Custom made water cooling parts?

[bartx]

Yes, I was thinking rather about this kind of stuff. Reservoirs, mounts, pump tops, custom radiators for GPU's memories, maybe universal CPU/GPU blocks or ITX cases Making full covers to unpopular hardware is pointless, I agree with that.

I'm asking you, because everybody has an idea about stuff, which he needs, but it's unavailable to buy. At example I couldn't buy for a long time ITX case, which was able to fit longer double slot GPU. I had Chieftec BT-02B case with HD7770 with modded cooling, because I wanted small and quite powerfull PC. After two years I've found and bought Cubitek Mini Cube, which is really nice case to fit strong hardware in small case.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Why imagine... http://www.techspot.com/old-articles/reviews/hardware/leufken_watercooling/index.shtml

I know they exist, but good blocks and the like are rare and expensive today


+1 to the custom reservoirs.
That's a good idea, add your own touch to your loop!

I use only barbs, so come sweet barbs like tachi mentioned would be awesome!

 

[waterJunkie]

I realize you have far less overhead than bigger companies. I guess I was just looking at it in terms of actually producing a custom water block for a card that the big manufacturers don't offer. Anyone looking for a custom block like that is probably putting it on a high end card so you're looking at $400-600 to acquire a card to use to develop your block. Let's say you charge a 25% premium over what the retail price is on a comparable block from a known company. That's about $160 per block. That means you need to sell ~3 blocks for that exact card before you even earn back your investment and that doesn't include material cost or pay you for your time.

Not trying to knock the idea, but it just doesn't seem practical to me. Custom fabrication works better for things like custom cases or sub zero pots and mounts where someone can just tell you what they want. I don't think too many, if any, customers have the tools and skills necessary to give you the info needed to make a custom gpu block, nor do they have the knowledge of thermal dynamics so they are going to be looking to you to provide all of that expertise.

If someone needs something simple fabricated then I'm sure you could pull that off at a good price and make customers very happy, but water blocks for a custom pcb gpu are anything but simple.

I do wish you luck, hopefully someone can utilize your services.

Good points.
My answer would be. Send me your card so I can take the measurements.
1 to 2 hours in CAD/CAM and $30 worth of copper and delrin or acrylic. Less than one hour on the mill. Done.
Charge $200 (that's only about $40 more than a commercially available block) and make money on the first one then offer up the cooler to others who may have the card.

you really only need to model the back of the block. The water passages would be very easy. Getting the heights and sizes for the GPU, memory and mosfets would be time consuming but even then it wouldn't take long.

Some value added services would be custom colors, engraving, lighting, inlet and outlet placement etc..

I'm just throwing things out there. I don't offer such services but I do have a small machine shop and I do prototype work almost every day.

 

[bartx]

Good points.
My answer would be. Send me your card so I can take the measurements.
1 to 2 hours in CAD/CAM and $30 worth of copper and delrin or acrylic. Less than one hour on the mill. Done.
Charge $200 (that's only about $40 more than a commercially available block) and make money on the first one then offer up the cooler to others who may have the card.

you really only need to model the back of the block. The water passages would be very easy. Getting the heights and sizes for the GPU, memory and mosfets would be time consuming but even then it wouldn't take long.

Some value added services would be custom colors, engraving, lighting, inlet and outlet placement etc..

I'm just throwing things out there. I don't offer such services but I do have a small machine shop and I do prototype work almost every day.

1-2 hours in CAD for full cover block for GPU? That's funny. In this time you may properly design a barb maybe. I mean proper considering available tools not only a cool looking 3d model or concept.

I'd say at least a week (5 days) for the first time including measuring, maybe faster next time. You have to strip the card, measure height and position of the elements like ram, mosfets and obstacles like capacitors etc. I guess it will be at least 200-250 dimmensions which you have to enter to CAD. You have to consider all clearances (you don't want short circuits or over heated components due to not enough space above the component).

Then design rough overall shape. After this step I'd make prototype from any sort of plastic to be sure that everything fits before you start to waste copper. Then you may start to design a seal groove and top (position of the holes) and general look of the block (chamfers, roundings etc.). After machining, it I'd be nice to make some leak testing, don't you think?

I worked as a constructor and machinist for last half of a year. It was a food company, but it was a clear difference between machines, which are designed from scratch including ALL dimmensions and machines, which were made "on the fly" on the workshop and designing process was like "let's mount it here or let's drill this hole here or weld it here".

I'm not offending you, but I just want to explain how looks designing process, because people don't have any idea about it. They see only finished product and wondering - why is it so expensive? It' s just copper and plastic, it should be priced much lower.

 

[tachi1247]

Good points.
My answer would be. Send me your card so I can take the measurements.
1 to 2 hours in CAD/CAM and $30 worth of copper and delrin or acrylic. Less than one hour on the mill. Done.
Charge $200 (that's only about $40 more than a commercially available block) and make money on the first one then offer up the cooler to others who may have the card.

you really only need to model the back of the block. The water passages would be very easy. Getting the heights and sizes for the GPU, memory and mosfets would be time consuming but even then it wouldn't take long.

Some value added services would be custom colors, engraving, lighting, inlet and outlet placement etc..

I'm just throwing things out there. I don't offer such services but I do have a small machine shop and I do prototype work almost every day.

Total time seems very optimistic to me. Also, if you're going to sell custom blocks you're going to have to test at least the first one before you send it to the customer. You can't send them a block, have them fry their card because you mis-measured a vrm height and it wasn't making contract. I also wouldn't want you making that "test" on my own personal card. Nor do I think a lot of people would be willing to mail their card to Poland and be without it for what would probably end up being a month from time removed from system until they get it back. That's also going to be some expensive shipping across the Atlantic with full insurance so that increases the total cost too, plus reduces your profit to send it back.

Starting small, how much would it be for you to make a dozen standard thread straight barbs for 1/2 tubing? O ring included, shipped price to Chicago.