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Modding How to reuse an old waterblock

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Lizard, 11 Jul 2009.

  1. andersson.j

    andersson.j What's a Dremel?

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    I've done this a couple of times with old water blocks. With some patience and polish the result can look even better than the original. I had to do this last week when the acrylic hold down plate included with my hfx mini cracked. Stupid acrylic, I barley touched it...

    I bought the thickest sheet of steel I could find on a sunday, about 1,5mm thick. I spent the better part of a day filing it down to the shape of the original hold down plate. When I mounted it it bent more than I found acceptable to so I scraped it and started from scratch. This time with a super stiff 2mm thick piece of stainless. It was a real PITA to work with this steel. It ruined my four 3mm drill bits, they barley even scratched it. So I bought new expensive drill bits which worked much better. After two solid days (three since the acrylic cracked) of drilling and filing I had new hold down and backing plates.

    Sadly, my struggle didn't end here. I did a test mount with some neoprene between the motherboard and the backing plate. A few hours later the computer was assembled (remember, it's a hfx case which means hours of heat pipe bending) and I fired it up. Not even a LED came on, the only life sign was the ticking sound of capacitors discharging somewhere close the the CPU...

    There goes the motherboard and possibly CPU I thought and went to bed. The following day I disassembled everything again and found that the neoprene had been pierced by several capacitor legs. All of them were close to the edge so I spent a few hours filing away those parts of the backing plate. This time I mounted it with a thicker sheet of neoprene and some clear plastic from an old PSU.

    To my surprise it booted just fine and today, about a week later, I'm writing this post on the very same computer.
     
  2. KingXerxes

    KingXerxes What's a Dremel?

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    Call me crazy, but I have actually re-used several old water blocks by mounting them with zip-ties. I've tried the method described above, and while it produced an acceptable plate, I never felt it was as secure as the original (perhaps this is because I dint use thick enough steel). However - the zip tie method really works if done right. Basically, if you get the right size tie, the length of it will fit through the hole in the motherboard, but the end wont. It makes it pretty easy to cinch down a waterblock and then secure by making an x with a second pair on the bottom. Its kinda hard to describe without pictures, but its a method I'm using on my current pc, and it works fine (and only take 10 minutes to do).
     
  3. cubixxx

    cubixxx What's a Dremel?

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    I bought my first CPU waterblock 6 years ago and realised in my ignorance that I didn't have the right bracket for my socket. I took to the garage and pulled out an old Kenwood mixer which I butchered and fashioned a suitable bracket. I used the same home made bracket on the next 2 rigs with the same waterblock, worked perfectly in fact I only threw it out last year.
     
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