Hey,

I'm back in the forums, and I'm trying not to follow the crowd. I want to save a 360 from the RRoD, so i'm going to attempt a watercooling project. The catch is I want to do it with Peltier Cooling, such as the Coolit 360 shown at CES.

CoolIT Xbox 360

I am trying to find out some values before I jump headlong into this project.
I need to know how much heat is created and/or dissipated from the CPU and GPU.


I'm trying to size a dual peltier setup with an external watercooling setup. Hopefully when I'm done... I can get that baby down to 15°C or less.

I am working on a budget though, but I was able to source an old, but still unused 600watt power supply to drive the watercooling system and peltier coolers.


What do you think? is it worth it? or just go for the watercooling?


When I get more money together.. I'll start posting some pictures, until then.. I'm going to work on adapting the motherboard.

Well first off I think this might get closed because i think theres a rule that "work in Progress" threads must have pictures. Or else its another "im gonna" thread i guess.

Anyways i wouldn't do watercooling myself because its bulky and cost too much when you can just do the artic silver and add a fan or two. BUT if i was to do water cooling I would make it internal which im sure costs even more, but would make it less bulky. Thats just my opinion.

Good luck and do post some pics sooon!

You need to fix the 3 red lights before any new cooling mod will have any effect. Also, the 360 will not function below a certain temperature.

if he re-pastes the chips when he puts the new waterblocks on, that should fix it all just like an x-clamp replacement would.

I'm going to go alittle above and beyond by actually attempting to x-ray scan the board at work to see if I can find where the cold short is. The machine itself is made more for checking fuse for explosives and military esq operations. I have a hot air machine that I can use to reflow any of the chips. I'll start with pics tomorrow. The 360 is nothing but a PC on krunk-juice so it should follow the same properties of a pc.. in respect of cooling and ability to operate at sub-zero temperatures. There are PC's that some very talented individuals have made to drop below freezing, and overclock to the edge of the boards voltage capacity. The colder the system gets, the more we're flirting with superconducting properties, and the ability to carry electrons. I know watercooling, especially externally is bulky but I do not plan on moving this thing around much when its complete, so I see the merit.

The article you posted dosen't go in depth on the inner workings. I assume that it works on a "chiller" basis, as I doubt they would have ppl attaching TEC's to their cpu/gpu. The peltiers will cool the liquid, which will be pumped through the water blocks. Again, this is an assumption... Is this what you're trying to do, or are you planning on attaching the TEC's to the chips directly and using the water to cool them?

As for the wattage, I believe that it's a 3.2 cpu with 3 cores(or did I lose my mind)? If that is the case I guess you can compare it to a Intel Quad, which needs a TEC in the 400W range to get temps close to 0c. This is having it mounted directly on the die.

I personally would go with the first choice I spoke off. It's safer, less if any condensation, 360 dosen't need that much cooling, and did I mention it's safer? After all you won't need temps close to freezing, as you're not going to overclock anything.

I'm building a similar "chiller" setup(pc verion) and I plan to use a 158W TEC. Mind you the current one I have (46W) keeps the reservoir at 2c without load. So once I triple it, I should make some ice.

the article I posted was just to prove that this sort of cooling has been done at least once. The inner-working of the Freezone system can be viewed at the CoolIT website. You are absolutely correct in the respect of the "chiller basis". THe system is pre-plummed and is just a plug and play solution. [H]ardOCP has a great review of the Freezone if anyone's interested. I plan on using somethign around 400W+ and use them on-die for the cooling. I'm not worried about condensation since I have a lot of conformal coating left over from a previous project. That combined with the proper steps should be enough to protect the bottom of the board, while I'll use conformal coat, dielectric grease, and/or foam insulation to protect the cores themselves. I wasen't sure how much heat the system created, so I was looking to find an uber peltier to cool everything.


As a side note, I was looking at Frozencpu.com at the 475W peltiers to use. I have the power supply to do it... I think I may custom fold a sheetmetal container and make my own kit.

You will have problems with condensation for sure. Especially under the chip. You seem to know what you're doing, so you should know that the socket needs to be filled with dielectric grease. This won't be possible on a 360 as the chip is not removable. Hence it will produce condensation under the chip, which will eventually kill it.

Hope I'm wrong as i would love to see a phase change 360.. Good luck with it.

