How effective would say an slk900 or sp-94 be if made into a waterblock? I'm thinking water in at the top, out at the sides. Just a thought that occured really, doubt i'll do it, cant afford the rest of the kit.
People have tried to do similar, and really its not going to work well, if you look at a modern block you need the water to go directly over the die, and a small amount of metal between the water and die. Oer all wouldn't be that great. 'doc
yep in short, they suck most self-made blocks these days just get annihilated by anything you can buy from the big guys, unless you are *very* good with the designs i cant see any block made out of another heatsink could even come close to comparing
Basing it on a existing heatsink is a bad idea. A better idea is to sell the heatsink, and get yourself a lump of copper and a hacksaw. Anyway the heatsink is worth enough to buy a few lumps of copper... A decent block is not hard to make. Just requires time and a lot of effort. Things that you will need to do for any homemade block: Lap it. Stock copper usually from a foundry type place, its not cut to size, instead its extruded to that size - when it gets to the supplyer they will cut it up into shorter lengths - supplyers usually get it in 2 meter (or was it 4 meter) lengths. Its far from flat, and will take a good hour maybe two, or three to lap properly (remember you willl need to do both sides to get a good seal on the top). Thent heres the shaping your block. Doing it with hand tools is painfull. I recommmend the use of things such as a dremmel or pillar drill - or a mill if you have one.. not many people do.. Then theres sealing the block. Soledring takes far too much effort, I recommend the use of a plastic top and sealant of some kind + bolts. If you do try to make one, remmeber that heat doesnt spread out that much, and its best to concentrate all of your cooling directly above the cpu - old blocks like the dangerden ones upto maze4 were the opposite of this. The best/easyest designs for DIY are like either white water - parrelell channels can be cut easly with hacksaw or dremmel cut off disks. Another would be the #rotor style which is where slightly overlapping holes are drilled so that whats left is square pins with concave sides. jet impingement - aka as cascade is something very difficult to get right - even with proper tools, so I would aviod that. For the best waterblock you need to get a balace between the highest conductivity between the block and water, as close to the chip as possible - but so the heat can still spread out enough to make that area effective at cooling, and also to keep the pressure drop of the block low, so that the pump used will be capable of the flow rates you need. You dont want to waste pressure/flow. Flow is easy to waste, simply if your block has laminar flow, like the early maze blocks - one wide spiraling channel inlet to outlet. Using a heatsink like ones you suggest, you would need to cut down the fins, they are far too tall, and the tops of them will not give any effective heat transfer. Flow flowing between the tops will all be wasted. Pressure is wasted by making it too restrictive - the only good that restriction can give is to break up laminar flow into turbulant flow. This in turn makes more of the water molecules contact the block and so remove more heat, and also helps break up the boundry layer. The boundry layer being the surface tension of water agsinst an object, where the outer layers of water will flow much slower than the cener layers, in a laminar flow. The abilitys of a pump are in flow and pressure. With no pressure, a pump will give the most flow. With lots of pressure, the flow can almost stop or stop compleatly, so needs to be the right balance. Water does not need to go directly down onto the die - aka center inlet. As long as the cooling area is effectve, then it doesnt matter where the inlet is. Having center inlet just creates an impingment above the cpu which helps, at the expense of an extra barb, but it isnt the be-all and end-all of waterblock design. Im getting some blocks machined and this is the design: http://server6.uploadit.org/files/kbn2k3-kbnblockv3.jpg I was going to use center inlet and recombne the outlets in the block, but it didnt work too great, and I prefer simple things, there less likely to break (and cost less). I recomemnd before you spend money, go over to forums.procooling.com and ask for design help in the waterblock forum, aswell as in here. Lots of diy blocks have been done in both places. I see from your in wrexham, uk? or us? (if there is a us place called that... they seem to have so many places named the same...). You can get copper from www.metalsontheweb.com or I have some spare which I may be able to sell if you want it.
www.onlinemetals.com = USA supplier of small amounts. I was/am planning to make my own block, RBX/Whitewater style, except two barbs (after reading this post). Here: Basically an RBX minus center barb. ANY block will be better then my current one, which is just flat copper on the inside.
