I am setting up my first water cooled system also my first major modded sytem. I was wondering if I could use copper tubing in place of the plastic tubing everyone uses. My only fear with the copper is condensation. The only reason I want to use copper tubing is for aesthetics. I do realize it will be much more difficult to work with but I think it will be well worth it for the look I am going for. Once i actually start builing I will start a project log and I think you all will understand. Well if anyone knows if copper tubing is doable or not please let me know.
You could, but if you read the watercooled shuttle log that's around here somewhere, he's doing that and apparently fried his GPU from the sounds of it. The only problem is that with copper, you have to be dead-on because it's not at all flexible like tubing is, and if you're not exact then the block won't sit on the processor right and buh-buy money.
I'll have to look for that shuttle log and see what he did wrong. The only other option besides regular copper tubing is perhaps a braided copper sheath for the tube. I think I've seen some braided copper tubing around this site but can't recall where it was. If anybody knows or even better where I could buy it do tell thanks.
I did my first case with bent copper tubing. The main problem that I ran into was that because the tubing is rigid I had problems getting the waterblocks correctly seated because the tubing is working against the leveling force of the holddowns. The other problem is that when you want to remove a part you have to drain the WC system and take out the connecting tubes because they won't drop out of the way. Bending the tube isn't all that bad since the stuff is pretty cheap, you'll just go through a lot of it before you get the bends right. My first case with copper tubing
If you take a look at the pictures gallery there is a guy on there who has used copper quite alot, but he has also mixed with plastic on bends.
Does anyone know where I can find braided copper shielding? This seems the easiest route to give me an all copper look while keeping flexibility and ease of maintenance. I have had no luck searching google. I'm state side by the way.
Closest i can come up with from an english site is this but its silver. Its from RS componants ... maybe you have a well known electrical supplier that does a copper varient?
This kid of stuff? Or it might be worth looking for the stuff they shield wires with, or even pulling apart some sheilded wire to get the copper. Or you can get copper tape that's used in electronics sometimes. Maybe you could have a predominantly solid copper tube setup, with short pieces of copper covered flexible tubing going to the blocks. Best of both worlds?
That's what i was thinking, the only problem with that is finding shielded wire big enough I could fit the tubing in after I pull the wire out. This is a great idea I'm gonna have to start experimenting.
It would, but not a noticable amount without several meters of pipe. If you used lots of T sections, and had maybe 20x500mm lengths in paralell with a silent fan pulling accross them, it would perform quite well i think. What about wrapping some of this round the tube, http://www.rapidelectronics.co.uk/r...CAT_CODE=30289&STK_PROD_CODE=M66924&XPAGENO=1 its 0.1mm so should be very bendable much like aluminuim foil.
