours of the day.

For your body, then the best advice I can give is to keep the air moving, wear the right clothes, and learn your body. I learned to love loose beach shorts, garish thin-fabric shirts (think Hawaiian) and sandals. Hey, it's college -- you're allowed to dress weird. A foot-tub of cool water will cool you off faster than you might think. So will a damp rag on the back of your neck. I don't know if a foot tub is a good idea while using a PC -- I definitely wouldn't if there's a ground fault on the power outlet for the PC. Dehumidifiers are nice but they ADD heat to the room and their purpose is defeated if you're getting good ventilation -- which you should be getting if possible. Also, keeping air moving helps, so box fans or oscillating fans are a huge benefit to your comfort, even if they don't help the PC.

Back to the PC, you might want to look at
Silent PC Review -- I know you're not asking about how to silence your PC, but you're really looking to solve a similar problem. You want to get the heat out of a PC. They SPCR guys try to accomplish this by using minimal noise, so they cultivate higher-efficiency techniques. These might come in handy, especially if you're willing to supplement the SPCR tactics with actual-speed fans. You might be interested in underclocking as well, some SPCR'ers have underclocked and achieved lower heat without losing too much performance. Not sure how that might work with your video card(s). Also, if you can watercool then you get more flexibility -- perhaps you can submerge your watercooler heat exhanger in water, and cool the water (giving the cooler an artifically friendly heat-dumping environment) and just add ice when your external reservoir heats up.

Alternate question - do you have a place off-campus you can go? Perhaps you can work something out with a person with an apartment to either LAN party it at his/her place? Are there open meeting rooms in the student union or something -- perhaps you could start up a student recreational organization that does LAN parties, and reserve a room every week for a couple of hours? If the dorm room won't work for your PC, can you enjoy your PC elsewhere?

400 BTU thermoelectric solid-state cooler, not sure on price

Air chiller using a fan, cooler, tubing and icewater

Inspiration for the above quasi-AC

Pete's closed circuit AC thingy

 

[cker]

Oh, and regarding dumping AC 'radiators' into the air -- please don't do that. If you want to use something like those copper assemblies, ask a local AC shop if you can raid their trash. They may charge you gor the privelege, though, due to copper's high scrap value. Some people have good luck using the old heat exchangers from the back of refrigerators, but they're no exactly tiny. They also can contain coolants, though. They normally are required to reclaim old ozone-depleting coolants from such systems and therefore you should have a better shot at not fouling the air. Besides, Freon and other coolant compounds are REALLY NOT A GOOD IDEA TO INHALE. Freon itself is non-toxic but (a) it's banned and (b) other coolants may not be -- please be careful not to inhale coolants. I didn't go into Ammonia coolers partly because of that -- an ammonia relase in an enclosed room like a dorm room would pretty much certainly kill anyone caught in it.

Freon toxicity
http://www.envirotools.org/factsheets/contaminants/Freon113.shtml

 

[herm0016]

and if you burn r-12 or r-22 you get poshigne (sp) gas, a nerve agent used in ww2! anyway...
<rant>
poor baby does not get ac. wow, what is the world comming to. none of our dorms have ac, only 2 of our buildings on campus have ac, one is a theatre that is 1101 seats, the other is computer labs and chem/bio/etc labs. ie-no normal classrooms. the house i live in has no ac. i would say: get over it. drink cold things.
</rant>
i would sugjest the water chiller system like the bong thing. very effective, not sure for the room size though. if nothing else, just use a watercooling setup on your computer and vent the rad to the outside. this should keep the computer cool and keep the computer from warming up the room.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: cker
Oh, and regarding dumping AC 'radiators' into the air -- please don't do that. If you want to use something like those copper assemblies, ask a local AC shop if you can raid their trash. They may charge you gor the privelege, though, due to copper's high scrap value. Some people have good luck using the old heat exchangers from the back of refrigerators, but they're no exactly tiny. They also can contain coolants, though. They normally are required to reclaim old ozone-depleting coolants from such systems and therefore you should have a better shot at not fouling the air. Besides, Freon and other coolant compounds are REALLY NOT A GOOD IDEA TO INHALE. Freon itself is non-toxic but (a) it's banned and (b) other coolants may not be -- please be careful not to inhale coolants. I didn't go into Ammonia coolers partly because of that -- an ammonia relase in an enclosed room like a dorm room would pretty much certainly kill anyone caught in it.

Freon toxicity
http://www.envirotools.org/factsheets/contaminants/Freon113.shtml

Thank you for posting this.
Where might be a good place to check? Online stores that sell hardcore PC cooling stuff should have smallish radiators, but where's a good source of really good radiators?

