Cating a waterblock?

[PolyPill]

After reading the "Gold Leaf for Cooling?" discussion I thought why can't you have the inside of your waterblock coated with gold, silver, platinum, what ever material is the best for transferring heat? Maybe the low heat transfer rate of water would cause it to not make a difference?

I do remember looking at a heatsink review of a bunch of different ones and there were like 3 weird fan shaped ones and the that had the best performance was coated with gold.

I'm thinking it'd cost a little over $7 to have your block gold plated because if you get your lug nuts on your car gold plated it's $7 each.

 

[William]

almost all blocks are made of copper and making it silver probably woulnd help it too much and even then the gain you would get would be completely negated by the cost to do so.

 

[cjtune]

It's better to coat the hot end of a HS or waterblock (the side in contact with the CPU) with the metal of higher conductivity (gold or silver) to 'spread out' the heat. For example, between the interface of water and the waterblock, the upper limit of heat transfer really depends on the flow of water and also due to the much lower conductivity of water (compared to copper or aluminium) so putting gold in the middle isn't going to do much (except adding more interface resistance -what's going to be in between the waterblock and the layer of gold?). The same reasoning goes for layering gold in between the CPU core and the waterblock base. However, wouldn't it be better to just melt the gold into some jewelry for your wife or something? It IS expensive y'know.

 

[cjtune]

It's better to coat the hot end of a HS or waterblock (the side in contact with the CPU) with the metal of higher conductivity (gold or silver) to 'spread out' the heat. For example, between the interface of water and the waterblock, the upper limit of heat transfer really depends on the flow of water and also due to the much lower conductivity of water (compared to copper or aluminium) so putting gold in the middle isn't going to do much (except adding more interface resistance -what's going to be in between the waterblock and the layer of gold?). The same reasoning goes for layering gold in between the CPU core and the waterblock base. However, wouldn't it be better to just melt the gold into some jewelry for your wife or something? It IS expensive y'know.

 

[William]

it is better to do so. Gold is not a great one, so we will leave it out. The difference between Copper and Silver is not much, and as for a real word performance gain, it won't be much. If you are rolling in the dough, by all means go for it.

And on the waterblock, after some thought, coating the inside with gold or especially platinum sounds like a good idea if you are worried about corrosion at all. Au and Pt are some of the most stable metals and hardly react at all especially Pt. But then again, there is antifreeze.

 

[JML]

Why does everyone assume that plat. transfers heat well? Cause it's expensive? Silver would be the best choice, but the very best I believe is CVD diamond

 

[Bender]

Why not make a solid silver water block. Silver is about $4-5 per oz so it is possible. It would be a very soft water block but thats ok for delicate T-bird cores. If the temps were a few degrees cooler it might be worth a try.

 

[Bad Maniac]

That would be an idea for my article/experiment... I am going to machine my own waterblock from copper, why don't I make one exactly identical from Silver... and see the difference. I will keep you posted, but it will take a few months because I am in the middle of getting a new job and moving to London...