Installing the chiller:
The first step is to choose where to place your chiller. Alphacool has designed a pump powerful enough to allow you to move it to another room, for example, to avoid noise pollution. In our case, we’ll simply test it close to our configuration first. Here are the steps to follow before powering up the Eiszeit 2000:
-
- Place the two G 1/4 connectors at the rear, noting “inlet” and “outlet” so as to place your components to be cooled in the right order. In general, a waterblock has a specific inlet and outlet that must be respected for optimum cooling.
- Install your pipes. In our case, knowing the power of the pump, we didn’t shorten them so as not to waste them, especially given their price – they’re EK-Loop ZMT Soft black – and especially since this isn’t yet the definitive location for our chiller.
- Fill the tank, keeping an eye on the water level. Note that once you’ve tested your cooling loop, i.e. plugged in the chiller, you’ll almost certainly need to top it up again, depending on the length of your cooling loop and the components to be cooled.
- Press the switch to the “ON” position and off you go!
Two operating modes:
Our chiller has two operating modes: intelligent mode and constant water temperature mode. By default, the intelligent mode will operate. The chiller will therefore adjust to the ambient temperature and set the water temperature 2°C lower. For example, if the ambient temperature is 24°C, the water will be around 22°C. To be honest, we’re not really interested in this mode, and we’d like to be able to manage the liquid temperature as we see fit.
Constant water temperature mode:
In order to be able to adjust the water temperature, we’ll have to change the operating mode, but here the default liquid temperature is 25°C. If the temperature rises, the compressor starts up to bring it back to this default value.
So we’re going to decrease it by going to the advanced settings and holding down ▲ SET for 5 seconds, until “0” is displayed. Change the value with ▲ and choose the default password, which is “8”, then press SET. This takes you to the settings shown in the table below.
The table above shows the default parameters that we’ll be able to modify. If we want to modify the water temperature, we need to edit code “F0”. We’ll select this code and lower the 25°C to 20°C by pressing SET and then saving with RST. We’ll also need to change code “F3” from 1 to 0 to activate constant water temperature mode. Code “F2” is used to set the temperature difference before the compressor starts. If we leave it at default, when the liquid temperature reaches 20°C, the compressor will switch off and only restart when the temperature rises to 20.8°C.
Go further:
As you can see, it’s possible to go even further and lower the temperature. To do so, you’ll need to deactivate the alarm via code “F5” and the minimum temperature limit via code “F9”. We’ll test whether this is possible on the next page.