I'm starting my teardown tonight. I'm going to remove the x-clamps and examine the board tonight. Tomorrow I plan on breaking out the ol' cad skills and draft up a couple of enclosure ideas to rest my watercooling items in. I have a buddy that works for U.S. Drillhead that does sheetmetal work all the time. I just need to design something practical that would not detract cosmetically from the 360.

Thank you for the positive words GSX, I'm still trying to plan out the best way to attain a nearly sub-zero 360, without blowing lots of cash and attaining performance results. Eventually, I'll make this something that can be replicated, and hopefully turn it into a tutorial.

I'm still thinking about how to keep the condensation out from under the BGA setup. Maybe I could flow dielectric grease under the chips? (<-- doesn't sound safe..but hey.. its the idea phase right now)


If anyone has more ideas let me know.

Just an update

I'm still designing the external enclosure to house the watercooling and power parts, but the search goes well.

After doing some measurements, I found out how much room I have to play with as far as the heatsinks and fitting the peltiers. I should have around 1-2mm overhang on the waterblock, so everything will be covered. Supposively the coolers I picked out were 158watt.. well below my hope.. but I did not realize I was working on a size constraint.

158 watt peltier coolers

I ended up buying 3 in case I need a replacement, or decide to mod my usb drink cooler to run off AC. Total cost shipped was around $32.

I will post pics and stats for the power supply I snagged from Microcenter. 600 watt dual rail external PSU with LED readout... $46. It works.. but its just leftover stock from back in the day.


I've decided.. i'm going to use cornformal coat around the CPU/GPU to protect against moisture. The type I have at work is able to be removed without a stripping agent (think booger glue.. the stuff they adhere credit cards and stuff in magazine with).

I'll be back when the peltiers arrive and I get a Cad design of the external case.

How do these things actually work? Do they just go on the cpu/gpu die, and thats it?

In this particular case, they are applied between the waterblock, and the CPU/GPU. The cold side faces the die and moves heat to the hot side. The hot side is chilled by the watercooling system.. effectively boosting the ability of the watercooling system to remove heat, and dropping the temperature of both processors to well below ambient temperature.

These are designed to get cold on one side, while hot on another when voltage is applied. They are used in portable cooler/heaters, ect. They've been used for overclocking for some time.

This is a video of something to the extent I'm trying to attain.
Boiling to 0°C

if you look at wikipedia for overclocking.. they are mentioned there too.

Thermal Electric Cooling.. [TEC]

I am unsure at the moment if I need some sort of variable voltage system to keep these under control.. but that will come about through R&D. I could just make a breadboard to increase voltage applied to the TEC's as head on the die increases.

You will need a serious power source if you plan to use a peltier device. You need a separate source from your 360 that should be able to pump out at least 1-3 amps at 12v dc for the average plate. You can get wall warts which can supply 1.5-3 amps from some online parts outfits. If you haven't messed with these things before there are lots of things to be careful about... you need high current and high voltage which means you will be generating a lot of heat somewhere. Also the devices MUST be actively cooled whenever they are running... they don't work like fans, they attempt to generate a temperature differential across a small distance.. if you don't keep the "hot" side cool enough the plate will overheat and break very quickly. These things are massively inefficient btw, in most cooling applications they do more harm than good.

This is an excellent guide on the subject:
http://www.heatsink-guide.com/peltier.htm

Like why do you need to water cool with these?

Like im saying if i just put one one of these on the chips, then put the stock heat sink on top, would it work?


Also if this increases the size of the heatsink where are you putting the dvd drive?

i have a 600 watt dual rail PSU to power the watercooling and the peltiers alone. Pics are coming up tonight.

The peltier itself is 3.3mm tall, so that shouldn't affect the height of the heatsink drastically. if it does.. I'll augment my heatsink and dvd drive to fit.


Filthy: I dont really need these to watercool, but they will chill my processor below ambient temperature. Translation--> the peltiers will cool the system below the temperature that the watercooling would do alone.

There are some really good links here about how they work, especially the link posted by Marmaladeboy.

Was gone for a while so I didn't get to stay up to date with this thread. It was the first thing I looked for tho.

I noticed that you got 158W Tec's(ordered the same one on Mon). Do you think that 115W of cooling power will be enough for either one of the chips? Seems a bit low to me... Have you found out how much power the cpu/gpu put out?

Marmaladeboy: A 3A Tec at 12V works out to only 36W, which would not even be close enough to cool this app. The 158W he got will use around 13A@12V(which still might not be enough). Tec's are not efficient by any means, as this one in question only produces 115W of cooling power, and eats up 158W to do it.

