Well today when i woke up, well actually more like made my way upstairs i found one of these "mini mini fridges" waiting for me on the kitchen table. Now where Ive always wondered about these, i never got one due to the fact id rather actually have a mini fridge, plus I never knew how cold these things could get.
The one i have is some off brand, and it can go hot or cold, personally i don't need anything kept hot, ill just stick it outside. SO i decided to see how cold this thing could get from ambient air temp in an hour.

I started at 68.1F at noon and put this little thermometer inside, and turned it on. 15 minutes later it was 59.5F inside, got my hopes up for a little bit, but then after lunch, i went back downstairs to see how much cooler it got, and it was only 51.9F. Not much of a drop. It is cool inside if you stick your hand in, but i don't see it chilling down that 6 pack of drinks you just put inside. But for keeping my current drink(s) cold i think it will work out just great.

From what i could find this is the closet to what i have on amazon: click me.
Below are the images of the "fridge" and the temp inside of it at the beginning and after 1hr.

Fridge Closed:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18090702/Fridge%20closed.JPG
Fridge Open:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18090702/Fridge%20open.JPG
Starting temp:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18090702/Fridge%20ambient.JPG
Ending temp:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18090702/fridge%201hr.JPG
Switch:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18090702/fridge%20side.JPG
The PSU for the fridge:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18090702/fridge%20psu.JPG

Oh and on a side note, since i found out my rents got this for $4, i think its only worth that unless you rip the piece's out of it and use it for something else, but its still cool nonetheless.

I vote you somehow turn it into an active CPU cooler of some sort. Based on the reviews, it's not good build quality, although weirdly enough the complaints don't seem to be about temperature.

I had thought about that, but then i remembered i have 2 peltier coolers in my room so i could use those for cpu cooling. Or maybe find a way to add them into the fridge to make it colder.
Here is a pic of the peltier coolers i have: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18090702/DSC00010.JPG

The mini-er you get, the more surface/volume ratios are going to screw over the efficiency of your device. I'm really not surprised that it has trouble.

Elfprince, an excellent point, and leave it to a physicsy guy like yourself to point that out. RCfreak, oooh, you should definitely use those! Of course, you still need a standard HSF on top of those.

Very true, I'm hoping it will at least work to help keep my cold drink colder longer. otherwise at least its quiet.
@Kerm Yes i would! Tho, i don't know if i want to try it out right now by taking apart my desktop, maybe my Linux box.
Edit:
On a side note Ive had these things for like 2 years cause i got them super cheap off ebay and they work really good even off a 9v battery lol

Also, the reason I spent a summer building a very-much unminifridge was because any mininess in relation to the size we built it at, and it would have been thermodynamically unsound.

I like your fridge, a lot. Its pretty awesome how you did it. Sadly i dont have room for one that big heh. But a actual mini fridge would be nice

It can barely cool the air inside of it, how on earth is it going to cool something producing 100w+ of heat?

If you live near a college campus, now is about the time you should be able to get them on the cheap. Otherwise you'll probably have to wait a year (or at least until Christmas) for the prices to bottom out again.


The thermal gradient and surface/volume ratio will be its friend. Cooling something below the ambient temperature is going to be a different beast than cooling something to the ambient temperature (accelerating a waterfall vs trying to run it backwards). My suspicion is that a bigger problem would be physically arranging the components in such a way that the cooling would be taking place where it needs to.

I was pondering ripping off the heat sink that was in the back of it to see if i could add another little peltier cooler to it, but i didn't want to risk actually breaking it so i held off. Tho while i was back there i clean a huge amount of dust out so maybe it will help a little, but i doubt it.


Good point, I'll have to keep an eye open for one around here now.

Yes, but that difference isn't going to be anywhere near close to enough. The thing is going to have a tiny compressor and a tiny condenser, neither of which are at all going to be able to handle the heat.



That isn't hard at all. You seal up the CPU socket and put the evaporator directly onto the CPU. Enthusiasts have been doing this for years now

I still suspect that it would do better than you think.


Fair enough.

The units that actually do this are bigger than that entire mini fridge. Heck, you'll kill a full size fridge if you try and use it (burn out the compressor in a hurry since it really doesn't like to run continuously)

Shouldn't be all that hard to test, though. Just throw something in there that produces some heat (say, a 60w light bulb), and see what the temperature is after an hour.