Converting a WBK38 Heatsink into a water block...

[Qualtran]

After I get my Glaciator II, I will have a WBK38 HSF laying around, so I was thinking of converting it to a water block! I was thinking of sealing the sides with soldered on thin pieces of metal, and using the sides where the clip used to go in as the water in and out. I would also put a dam in the center to insure that the water flowed throughout the entire heat sink. I attached a couple images to visualize my ideas a bit. What do you all think?

[curnow]

That should work, I used a stock heatsink from a k6-2 500 to make my waterblock, it's working well (I stuck my original coolermaster heatsink fan from my athlon onto my k6-2 and I'm getting good temps on it now). Kind of funny that the two systems switched heatsinks. A few things to think about... how do you plan to fasten the block to the cpu? Also, you need to make sure you have room on and around the motherboard for the hose barbs. With mine, the PSU was too close to put a hose upwards, and other components of the motherboard were blocking the downwards(capacitors, or something [I actually have no idea what they are]), the atx connector and plug blocked the left side, and both the left and right side were crowded anyhow by the bolts I used to secure the block to the cpu with. I really had no choice but to put my hose connectors on the top of my block. Also, I have no idea if you can solder to aluminum... you can weld aluminum to aluminum with aluminum, but I'm not sure if that can be done on a precision level because the only welded aluminum I've looked at are on boats and a few peices of industrial equipment

[lennytiger]

if your board has 4 holes by the cpu you can make a clip from that then just bolt the hsf to the mobo through the four holes... easy!!

Its a good idea, are you going to "water proof" your system??

[Qualtran]

I'm glad to hear that someone else has done something similar already, curnow! I hadn't thought about that: the fact that Aluminum is very hard to attach to other metals... But my motherboard, the Gigabyte-7DXR, does have the four holes, so I could make the clip pretty easily, and I have lots of space on the mobo and in my case. (The case is an Antec Soho server case, so its BIG)
But how do you think I should go about waterproofing my system?

[The Overclocker]

a few heatsinks have been encased in lexan and there was litte diference between a 486 heatsink and a swiftech, i would look for a copper heatsink to encase

[DeerHunter]

The WBK is aluminum so soldering is impossible, (any copper HSF could be e.g CAK-38). I'd get some .063 2024 T3 aluminum sheet enclose the HSF with it and heliarc or MIG/TIG weld it around it. The problem is by the time you are done it would cost more than a good retail H2O block.

[ButcherUK]

Al is not at all impossible to solder, dunno what gave you that idea.

[curnow]

I'd like to see how much better a copper heatsink works. I have an opportunity to buy a large copper heatsink second hand for cheap, and I already have a very large amount of 1/8" copper sheet. This would make soldering a reasonable method of joining the two, correct? Would using silver solder work on copper? I'm inexperienced in soldering. My converted aluminum heatsink is encased with clear plastic and 1/4" lexan. The top cap is oversized and I drilled right through the lexan to make holes to secure it to the four motherboard holes on an athlon MB.

I have a question, what is required to solder aluminum? I was told that it couldn't be done.