Is it possible to take an AC/refrigerator/dehumidifier/whatever somewhere and just have them empty out the coolant, and then let you keep the rest of it for parts?


Edit: I may have answered the former already. Radiators The Thermaltake one looks like its pipe makes quite a few loops through the fins.

 

[cker]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Where might be a good place to check? Online stores that sell hardcore PC cooling stuff should have smallish radiators, but where's a good source of really good radiators?

Is it possible to take an AC/refrigerator/dehumidifier/whatever somewhere and just have them empty out the coolant, and then let you keep the rest of it for parts?

You could probably scavenge any of the appliances you mentioned (AC, fridge, et c) and get a radiator. All a radiator is, is a heat exchanger optimized for transferring heat into air; you could use a less efficient radiator if you increase the airflow. The PC mod stuff you mentioned all looks pretty good, and the smaller radiators are all fan-assisted.

I haven't seen any a la carte radiators much because there's not much demand for them. Heat sinks -- just large-surface aluminum blocks -- can often be bought from electonrics shops or pulled from old high-power equipment. You'll probably have an easier time scavenging radiators than buying new, unless you're talking about stuff that's badged for PC watercooling use. You may have luck asking a local AC shop or appliance repair / recycling place for castoff stuff. I find asking forgiveness for dumpster diving is usually more helpful than asking permission ahead of time.

I don't see them giving up a copper radiator (and if they do you might want to price it as scrap) but aluminum radiators are also common; I have a window-unit AC that uses Al radiator. In a pinch you could get into hand-forming a radiator with copper tubing and copper sheet, but that's a kind of frustrating process at best. If it were me, I'd probably not bother with it.

You're still talking about dumping the heat from the PC into the room's ambient environment, though. If the heat's really bad, then I don't see any marathon gaming sessions in the heat of the day. Obvious: Putting your radiator in the sunbeam will not help. Not meaning to be an ass, but I've seen people totally miss that about a heat exchanger. If the radiator is picking up radiant heat from an outside source, then it will work opposite of how you want -- it'll turn into a heat ABSORBER.

I had a hot dorm room in college, too. They turned on the AC late in summer, and then again around late November (sigh). The terrible temps in my dorm were a great incentive to get out, get work done in the lab, go hang out where it was cooler. I found most of the womens' dorms had working AC, which was a great incentive/excuse to go there. Best thing I ever did for being able to tolerate the heat, though, was work construction all summer. After the first week, I hardly noticed the heat except as a dull background detail of the larger misery of my job. For years afterwards, the heat didn't seem to bother me much.

 

[Jeff7]

You're still talking about dumping the heat from the PC into the room's ambient environment, though. If the heat's really bad, then I don't see any marathon gaming sessions in the heat of the day. Obvious: Putting your radiator in the sunbeam will not help. Not meaning to be an ass, but I've seen people totally miss that about a heat exchanger. If the radiator is picking up radiant heat from an outside source, then it will work opposite of how you want -- it'll turn into a heat ABSORBER.

I failed to even see the part that the OP wants to keep his PC cool. If that's the only concern, either do water cooling, or get one of those expensive mini-AC's for the PC. They'll use less power than a traditional large air conditioner, or so I'd imagine. Something like this.

As cker mentioned though, this'll just be dumping the PC's heat into your room, and the unit itself will generate heat due to various losses associated with any electrical device. I was fortunate enough to have a laptop along when I lived in the dorm, so my PC spent the hotter days turned off.

You could probably scavenge any of the appliances you mentioned (AC, fridge, et c) and get a radiator.

But then there's still the problem of how to get just the radiator without releasing all the coolant into the atmosphere. That Thermaltake radiator I linked to looks good. Copper and aluminum, just like you'd find in an air conditioner, so it won't rust.

 

[Talcite]

ahh but what about the poorman's airconditioning?

This is direct from the engineering dorm at U of Toronto =p.

get a bucket and a long copper tube and a fan and a funnel

twist the tubing into a coil, but leave two ends straight

put ice + water into the bucket. connect the tubing to a funnel, place inside the bucket. Place other end of the tubing outside the window. Prime the tubing, then drain the water through the tubing and out the window. ensure the bucket is higher than the tubing, or else it won't work (obviously). position the fan so it blows through the coil.

You'll need to refill this constantly, so either refill it constantly, or make the diameter of the tubing small. your choice.

Voila, aircon for 10 bucks.

I've suggested using a rad instead of copper tubing, since it transfers heat better. Also try using rubber tubing for the bucket - rad section, and the rad - window section.

My friend has also suggested putting salt into the water, it lowers the temperature of the water in general, just make sure you don't drain it outside, but into another bucket instead. salt has a nasty tendancy to make things rust or plants die =p.