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Dumb Idea?

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hoytron

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2001
Location
Duluth, MN
So I've noticed that many DIY waterblocks are made with small, low-profile heatsinks which have been modded a bit and sealed off. This got me thinking. How well would a high-performance heatsink, like an Alpha PAL8942 work as a waterblock? I could place a long strip of sheet metal between the fins vertically to guide the water in a spiral as in other designs. I could then seal off the whole heatsink so water could pass through it. What do you folks think?
 
Water absorbs so much more heat than air that its a case of diminishing returns with any waterblock with fins or pins in thicker than about 1/2 an inch.
I would have thought that the pins or fins on an aircooled heatsink will have dissipated all their usefull heat by the first 1/4 or 3/8ths of an inch in water as they're that much thinner than waterblock fins in general - unless you're talking about the white water or similar designs, in which case, they're only a few millimeters tall anyway.
It's not a bad idea, by all means try it, but I think you're likely to get your water hanging around in the "block" too long with the increased pin / fin length, and you ideally want to get that water moving through it as fast as possible :)
 
Well, yes it would work, but it wont be as good as a block designed for water to begin with such as the Cascade or the White Water or the MCW5002 etc, etc. Having the aluminum and the copper in the water is a bad idea too. There are some interesting 'skiv' type 1U copper heatsinks that look like excellent candidates for an H20 conversion. The bigger HSF's have really thick bases which are not always ideal for water cooling.
 
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