What country are they coming from? Customs issue or just delayed shipping?

Hmmm, maybe reading too much into my statement.

Much of my fumbling math was done assuming 25C water, and the kinematic viscosity that goes along with that. That was what was used to drive the basis of the design, which then got refined through emperical results (and a rough attempt at adapting the maths to fit). I hadn't really anticipated 25% glycol viscosities and the effects that could have.

Sunny Saskatoon apparantly.

Have decided not to wait any longer and have submitted the refined design to the machinists already. I figure by the time that the blocks get back I can do a shoot-out between the old and the new, with plain and glycol-gooped water, and decide then on which way to swing.

The new block could perform worse (and I have a slight feeling that it will) for plain water, but in any event I'll find out either way.

To be shipped by dogsled.......waiting for snow aparently :dome:

I'll be back at home around midnight; will check on a tracking number then Cathar.

I thought hot water froze faster than cold water because it was evaporating away (and decreasing the volume of liquid water that is involved)? Pretty sure I recall something like that from a P Chem discussion...

The idea of hot water freezing faster, while true, is retarded. Put less water in. Then it will freeze even faster and you'll get the same amount of ice!

It doesn't account for all of it, the Mpemba effect occurs in closed containers as well.

interesting. The more you know, right? It's been a long time but I seem to recall doing the math on an open system and evaporation could explain it. It's biased though because we were given the numbers to work with rather than actually doing said experiments. Guess the P Chem prof was just seeing if anyone would actually go out and look for more research on the topic...

Hmmm, can't remember where I read it now. The explanation that I read for hot water freezing faster had to do with the crystalline nature in which water molecules align themselves.

Apparantly water is a very highly structured liquid if left to sit. When it's cool, (and sitting still) it apparantly conducts heat much more readily through its structure. When the water starts off hot, the exited molecules break down the crystalline structure of the water, which takes a long time to re-establish.

So basically what is meant to happen is that the initially cool water freezes throughout, meaning that the entire mass of the water has to be brought to the freezing point. In the initially hot-water scenario, the outer edges freeze more quickly.

Seemed a little wishy-washy to me though.

I remember playing with my TEC water-chiller, attempting to freeze up a few litres of water in a bucket. The water would keep on flowing down to around -2.5C or so, until the water froze up solid inside the TEC chiller, forcing the flow to stop.

I would then see some little ice crystals exit from the loop outlet into the reservoir just as the flow was stopping, and then the water turned into what can be best described as a set of icy sheet layers, of a highly crystalline nature. The whole reservoir of water froze up into this sloughy set of ice sheets, and somewhat more curiously, when this process happened, the water temperature jumped up to -0.1C almost instantly.

It was like the kinetic motion of the liquid was enough to stave off the phase-change into solid form for a while, until when the motion was removed by the flow being blocked, then that catalysed the near total phase-change of all the water in the bucket into icy sheets. Now when I say "sheets", these are not layered horizontally. They were more like at a 45 degree isometric angle kinda deal.

Yeah, I know, kids playing with water, but it was fascinating to watch the phase-change into a solid take place, and then to measure the temperature jump, and the form of the frozen water.

I'm not sure how useful this is but here's another hot water freezes faster than cold discussion.

The results from this less advanced test suggest water has to be very warm ~140-212 deg F (60-100 deg C) to realize any appreciable decrease in freezing time compared to cold tap water.

man,what a tease this is.i live in saskatoon,and know somewhere in this great little city,lurks not only phaestus,but soon the new cascade :cry:
fyi,the igloos are melting pretty quick today :D

KnightElite lives here too. We should get together for some beers + LAN action sometime. I have a finished basement and plenty of room (and mediocre gaming skills)

that sounds great.not sure if i am up to transporting my rig tho,
26"chenming case with an external watercooling box.
nice to know this type of action going on here

Ok , numbers are a decoration.
Have deleted mine.

