Making of a Water Block

After seeing the “Tide
pool”
that Ed Lawrence
sent Joe to be tested, I wanted to try and incorporate the swirling effect
of the “Tide pool ” with the internal sink design of my “Beehive”
water block.

Since I have posted these, I have gotten numerous requests on how to build a beehive and figured this
would be a great chance to explain this also.

The first thing to do is get your materials together. I am making this one
out of a 11/4 inch cap instead of my usual 1 1/2″ cap ,as it is for my
GeForce DDR and I need to try and save some space. Here is the lineup for
this particular project . 1 1/2″ copper cap, 1 1/2″ square by 3/16″ copper
plate ,6 copper pennies, 6 small copper spacers , and a piece of 8 gauge
copper wire to keep everything in place while we solder it.

OK here’s the UpAvolt lab (lol).

Lab

This job can be performed with simple hand tools ,but since I have the
drill press and oxyacetylene torch, I will be using these.

The first thing we need to do is drill the pennies and spacers to slide them over our wire that we are
using as the “axle” for our disked sink.

Penny

Then I drilled a hole in the plate, being careful not to penetrate through the bottom
(for the regular beehive you would drill lots!! of these.

Plate

Once the pennies and spacers were stacked on the plate with the wire down the middle, it was time to solder the base
assembly. While the solder is cooling, I will cut down the cap 3/8″ so I don’t lose another PCI slot under my GeForce.

Cutcap

Here we drill the holes in the cap to try and get the swirling effect.

Drillcap

This is where I soldered it all together. Unfortunately ,we ran out of video tape right about here. SO,
try to imagine a big ball of flame with a red thing in the middle 🙂

Here’s what she looks like all soldered up and ready for bench testing.

Done

I will be testing this block against my “beehive” on a stacked peltier to simulated 120 watt
heat load, using the UpAvolt
test rig to keep the water cool. Next I will post the test results
along with instruction on how to mount it to the GeForce and the
all important “playability” factor 🙂

Email Surly Joe


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