Tho I must disagree that they will do more harm than good. If you don't care about electricity usage, and are a hardcore overclocker, than this is the only way to go. I have seen 400W+ Tec's cool down Quad core chips to way below ambient, at outrageously high clocks.


It's just a hardcore cooling solution, for hardcore people

Keep us updated!

Sorry,
I promised to put up some pictures, but my camera is giving me problems. I've done a test run with one of the peltiers.. but it was being cooled via a regular heatsink with fan. I was able to take it up to 58watts max. It was pushing it.. and my bench power supply's fault circuit would not let me go any father, even in series.

The reason I went with the 158w was because they fit the waterblocks by Koolance perfectly. I have 1mm on either side of the waterblock to work with. I was afraid that the waterblock would not cool the peltier efficiently if the peltier had overhang off the processor. I dont know how well these TEC's are going to work until I flesh out my cooling system and do a test run. I know the Koolance block can only dissipate 200w of energy, so I'm hoping that I can compensate that by running a high volume system, with a very efficient radiator and supplement my system with Ethylene Glycol.


I am going to experiment in the near future with a few types of liquid sealants to see which performs the best for my use. I was recommended the liquid rubber agent that tool handles are sometimes coated with, or liquid electrical tape.


I'm a broke as hell college student living at home, so progress is minimal if best. My credit cards are through the roof from my CCNP studies. I'm going to buy my primary watercooling components when the money is here.

And I promise to put those pics up for you guys.

Still trying to get a suitable camera for this project before it gets capped for no pictures.


I got my waterblocks from Newegg. I didn't realize how rediculously small these things are. I'm waiting to scrap together some money to buy the core components to do a peltier test. If the water system can evacuate enough heat, then I'll use the blocks I have; if not, I'm tempted to adapt the Swifttech Apogee blocks that I can get, for the simple fact I know those blocks are huge and I can use larger tubing. I'm still tampering with my power supply. Do I need a rheostat to control the voltage/amp to the Peltiers? or should I just let them take full draw? What I'm most concerned about, is I have yet to establish if they can be wired directly though molex connectors. Any Ideas? Trying to get pics up desperately, believe me.


I have like 4 other projects going right now, so money is tight.

I know that I tried peltiers on my xbox 1 and the one issue that I had was that if you didn't provide sufficient cooling to the hot side of the TEC, the heat will actually overpower the cold side, making it into a source of heat rather than cooling the system. Just a heads up and good luck.

I'm also planning such a project but I'm going to try to build it from scratch (other than the peltiers) and make it internal.

I conducted a sweet test last night.. which gives me hope that I will keep the xbox well below ambient.

I used the xbox cpu heatsink to conduct heat. I submerged the fins of the heatsink into a bowl of water and started the peltier. The heatsink.. just below water level, stayed cool, and the peltiers drew condenstation out of the air. The bowl of water has no flow, which i imagine is less efficient than the watercooling setup i'm designing. The peltiers were just around or below freezing, as the peltier flash froze my finger to the surface. I think if the heatsinks i bought are efficient enough.. this xbox should run frosty


If in any case the peltiers I purchased are not efficient enough.. I will upgrade to 300watt and buy larger waterblocks.


I'm making progress.. I'm debating buying the rest of the system this weekend.

Just droppin in to make some more updates.

I dont have any homebrew pics of my project. Like I said.. i'm a deadbeat for a camera right now. yeah.. not even a cellphone camera... nokia 6015i ftw.

I have a link to some of my parts if you're interested in the parts and stats I'm using/gathering.

XG Magnum 600 watt PSU

my peltiers were previously posted.


Still think that I'm going to CAD up a custom fabricated sheetmetal enclosure to contain all the watercooling materials. hopefully I plan on camoflaging it to appear as a Media Center acessory. I plan on having all the acessibilty necessary to mantain a watercooling kit, and still make the xbox appear near stock.


*************Everything Below here is speculated for purchase

Radiator

Water Pump

Reservoir


I also think I'm going to use household silicone or liquid electrical tape to seal the board. I'm just wondering how to handle the small airpocket that would be under the processors.

BTW: I'm trying like hell to get you some pics. I know that because I have nothing to show, I could get closed, but I'm rolling along, and as soon as I get a goddamn camera.. even a disposable.. I'll snap some killer pics for you guys.