Cathar, when do you plan on releasing your block? i am going all out this summer on a brand new rig, and am only getting the best, and your block is #1 :)

I, and others, would argue that is yet to be proven independently.

When it's ready. Still awaiting the return of my test blocks, and still waiting on the machinists to complete the "goop tweak" version. Might have both by the end of this week.

OHHHH NOOOO!!!!! before or after DUKE NUKEM???? :evilaugh:


Anyway what is your target price, or are you close enogh to know yet????

That reminds me of Lomac. lol

Yeah, I'm putting together a rig next summer. I'm holding out for the Athlon dual-core (:D) and I plan on using your latest and greatest. Will it be out by then? I must admit though, I haven't rulled out the TDX w/ the #5 nozzle. ;)


Good luck to you Cather!


DrCR


__________
1977 Bonneville Heatercore
IWAKI MD-20RZT @ 60Hz

Got my blocks back today, just sitting on our front porch for who know's how long? :eek: Yay! Thanks Phaestus. I've been missing them.

Opened up and inspected the blocks. The "Storm" is a jetted block as I've hinted about this before. A significant number of the jets were clogged quite heavily with balls of lint, and especially over the central die area. The baseplate even had lint trapped in various places, which says to me that some of the jets were so clogged that there wasn't even enough flow to push the lint out of the way as there's plenty of room for it to escape once it reaches the base-plate.

The Cascade SS faired a lot better, with just a few outer (slower-speed) jets clogged mildly. The Cascade SS was tested second, so I have a feeling that the Storm already did the job of mostly filtering the test system. I don't believe that the SS's performance would've been impacted to any significant degree given what I saw.

I'll still run the "goop" tests, but right now I'm thinking that it was a filtering issue that explains the differences between Phaestus's and my own internal testing.

Sadly this is something that all these modern higher performance finely-structured blocks do suffer from. If the loop is open to the air for long enough, or perhaps refilled using dirty containers that introduce lint into the system, then this can be an issue. I'm sure what with Phaestus installing all manner of blocks all the time, that over time enough lint would've entered the system, whether from his own actions, or from lint/crap already present inside the previous tests blocks that were installed.

Stew
Do you use an Inline Filter?
What do you use or what are the preferred types?
Thank you:)

I have an in-line filter here in my test setup, but only because I accidentally sprayed paint into one of my radiators and it often releases globs of paint into the system. Otherwise I filter all my water and using clean containers I add it into the loop, and never have a problem with lint. The filter catches the paint particles.

My inline-filter is a "barrel and basket" micro-irrigation filter which I picked up for US$3 from a local hardware store. It's the one on the right in the below picture:

http://www.employees.org/~slf/images/filters.jpg

It is very low flow restriction, offering less resistance than one of my heater-cores. It has a removable "basket" inside that has literally thousands and thousands of ~0.1mm diameter pin-holes in it. It's big and ugly, but it's free flowing and dirt cheap. There'd probably be a good market for something that was 1/3rd the size for computer cooling use with micro-structured/jetted blocks.

My other closed-loop Cascade-based system that I leave running all the time (my P4 work system) doesn't have any inline-filters installed and it's never had any problems because the water was pre-filtered when I added it. I pull it apart every 3 months or so just to check, and it's always been fine.

what do you use to filter the water?? one of those regular Purina water filters you put on your sink or something?

Something similar to that. It's just a basic sits-on-the-bench water-filter that uses a 10 micron carbon filter. For the price and the amount of water needed, it would be perfectly acceptable to just buy a couple of litres of bottled drinking water. I'm somewhat fortunate to live in Melbourne, Australia which mostly has the cleanest and softest drinking water found in the country. Only a total paranoid would ever feel that drinking Melbourne tap water was bad for them. Chemically it's purer than many bottled drinking waters. We just filter it to get rid of any localised particle matter.

What about the top plate?

I remember an article showing that copper + anodized aluminum still causes corrosion when the anodizing wears off ...

Also, when these blocks go into retail, any idea what they will cost?