water cooled heatpipe cpu cooler

[Rob Hobbo]

I built this cooler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3TxgqUDa18
Hope it's not against the rules but I'm not a business n I'm not trying to sell it.
To be honest I'm hoping to generate enough interest to get it tested.
[edit]
Added this link to my leak test.
https://youtu.be/DKpmc9UDbhI
Just to show that water went through it like it should and put both videos in one post.

 

[EarthDog]

Neat, but, do you draw a vacuum in the tube? You would need the thing to reach around 90-100C to phase change water without a vaccum, no? Which would be too warm to have it do anything The vacuum lowers the boiling/phase change point of water.

Have YOU tested this? How well does it work? What about mounting for CPU sockets?

 

[Rob Hobbo]

The vacuum or partial vacuum is in the heat pipes themselves along with a small amount of working fluid ( usually water ). This is where the evaporation takes place. Water from a cooling loop is passed through the tubes in the acrylic, passing over the heat pipes and cooling them.

 

[EarthDog]

I know how it works.

So the heatpipes you used already had the vacuum? What about the ones you made? Are those in a vacuum too?

Have YOU tested this? How well does it work? What about mounting for CPU sockets?

 

[Rob Hobbo]

I bought a Rajinteks aidos cpu cooler and stripped off the aluminium fins. I then bought two blocks of acrylic and had tubes cut into them so that the heat pipes of the cooler could fit inside. I had further tubes cut to allow water to be pumped down each tube and over each pipe. After assembly the blocks were sealed at the bottom. One of the reasons I chose an aidos was that it has a backplate mounting system for both amd and Intel. As for testing, I don't have a water cooling setup so I am hopefully going to get someone to test it for me. I have leak tested it as best I could and it seems watertight.

 

[EarthDog]

Im just wondering how much of a vacuum they have in those heatpipes...the more of a vacuum the lower the boiling point/phase change temp is. If it isn't phase changing because the surrounding water is keeping them below that point, then its simply a convective/conductive heatsink with very minimal cooling area (saved by the water).

http://www.jbind.com/pdf/cross-reference-of-boiling-temps.pdf

This is incredibly neat and unique, but I'm just not sure how effective or practical it will be. The point of water cooling is to use the radiator to cool, which this is doing, but I am not sure the heatpipes will be as effective as a made-for-water-cooling-block will be to get the heat off the CPU. Another reason to watercool is to save space around the socket area and make a 'clean' look. This has the size of an air cooler but is being water cooled.

Either way, I want to see this thing in action.

 

[Mr.Scott]

subbed.

 

[Joe88]

looks neat but also a little scary if its gonna leak
would love to see some results compared the the original version (before you stripped the metal fins off)

 

[caddi daddi]

this is interesting, but.... you have three heat tranfers in this setup.
I think you would be better off cutting off the tops of the heat pipes and running the water through the heat pipes to the cpu.
but I have to admit yours does look cool.
if you're in the us and want it tested send me a pm, I'm in when it comes to neat stuff.

 

[Lochekey]

I'll play guinea pig and test it if your willing to cover shipping costs.

 

[GTXJackBauer]

Interesting... Let us know what happens next.

 

[Rob Hobbo]

This is my first time doing something like this and I'm learning as I go. My youtube video is probably not as clear in it's explanation as it could be, thats one of the things I've learned. I may actually post a link to this forum on my youtube comments so people might get a better idea of what it's about.
I'm grateful for all your interest. I live in the uk and I was hoping to get a uk magazine called micromart to test the thing for me. I've e-mailed them but so far no reply.
What motivated me to make the cooler?
Well heat pipes are a solid state phase change cooling device, no moving parts, no having to pump power into them. All you have to do is maintain a temperature difference between the evaporator which can be anywhere on the device ( the middle of the U shape in this case ) and the condensor ( everywhere else on the length of the pipe ) and you got instant phase change cooling. I think they are elegant.
Would cooling them with water instead of air improve their performance? Could it possibly improve on the perfomance of conventional water cooling blocks? I need to know. I've looked into it and have found one other example: the rx2 ufo, but I've got to say I found it a bit unsatisfying.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Subb'd. This looks real cool!

There was another member here how took an old Dell heatsink and piped water through the heatpipes themselves with a small pond pump.
I forget how well it worked since he didn't have a radiator to cool off the water, but he could have probably just slapped a fan on the heatsink again and use the fins to cool the water itself.

 

[EarthDog]

Well, would you be interested in sendingetting it to our primary heatsink reviewer here? I may be able to make it happen if you are interested and he has the time. That way it goes through our empirical testing and you can see where it stands among other coolers we tested, bit air and water...let me know amd I can reach out and see/put you two in contact.

 

[Rob Hobbo]

That's an interesting offer. I am going to give micromart a week and if I don't hear anything from them I will certainly give it serious consideration. To be honest shipping my baby overseas sounds a bit scarey. I will need it back if I do though because I plan to modify it a little. Just cosmetic but it will require cutting into the blocks. It will reduce amount of tubing and fittings and make it look neater. but until it's tested i'm not going to mess with it.

 

[Rob Hobbo]

Micromart have replied to my e-mail and although nothing has been sorted for definate, things are looking positive. I have posted a new youtube video showing how I did the leak test:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKpmc9UDbhI
does any1 know how to add tags to this thread?

 

[EarthDog]

What is micromart??? Are they versed in testing these sorts of things on a PC?

 

[Rob Hobbo]

They're a weekly uk computer hardware magazine. It's the only one I buy ( mainly because it's cheap ). It does articles and reviews on all kinds of computer hardware and I believe it's available in digital form so you can have it on your e-reader. I used to get it every week but I don't so often now. I used to leave copies all over the house and didn't like throwing them away as there was generally an article I liked in most of them.

 

[sporktar]

This is really cool, I've never seen anything like this. Subbed.

I'm surprised no one has commented on the acrylic machinework on here, it looks really clean. I'm impressed at how clean looking the final product came out.
I think you should try another leak test with some pressure in the "loop". Pumps generally produce some extra pressure which your testing didn't appear to factor in.

I'd also like to see the results from our heatsink reviewer, I'm interested to see how much better or worse heatpipe transfer to water is than a standard waterblock.

 

[magellan]

Would it have made sense to just leave the fins on the heatpipes and then circulated a coolant around both the heatpipes and the fins? Or would this contribute to ED's thoughts that the heatpipe's evaporative effects would be nullified because it would be running too cold?

Actually, if the heatpipe's evaporative effects were nullified I'd imagine that would be soon rectified because then the heatpipe would heat up as it absorbs heat from the CPU?