Hybrid air-water cooler?

[4GHZ_or_bust]

Theoretically can one take a decent tower style air cooler like Noctua NH-D14, snip the tip of the heat pipes, hook the heat pipes to water cooling pump and reservoir?

The CPU block won't have pins or channel to agitate water but on some coolers, the heat pipes are in direct contact with CPU IHS.

Could this work or would a $50 water block do better than a hacked air cooler?

 

[RGE]

The waterblock would have no pins like you said, and pins are for massively increasing surface area, even shortening pins has a detrimental effect, eliminating them.... what you would make would likely be worse than your air cooling.

so any cpu block on market with some pins would be better.