Cathar, I have a question about the Storm G7

I read that you are reaching the limit on the storm and was wondering if you tried this design out.

This is a picture you have as the storm g7




What if you cut slits in between each cup? Do you think it's improve the flow or block itself. Here is a pic of what I mean.

I’m not Cathar, I don’t play him on TV, and I haven’t even stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. However…

I believe the idea is to get water to the hottest part of the block, then immediately get it out of the way. The cups facilitate this process well. The cold water streams into the center of the cup, then up and out, absorbing a good amount of heat and making way for fresh water.

My first thought is that the pressure in each cup is the same, so even if you have slits between them, you won’t have any water flowing. My second thought is that slits would hinder the “up and out” concept by create turbulent areas with no real benefit. My third thought is that removal of block material would provide less area for heat transfer, and reduce cooling.

Hey, you have to experiment with different designs, computer models can't give everything. But the flow becomes restricted as a trade off from the water passing through the constricted points in the plastic plate. Right? I might have the terminilogy twisted there

I can add to that as well.

I finally got the concept of Cathers design when I was taking my contacts out. I usually wash my case under a full stream of water. It dawned on me that the cup was very similar to the Storm series along with the steady stream from the tap (jets). I noticed when the water hit the middle of the cup perfectly, the water would touch every part of the cup and then quickly come out. So if the slits were introduced then then uneeded turbulence would occur and cooling effectiveness might go down.

Bryan d.

The problem is not with the flow itself but with the machining of it. Each of the jets is so small that it takes very good tools and people to make them. The tools used in making this have a margin of error (ie: how inaccurate they are allowed to be when performing their function) now as the thing you are trying to accomplish gets smaller the inaccuracies become more apparent and causes larger problems (such as defective jets and what not). Now to reduce this margin of error you need high quality and custom designed tools which would cost an arm and a leg. So, this is not a flow problem or a design flaw it is merely a limitation in the tools used to make it. Besides I honestly don't think there is much performance gain to be had by going above the G7 and it is unlikely that the G7 will ever see mass production (Cathar feel free to correct me on this).

Also ultimately turbulant flow is what you are trying to achieve as it allows for maximum efficiency. But in this case I am agreeing with the fact that it would merely interfere with the water flow since the cups are designed in an in-out fasion (as stated above).

I see the point you guys make, after reading bryan_d post I wonder if the cup are actually flat or are they oval like this...

I beleive the key the jet impingement and the storm design is not 'getting the water to the hottest part of the block and getting it away' as much as it is controlling the boundary layer. Even in a very inefficient waterblock with miserable flow rates, the temperature of the water hardly increases. In any flow system, the water molecules touching the surface do not move. The molecules just above them hardly move at all. As you get farther away from the surface, the speed of the water increases until it is about the same as the rest of the water. This layer of slow water is called the boundary layer and exists in every flow system. There is no getting around it. The problem with the boundary layer is that heat has to move through it like heat conducts through a solid more than a convection itself. In the storm blocks this boundary layer is reduced to a micro thin layer, effectively multiplying the convective heat flux coeficients by an order of magnitude. Disrupting the already precisely engineered dimples will only diminish the control over the boundary layer and really will not help.

I am sure my understanding of this is rather small. I would love to hear the how the dimples were optimized and what is really going on there.

I'm pretty sure their oval. If it were flat it wouldn't work nearly as well, plus they look kinda ovalish from the pic.

Actually, another radical design would be to add rifling to the cups, and have a pin sticking out of the the middle of the cups ( with it piercing the water flow). That way the holes would aline true in sight, in a locked manner. I wonder if the fluid would follow the new channeled rifling? Call it Pin Head. That would require more machine time though....$$$$$

edit: If that plate is homemade, it's probably drilled, so it would be oval. If it was done on the machine, I'd think it'd be somewhat flat. Right?


the ideas we have after we've been drinking.....

Does anyone know what the tip of this "Cold Heat Cordless Soldering Iron" is?
This "proprietary tip material" cools really quick.....what is it?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/69d3/

the concepts you are all talking about take away from the idea of impingement. by using hte ideas of cutting or adding ridges you are changing impingement to increased turbulant surface area which is not the same thing . there may be a crossover point but that can not be established without extreme testing and unless you are going to donate roughly 6 grand for the blocks and machining you wont be able to get enough data samples to find optimum without relying on luck

Roughly 6,000...US? Raw materials plus machine time?
Testing would be the cheap part.

not when each variation requires a new block

The cups on the STORM blocks appear to be flat, with a milled artifact right in the middle, indicating it was likely machined with a flat headed, small diameter endmill.
Had they simply used a conventional drill bit instead of a two fluted endmill, the result would have been a concave base with no artifact in the middle. I'm curious if a concave surface would yield better performance?

Six grand is a little on the high side, though if you consider the cost of setup and machining along with materials, that's about what you'd pay to make a one off prototype at any high end machine shop.

I'll have to talk with Cathar and see if he's interested in bringing the G7 to life. Through STASIS, I have a partnership with the most capable machine shop in the Bay Area, and could probably mass produce this part for around $150...

$150 cost or $150 retail

If you were careful enough, you could drill the artifact into the head of the drillbit so you still get the concave surface AND center artifact.

pwnt by pat said:

$150 cost or $150 retail

If you were careful enough, you could drill the artifact into the head of the drillbit so you still get the concave surface AND center artifact.

Click to expand...

unfortunately at the size endmills you are talking about, that is practically impossible.


The way I see it also. The baseplate is a piece of cake to manufacture. It is the plate with the jets that is the real obstacle. The biggest challenge to overcome would be the tooling and time to cut.

I think the cheapest 1/16th double fluke HSS endmill I have cost around $15.
Thats considered cheap.

This kind of a radical idea I had. Instead of concetrating on on running water through the block more quickly why not design a block spends more time on optimal transfer of heat to water for longer Idealy a more modern maze design would be able to transfer more heat to the water which would once again focus our attention on the most ignored part of a modern WCing system the radiator.

speed bump said:

This kind of a radical idea I had. Instead of concetrating on on running water through the block more quickly why not design a block spends more time on optimal transfer of heat to water for longer Idealy a more modern maze design would be able to transfer more heat to the water which would once again focus our attention on the most ignored part of a modern WCing system the radiator.

Click to expand...

The problem with that concept is that we'd have to create a new universe for it to work.

Graystar said:

The problem with that concept is that we'd have to create a new universe for it to work.

Click to expand...

LOL. Nice answer

again many of you are mixing multiple concepts.

acelerated impingement does not use the same concept as surface area maximization.

though you can use both in a block you have to find a balance point because as you increase surface area you generally decrease velocity on this small a scale and impingement works because of its use of velocity.

stew has done extencive modeling and data collection and comparisons and then builds and tests to get the blocks where they are now.

you also have to remember his aims with the block are not exactly whats talked about here . he talks about flow agnostic blocks and i have to say he has done an outstanding job.

a rough idea of how this and a maximized surface area block would be this:

compare a honda S2000 4 cylinder to a 1964.5 mustang . they both go fast.

1 is built on the premise of brute strenght horepower aka all muscle cars
the other is built using more modern ways of squeezing HP out without the brute force large liter bores.

old harleys versus crotch rockets are the same thing..

anyways back to my liquer