What would you do?

Well, I'm starting to collect the toys needed for my new watercooling setup. The radiator will continue to reside in the basement, where I can enjoy sub-ambient air temps all year 'round to keep the processor at room temp.

I got a hold of my radiator for free, but it turns out to be aluminum! Apparently all the Taurus' from 88-95 have aluminum cored radiators with plastic endtanks that are crimped into place.
My wife's Taurus had a copper HC instead of aluminum (that's where I got the one I'm using now).
Stoopid Stoopid Ford.

Anyway, considering my long history of exclaiming the virtues of a single metal system, do you think I should break with said history and use it?, or keep on hunting?. It's really nice with a big ol' drain valve and everything...What a dilema.

As a side note, my QuietOne 3000 arrived today--oh mama can that thing pump! I put it in a bucket under the faucet in my bathtub, and it pumps the water out of the bucket faster than the faucet can supply it (both hot and cold taps running full blast) !!! It sprays about 3 feet high without any fittings at all on it....gonna love that in my system.

Thanks for any help, I'm just having trouble making up my mind.

Supposidly it'll be fine if you use enough antifreeze, but that's just a hinderence to your cooling capabilities. It'd probably be best to get a different HC/Radiator. Wouldn't want corrosion to start happening inside your WB, break through and poor liquid all over your cpu.

Yeah, you're prolly right. Maybe I'll give it a week to see if I can get out to the U-Wrench-it yard and snoop around.

By the way, I reread my post, and I didn't mean to be confusing about HC's and radiators....I use a copper Taurus HC now, I found an aluminum Taurus radiator (15" x 24")..

THINK BIG!

That's my motto for this rig

i wish i had a basement
i saw a guy and his basement was his computer room
great for isolation from the kids and sound

Ah...copper radiators are pretty hard to find. If I were you, I would search around at whatever junkyards/pull yards you're planning on looking at. If you can't find anything there, then go ahead w/ aluminum. If you can though, I'd get copper.

A copper radiator would be sweet, but I'd probably have much better luck at finding it's second cousin, Brass. They should be pretty common, I just have to get out and look.
When you're making money, you have little time..and when you have time, you've made little money.

My house was built in 1836 by the stagecoach company, so the basement is just a stone and mortar cellar really. There's barely room to stand upright completely. I wish I'd had one I could use for a computer room...that would really put a nice tax break on this home-office deal.
The nice thing is the temperatures from down there. It's unheated, and that stone foundation keeps temps nice and cool all year long. With just a heatercore, my temps in my sig are true. I just wanted to go large so I'd not have to do this again for a few years, no matter what furnaces that AMD might make.

Diggrr said:

Yeah, you're prolly right. Maybe I'll give it a week to see if I can get out to the U-Wrench-it yard and snoop around.

By the way, I reread my post, and I didn't mean to be confusing about HC's and radiators....I use a copper Taurus HC now, I found an aluminum Taurus radiator (15" x 24")..

THINK BIG!

That's my motto for this rig

Click to expand...

If you do happen to find a copper rad that big, please post what make and model it is out of or where you got it from, would be absolutly perfect for something i am doing. Good luck

Rich

Im new to this, but what about running a few of those same heater cores in parallel....?

Money, time, space considerations. That's about it. They'd perform pretty good. Diggrr: Try to find an additive that you don't need a lot of to prevent the corrosion with, and just go crazy.

Do Like I did.

Ebay!!!


I picked up my brass 1957 Chevy Radiator for 50 bucks plus shipping.

This thing is huge.

It would be the perfect Rad for your system easily.

Sorry though this one is already taken


Oh and for the person who asked make and model

Harrison 3136158

Im new to this, but what about running a few of those same heater cores in parallel....?

Click to expand...

He's not running heatercores this time - he's using actual car radiators. Take a look under the hood - it's the thing that looks like a heater core with a screwed up pituitary gland. The heatercore makes warm air for the heater, and the radiator simply cools the entire engine.

Don't kill yourself looking for an all copper rad. The brass internals of a core are paper thin so the 180(W/m K) advantage copper has over brass is negated because the copper has to be 3X thicker to compensate structurally.

So it really doesn't make a bit of difference if it's brass or copper. Any difference between the two will be imeasurable by us.

johan851 said:

He's not running heatercores this time - he's using actual car radiators. Take a look under the hood - it's the thing that looks like a heater core with a screwed up pituitary gland. The heatercore makes warm air for the heater, and the radiator simply cools the entire engine.

Click to expand...

I know what a radiator is.. I'm a car guy, but his stated point was that they were big sooo... I was just asking if he could just put a couple of heater cores in a row to basically have the same size of the radiator.

He could! Rig a heatercore rack. When he upgrades to the next AMD "furnace" as he calls it, he can just add another heatercore and another fan to the mix to keep temps low. It's definately do-able, but I think it would be a little more ghetto to have multiple heatercores with case fans on them than it would to have just one big radiator.

If you go with big radiators, stick with copper if you can find them cheap. Hunt ebay for a while...

Heh, radiators are the size of 8 heatercores, at even $20 apiece, I could buy a cadilac triple core radiator for less (and it'd be larger still).
Besides the fact that I'd need 8 fans instead of one blower...

Thanks guys, I'll probably go out to the junk yard tomorrow and see what I can find. Ebay had some nice radiators from the 50's (all copper too), I'm gonna check them out a few times tonight to see how the bidding goes.

Ciao.

Woohoo! Found one through the good 'ol boy network.
Called my Dad, who called his brother, who called his son-in-law...
I'll have a copper cored radiator with brass tanks tomorrow afternoon, for free. He's looking for a Taurus radiator, and will trade even up for the one I didn't want to use.

Gotta love it!

Now all I gotta do is order some tubing, and pick up some pvc 'n stuff.