I think a mini fridge water cooler could work IF DONE A CERTAIN WAY.
That being don't just stick the computer inside the fridge. This has already been proven to not work with high end machines and only little tiny computers.
But imagine this. if you had a water cooling setup with no radiator and a swimming pool for a res , there is zero chance the cpu will actually be able to warm an entire swimming pool of water , so your water source would always be cold.
So if you took a mini fridge and place inside of it a res big enough to occupy the entire fridge , the difference in water that is already chilled vs the water that is being warmed by the cpu with be massive. So much so that the fridge compressor would not have to work hard to keep the water cool because at any given point the majority of water is already cold. then simply build the pc outside of it with the fridge just being used as a massive chiller res.
Is this practical or financially smart over a normal water cooling setup? NO. But is it possible if done that way , I think yes.
The more water there is to heat , the harder is it to heat it up. It would take forever for the cpu to heat up that much water , so the compressor on the fridge wouldn't be on very often.
May not be a mini fridge but this is what i was picturing.. just making the fans run along with water cooling setups would make this A+.... just have fun paying electrical bills hahaha.
while we are throwing practicality out the window and just having fun, You could use a window AC unit and wire weld the copper pipes to the pipes of the CPU cooler. and submerge the whole thing in oil. You could also get an old 8 Row radiator out of a junk yard and wire up an automotive electric fan from a Honda civic I mean, granted, your cooling solution would weigh more than your computer, but hey, MOAR POWAH
It would work as long as the components you are cooling do not exceed the cooling capacity of the fridge. Also if your coolant is below the dew point you'll have to worry about condensation on your components.
The problem is the same amount of thermal energy is being generated as if you stuck the pc in the fridge in the first place. That thermal energy has to moved somewhere else. This is done by the fridge in your plan, just the same as if you stuck it in there in the first place. Although there is the slight advantage that the case fans will help some what since the system is not actually in the fridge. Thus the case fans are not just blowing the air out into the fridge. I am not sure if this will be enough though. Although there is another advantage that water requires more thermal energy than air to have its temperature changed(well sort of), so the amount of water might allow you to play for sometime before it gets to hot. You would have better luck if you used a metal fridge, removed the insulation, and stuck some fans blowing on it. That would allow for air to cool the liquid as well. How ever I am still not sure if this would work.
Also why not just use a plastic 55 (or 30) gallon drum as an external, I am pretty sure your computer would never really heat that up beyond the ambient temperature.. Edit: wow thought my idea was kinda original but internet always beats me.. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1745320
The idea is that the sheer amount of water is too great for the cpu to actually warm it. The fridge is there to make it cool.
Even if the cpu was fully submerged by itself inside the res and inside the fridge , I doubt the water temp or fridge compressor cycles would change at all. it's just too small and not enough heat.
If you want to talk sheer amounts of water, let's think about a different principle: The cooling system of a nuclear reactor.
Since we all know that a big loop of water is difficult to keep clean enough for the small waterblocks to remain effective I propose the following:
Do a loop of normal watercooling, but instead of dumping the water into your big reservoir dump get a copper coil of a similar size and put it into your loop. This is your primary cooling loop. Now for the secondary loop, get a large container for water (food-grade is not very expensive) which can house up to a ton of water (1000 litres, aka 264 US-Gallons) and either route your loop with the coil directly through this tank or set up a pump to cycle water through a smaller tank (since you probably won't have the floorspace near the PC).
A PC that creates 350 Watts of heat will be needing to expend that heat over the period of 3 hours and 19 minutes to warm the large water tank by 1 degree. Not counting for loss of heat of the large tank.
So your primary cooling loop is: CPU -> GPU -> other PC components -> copper coil -> back to CPU Secondary loop: tank with the copper coil in it -> large water tank -> back to smaller tank
If you have a garage you can put the large tank on a shelf (well heavy-duty shelf) you can make clever use of the pressure the water will create in the outflowing pipe. If you have a swimming pool or a pond in your garden you could use that. A reservoir for rain collection works great too.
