Bahh, there is no such thing.

Willie
from where does your comment originate ?
I have never heard the phrase "lockseam" until you used it, I refer to the more common mfgn term 'rolled seam'
nor have I ever made a disparaging remark regarding same
(if so, please quote me)

Swiftech did what they did w/o any inputs from HW Labs, positive or negative, and did so for a variety of reasons which are their business

a seamless tube may be more reliable, or not - depends on the tube mfgr
if you can show a performance improvement where the ONLY change was the seam, do so - otherwise its all sales patter
(I cannot make such claim, theory ok, just not able to demonstrate)

so the tube seam you used for how many years is now "old style cheap ass lockseam tubes" ?

you said this, not me - and why your info is sales junk and not product performance
it will be interesting to see how you present your new rads

Dammit.... I let those ruddy worms out of the can again...

/me grabs the whacking stick

... Damnit, it all fizzled before I was able to get the popcorn out of the microwave....

It's stuff like this that adds a little flavor to the watercooling scene. :cool:

Just to note "lock seam" is a common name for such tubes. http://www.google.com/search?q=lock+...f&start=0&sa=N

Am a little confused as to how rolled seams, which occur at the thin end of the tubes, could result in much of any performance difference in comparison to "seamless". The seam affects a thermally insignificant portion of the overall convectional surface area.

It seems about as significant to me as claiming that blocks with metal lids will perform better than blocks with plastic lids. Sure, could possibly argue that theoretically it will make the tiniest of differences, but in practise it makes effectively zero.

The only thing that I can think of is that a seamless design may facilitate a greater number of tubes and thus a greater surface area. Wouldn't be a 1 to 1 comparison if that was the case. Just my thoughts.

I think the reference is to a seam (or not) that runs along the length of the tube.
I'd actually expect seamed tubes to be better (so long as heat wasn't being transferred through the seamed area). I'm reasoning that the shorter the distance heat has to travel through metal the better (like thinner baseplates in waterblocks being better).
I'd also expect that a limitation to making tubes thinner is their rigidity during manufacture - and a seamed tube had ought to be more rigid than a seamless one (either drawn or continuous weld - actually I don't know which process might be used for seamless in this case - and one could argue that continuous weld isn't actually seamless) so enabling use of a thinner tube in the case of seamed tube.
I'd also guess that the difference between brazing with copper and soldering (even with silver-content solder) would be a bigger deal than seamed/seamless.

But that's all guessing and what the he** do I know?

Interesting to hear that Bill's moved from Swiftech to Coolingworks. Sounds like a different set of challenges - hope it goes well :)

good guesses, the marriage of design goals with the specific mfgn process capability
cost is always a factor, generally a change must improve performance AND reduce costs
cost reduction is normally selected over performance

solderless copper 'brazing' is the process, beyond the quantity/performance necessity of our apps to justify

if HW Labs is doing such there are better markets
I'm thinking that the "old style cheap ass lockseam tubes" was just a sales slur and not notification of a technical improvement
?
but what the he** do I know ?

If their DD advertising is anything to go by, im not surprised.