RoadWarrior
11-26-01, 05:52 AM
I was just doing some empirical figuring on the size radiator I'd need, in a water cooling system Here's what I came up with, let me know if I'm way off base...
I'm pretty much decided on using this circular screw down mushroom type old socket 5 heatsink I've got, sealed into the end of a short bit of PVC drain pipe. I guesstimate the area at about 3000 square millimeters or 30 square centimeters. Now, if water can pick up 30X the heat of air, then that means I need a water>air interface area of about 30x3000mm^2 or 90,000 mm^2. So if I use 6mm diameter copper pipe with a circumference of 18.84mm, then I need 90,000/18.84 mm of it to match the efficiency of the heatsink, so that's around 4.77 Meters..... Hmmmmmmm.
Well measuring the coil I got from a yard sale a while back, It's about 4m.... Guess that equivalency though would be for equal flow rates of air and water. Say my pump does about 50Gph, which is around 200l/hour and I use a household fan to cool the coil which I guess easily does 100cfm, which is I think, WOW 2700 litres a minute, hmmmmmm.
if we take equivalent heat capacity of water x l/hour then that's 1500 litres of air an hour equivalent. So my airflow has to exceed that by a factor of 4.7/4 for the lenght difference of the calculated equivalent, which it would seem to exceed by some way.
So, it would seem I have enough cooling for the block and gph I am using right?
Road Warrior
I'm pretty much decided on using this circular screw down mushroom type old socket 5 heatsink I've got, sealed into the end of a short bit of PVC drain pipe. I guesstimate the area at about 3000 square millimeters or 30 square centimeters. Now, if water can pick up 30X the heat of air, then that means I need a water>air interface area of about 30x3000mm^2 or 90,000 mm^2. So if I use 6mm diameter copper pipe with a circumference of 18.84mm, then I need 90,000/18.84 mm of it to match the efficiency of the heatsink, so that's around 4.77 Meters..... Hmmmmmmm.
Well measuring the coil I got from a yard sale a while back, It's about 4m.... Guess that equivalency though would be for equal flow rates of air and water. Say my pump does about 50Gph, which is around 200l/hour and I use a household fan to cool the coil which I guess easily does 100cfm, which is I think, WOW 2700 litres a minute, hmmmmmm.
if we take equivalent heat capacity of water x l/hour then that's 1500 litres of air an hour equivalent. So my airflow has to exceed that by a factor of 4.7/4 for the lenght difference of the calculated equivalent, which it would seem to exceed by some way.
So, it would seem I have enough cooling for the block and gph I am using right?
Road Warrior