Hi Guys, I've just started a new project and I thought the people on this forum may be interested. Dirt cheap DIY water cooling. So I've spent the weekend making the water block. I've thought about this for a long time, and I believe the trick is getting a really good seal and sturdy design but still keeping the cost and simplicity down. The base of it was an old heat sink i had laying around. The top is a PVC end cap cut down to size. To start with, I cut the heat sink down, then traced a circle where i would keep the fins, then cut the rest off. I then did a lot of filing to get it nice and smooth. In between the PVC end cap and the heat sink I used a cut down O ring i found at Bunnings. inbetween the barbs and the PVC end cap I have used some little O rings also found at Bunnings. if you already have an old heat sink, this design will cost you $10-$20. I have no idea how this performs yet (I am waiting for my ebay pump/radiator to arrive ) I may of made the fins too long, we shall see. I will be testing it on an old acer SK50, intel E2140, 1.6Ghz dual core.
I love DIY projects! Interesting to see what sort of temperatures you'll get with that block. Mind me asking what pump/rad you will be using (link please)? /Mork
better go with some sort of silicon or smth. if You'll get copper rad - better use some inhibitor of corrosion to avoid galvanic corrosion. and this inhibitors are really aggressive to all sorts of o-rings
Cheapskate approved! -Four bananas. It should work just fine on a 1.5ghz. If you scrounge around for a copper sink, you can solder the whole thing together with copper pipe parts.
This is the radiator, about AU$23.75, yes it looks poorly made and cheap but i don't care it was cheap http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290676987623&ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:AU:3160 This is the pump, AU$14 380L per hour: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290676987623&ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:AU:3160 I have some automotive coolant under the house which i was going to use, not sure how well it will work?
absolutely brilliant! I'm designing my own blocks at the minute and hadn't even considered using an old salvaged heatsink. If it weren't for the fact it'll all be copper based, I'd tempted to pull the cooling off my old 7900GTO's and run water through them for complete OTT cooling. lol
Just a quick update. I have made the mount as seen in this picture. Just cut it out of a bit of sheet aluminium. Hopefully it's not too thin. It's keeping the block tight down on the motherboard at the moment, but i can see it bending the aluminium a little. I am still waiting for my pump and radiator to arrive from ebay land.
You will want to use only a little of the automotive coolant. It works better for the 150-210 degree range. The more glycol you add, the worse your cooling will be.
For testing I will be using a 35W delta fan. this thing is rediculus - loudness and airflow wise. Most likely the end product will buy a nice quiet Noctua fan. I ran into a bit of a problem with this radiator. The barbs are too small! looks like it's designed for 8mm pipe or something :/ (the pipe I have is 10mm). I thought about sawing off the barbs and attempting to self tap some bigger ones in, but i'd probably break it or it would leak. Luckily I had some other pipe which fit the radiator nicely. and with a bit of persuasion, the clear 10mm pipe will fit over the smaller pipe!
Can't get much more ghetto than a chop job block cooled by a delta screamer... That block looks awesome, crying out for an industrial/steampunk casemod to live in - how well does it cool?
Finally got a test setup happening and WOW am i impressed with the results. The reservoir is a massive, must be like 10L? It was an old water bottle. First off, I installed CPUZ and Real Temp. This is all with the radiator fan turned off too. RealTemp comes with it's own loader tester, here are the results of that running. 23 degrees max!!! Yes i know that the reservoir is massive and it would take a long time to heat that much water. BUT this proves that I am getting a good heat transfer from my homemade block! Then I stopped the load test, turned the radiator fan on for a few minutes to cool it down. and here are the idle results: I am really really impressed with this. Unfortunately I am unable to overclock with this motherboard, so it's stock E2140 - 1.6Ghz. Unless anyone knows of any tools that will let me overclock via software? The motherboard is a stock acer SK50 board.
Latest work: Let me know if anyone wants screenshots of temps, details of O/C etc. I see a lot of views but not so many comments
Here you can see that the Idle GPU temperature is around 35 degrees. (ambient room temperature is 12 degrees), and idle CPU temp is about 26 degrees. As you can see, the GPU has been overclocked from 567Mhz to 750Mhz. I found a GPU test program on the internet called OCCT, after running that for about 5 minutes, the GPU temperature was staing about 46 degrees. This Leadtek 8400GS came stock with a passive cooler, temps were like 70 idle, so I'm really impressed with this basic water cooler.
I just got mail! 120MM thermaltake fan arrived. Idle temperatures with fan, CPU is idling between 15-18 degrees!!!: almost half an hour of prime 95, max CPU temp 32 degrees!
