Homemade waterblock

OK I am making my own water block and the way I designed it it was going to have copper for the base where it contacts the CPU however I am struggling to get cheap copper that I can use cos it is part of a system I was challenged to make for 20 pounds, so I was thinking, all I need is a flat peice of metal as my design wich is a slightly modified version of one that I saw on the wab is it have the base of a drinks can, u know that curved bit at the bottom sat on a peice of copper and then becos of my high flow pump the heat will be transfered from this flat peice of copper, howeve I now need something diffrent as the copper is out unless I can fins some somewhere else, so I was thinking why can't I use the rest of the aluminium can as aliminium is the next best thing, So i was thinking of cutting out a peice of aluminium from the can that is about 6*6 but that is dependent of sizes cos I haven't measured yet. then I would take this peice of can and blow tourch it to get the paint and everything else of of it, and then while it is read hot I would make it plat by sticking it under a very heavy weight until it cooled then I would do it again a cople of more times until it was as flat as flat could be, at this point ai Would heat it up one final time and cool it really quickly using a bucket of water as this prevents the metal from expanding and contracting under heat as much later apparently although I don't know how that works, but any way wot do you think is this feasable and would it work

Thanx -I-

Whoa there, trust me, you dont want to work with aluminum. Its a giant pain in the ***. Stick with copper. Some people have made blocks out of copper pipe endcaps. you can get a bigger one about 2" in diameter and thread and solder it together. Someone wrote a guide on how to do this in this forum somewhere, maybe its a sticky. I'll go look

Here we go, ghetto comp made one in the waterblock gallery sticky on the last page... I'm sure he'd be able to tell you how he did it. He used a copper pipe endcap, and a brass plate for the top then a piece of plexi for a hold down. But you dont need plexi for a hold-down, you could use any old thicker metal you have laying around.

Right I have just been luking and the topic and wot u have said and I think that sticking with Copper is better but I need to make it so the thickness of the copper that is in contact with the CPU is reaally really low so really I need some sheeting and then I will place a copper end cap or something on top of that and soldoer it all together and then epoxy it for gud measure, does anyone know where I can get thin copper sheeting like .5mm real cheap if not I will have to try using thicker copper but I would prefer not to cos then it doesn't conduct heat away as well as I would like.

Intrepid_ward said:

Right I have just been luking and the topic and wot u have said and I think that sticking with Copper is better but I need to make it so the thickness of the copper that is in contact with the CPU is reaally really low so really I need some sheeting and then I will place a copper end cap or something on top of that and soldoer it all together and then epoxy it for gud measure, does anyone know where I can get thin copper sheeting like .5mm real cheap if not I will have to try using thicker copper but I would prefer not to cos then it doesn't conduct heat away as well as I would like.

Click to expand...

There is an ideal thickness for the base of a waterblock. Pretty sure its not as thin as possible. Past a certain thickness, the thinner it is, the less the heat is spread throughout the block.

Might wanna browse around here for awhile:
http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/forumdisplay.php?f=37

thanx I will do that

Yeah, there is such a thing as too thin especially when you consider warping the plate in contact with the cpu die