[|kbn|]

Hello. Has been about a year since I last used my watercooling, maybe 2 years since I really done anything with it.


I had some ideas recently when installing an old system that was gathering dust. A friend donated some parts after deciding its not practicle and has little benifit over recent aircooling.

I decided I would try explore how to make it more practicle, after reinstalling my 1/2" system. Altough I only have 4 components inside the case - cpu and gpu waterblocks, two ball valves to help with disconnecting it.

I notice that heatpipes are hugely popular now, becuase they are cheap, practicle and perform well.

Can watercooling do the same?


I made a small test waterblock, measuring 25x19x10mm (plus connections). I intend to base this on a 5mm ID system.
There is maybe 50grams of copper in the below picture...
Needs some more stuff done, I will fill the channel ends posibly with 1.5mm copper inserts and solder it together.
For mounting I have made a small bracket from SS 2mm thick and it will use normal mounting holes.


Attached is a picuture of the block inside some tygon, next to an ancient athlon xp 1700+!
I plan to test this on a 0-50w heatsource, and depending on the result it will probably live on the northbridge of my nforce4, as a seperate system to the main one.

Which leads me to this:

I would also like to try convection, IE pumpless. Im searching for info if anyone has done this and how successfull it would be. While it is very different, I see that heatpipes are very good as passive systems and that a correctly designed convection system may also work.