DIY alternative to a chiller?

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So I was thinking about how expensive chillers are and how (from what I've read here) most people in Utah don't use them.. And I remembered a DIY method of cooling the water in a water-cooled computer system that was an alternative to buying an expensive heater core from a truck/SUV. It was called a water bong (for reasons beyond me), but for this scenario we'll call it a poor man's water chiller. My only question is if anyone thinks it would be effective enough for aquariums. I would assume so, because it was used in bringing the water temperature down from about 125 degrees F to about 75-80 degrees F. Now, these were designed for very low volumes of water (about 1.5gal total), but it was still moving about 300-400gph. So, it would be interesting to gather everyone's opinions based on the figures above and the crude drawing I made below of what it looks like. 

This is definitely not to scale, obviously. As you can see, the water comes in through a cheap shower head, and falls down into about 4-6 inches of water. As it's falling, it passes about 3-4 fans (depending on the size you go with) to cool the water as it falls. The idea is to cool it the entire way down. There's one fan up at the top to vent out the hot air. Then the water gets pumped out of the tube back into your sump or what-have-you. The pipe is just a standard 4" sewer pipe you can get at Lowes/Home Depot for $6-7 for 10ft of it. Mount/seal the bottom with a 3/8"-1/2" sheet of acrylic. The top can be left open, but for the purpose of muffling noise and mounting a fan, also use a sheet of acrylic to seal it. For high-volume, you could also create a U-shape using two elbows, two verticle pipes, and a short horizontal pipe. You would just make each vertical pipe the same as you would a single one. Mounting it would be interesting, but it could be done with a sheet of acrylic on the bottom with some acrylic triangles glued to the pipe and the base to support it. 

Alternatively (and would I would like to do), you could modify a large floor standing decorative fountain into the loops and use that, resulting in function and form. 

Thoughts? If I eventually build one, I'll make a step-by-step guide, but it's pretty simple to do with just a picture. :) 
The only problem I could see with this is having it on a controller and when the pump turns off, you have stagnant water in the tube. This could be solved by either placing a very small powerhead inside that's always on, or just hooking the fans up to the controller and having those shut off.