Water Cooling surface area

[Schlomo227]

Would the gains in surface area, and therefore cooling efficiency, be offset by water flow obstacles in this scenario: instead of fabricating merely a box in which water will flow in and out of, carrying heat away, I encase an existing heatsink (minus the fan of course ) inside the box and have the comparatively enormous amount of surface area of the heatsink cooled by the water. Someone tell me if I'm too crazy.

 

[William]

Actually a guy had Dangerden engineer a waterblock using fins instead of the maze channel. He had NO temperature difference. DangerDen's designs seem to provide all the surface area needed. I have seen people build blocks like you proposed doing with quite a bit of success. I would say build one out of copperusing say a Gladiator which has tons of surface area.

 

[Flash]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you proposing to build a water block with a heatsink inside of it? If so, I think the restriction on water flow would *way* couterbalance any benefit you'd achieve from increased surface area. Original idea, though.

 

[ap0calyps]

I agree with you. The water would not flow through each individual fin, it would just sit there. Don't think it would work very well.

 

[Shadow ÒÓ]

I've built 4 coolers out of retail sinks for socket 370 chips. Cut the fins out (to a degree) and cover 3 sides with 1/8" alum. Put 2 nipples in the end and fill her with water. Can't say it's remarkable, but works very well. Never got one of the professionals to benchmark it either but I think anyone who's using one of them is satisfied.

 

[Schlomo227]

What if i were to massage the areas between the fins on my heatsink to direct flow better, cause I am really stuck on the surface area increase here.

 

[Mord-Sith]

I recal that spode (ala www.spodesabode.com) had some sucess with a watersink but then that guy will make a water block out of anything ???

Right Spode?

 

[William]

there is an article in the watercooling section of the front page about that DD thing I told you about. If you are interested in homemade blocks, http://www.spodesabode.com is the place to read about it as Spode and Surlyjoe(both seniors here) do some crazy stuff with the wierdest stuff. Definately worth a gander.

 

[Ridenow]

I think our own Joe C. was the one who asked Danger Den to make that one. Many people have done just what you suggested. The problem is that the water does not flow over all that surface area. it only really flows over the fins that are between the intake and outtake. What I would like to see is "fins" or "ridges" added to the maze block design. There is one in the tips section that has side by side maze chanels that looks good to me.

 

[Schlomo227]

The water in my block, yes, i made it this weekend will have to flow over the fins of my heatsink. The way I put in the intake and exhaust water ports makes the water flow over all the fins. I am not new to building things, but I am new to this world of computer cooling and performance. I would be happy to post how well my creation works, but I need to know where to get the software (and what software to get) to test my new system. I know my aircooling setup was insufficient becuase I can look in my BIOS to see temps, it was in the mid 60's under load (counterstrike) with the case panel off. I would like to be able to monitor how much better my water cooling works.

 

[Tacoman667]

How about putting fins on the TOP of the waterblock, not to get in the way of the nipples though. That way the case cooling could also help in cooling off the block too. Just my thoughts.

 

[cjtune]

Tacoman667 (Jul 30, 2001 12:27 a.m.):
How about putting fins on the TOP of the waterblock, not to get in the way of the nipples though. That way the case cooling could also help in cooling off the block too. Just my thoughts.

....but if case air temperatures are higher than the water, it'll transfer heat to the waterblock -surface area increase works both ways, you know. But with some fans as well might be a good contingency plan against pump failure.

Fins work with any fluid that has lower conductivity than the hot surface -this includes water but water is a very viscous fluid compared to air and will be very hard to 'push' through fins and the like -powerful pumps will be needed. The specially machined Dangerden block William mention had really dense fins so no wonder they were close to useless. But with nearly 30x the conductivity of air, it needs just about that much less area for equal heat transfer. The next 'watersink' I'm gonna make will be using an old 486 heatsink, the type with sparsely placed fins.