Making of a Water Block II

In a previous article, I covered how to construct a hybrid water block
out of common plumbing parts. The design I chose was a combination
of two styles of water blocks ,the “beehive “, and the “Tidal
Pool
“.

Now we will see how well our “tide-hive” water block performs against
a regular “beehive”. This will be interesting as the “tide-hive” is about
30% smaller than the “beehive”. I reduced the size so I could use it as
a video card cooler for my GeForce DDR and only lose one PCI slot.

To test these, I will be using two stacked peltiers to simulate a 120 watt
heat load .The cooling of the water is courtesy of the “UpAvolt
test rig”
(a 20 inch industrial fan with 50 feet of 3/8 inch
copper tubing ). Room temperature was 29c.

The first victim was the “tide-hive.” I was pleased to see that it handled the 120W load this well . It should
be plenty to cool an over clocked FC-PGA, although a peltier on top of
it may prove too much.

Tidehive

Then I tested the ‘beehive”. Not surprising to see that it kicks the
“tide-hive’s little rear. This design has been tested against, and equals or bests the top designs
available today. This block has about twice the internal surface
area than the “tide-hive” due to the 55 1/8″ x 1 1/4″ copper pins
inside.

Beehive

Apparently, the “tide-hive” design is sound, and the horizontal in/out lines were
something I needed for a video card application and was unable to incorporate
into the “beehive” due to the pin arrangement.

I mounted it up using the stock heat sink retaining spring with a dab of
epoxy and some zip ties.

Here she is ready for some serious fragging . I can run the GPU at
150mhz, and since there is no heat in the case from the CPU/GPU cooling
units, I can get the DDR ram all the way up to 375mhz with no artifacts,
using sinks on them along with two 80mm case fans.

Looks like surly’s “LAN party rig” is all set to go to Texas at the end
of July for Gcon 2000, this should
be the ultimate test ; }

Email Surly Joe


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