what do you mean by flare out?

Any thoughts of how I could make a splitter so I could use 6.3mm OD copper tube with 1/2" the rest of the system? I was thinking a 6.3mm hole in a 1/2" copper ppipe witht the 6.3 soldered in, tellme if its a good idea...
Also need to find somewhere selling 6.3mm flexable tubing like tygon...
Any one know if 6.3mm = 1/4" exactly? my vernier says yes, nm :)
the 1/4" tube might be usefull for ram cooling...?

Back to hdd cooling, Would it be better to flatten one side of the pipe for better contact witht he flat peice and a stronger solder joint? My dad suggested annealing the pipe first, then filling it up with either sand or something square and squasing it in a vice... I wont do it yet incase someone can think of an easyer/better way (I dont have any sand...)

What about brass channel. Solder a sheet of copper for the side touching the hdd. Using 1" channel is 0.28p/cm (www.metalsontheweb.co.uk). Only problem is attaching fittings to it, youd need a 1" square of copper to seal the end and put the barb anywere and solder.. makes it ahrder to solder though

0.250 inch [in] equivalent to: 6.35000 millimetre [mm]
calulation available at http://convert.french-property.co.uk/

Sort of an extension of what MMZ was talking about with putting a taper on the inside of the tube. I use a tapered reamer or a tapered punch driven into the end of the tube so that the end is stretched a little, and the OD of the end is slightly greater than the OD of the rest of the tube. I am not talking about a huge amount, just a few thousandths, or enough that you can just feel the difference. It acts like a mini-barb of sorts to hold the tube on, and if you use a clamp, any effort by the tube to slide off will jam the plastic tube in between the clamp and the flare locking it in place.
That would work but would be a bit fragile. I would be more inclined to get a "T" or "Y" fitting and the appropriate reducers if needed. If you go to an actual plumbing supply house (instead of the local hardware store) you would probably be able to get an appropriate fitting ready made.
In the US try McMaster-Carr, or MSC Industrial supply (mscdirect.com) for Tygon in retail quantities, look for formulation R-3603 (there are several types, that number is the one you want)
My conversion chart says it is the same for measurments, I'm not sure on the tube sizes since the actual and nominal sizes might differ. I suspect they'd be close enough to interchange in any case.
It might be if one wanted to spend the effort on doing it. IMHO cooling RAM is something that should be WAY down on the list of priorities for things to cool.

In theory it might help, but in practice a hard drive puts out very little heat, and is very effectively cooled by almost any sort of cooler. Keep in mind that a very important part of engineering design is the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle, or don't make things more complicated than they need to be in order to do the job. Your father's proposed approach might work, but would add a bunch of extra work for a temp improvement I doubt you'd be able to measure and that certainly wouldn't help your system any. It would add the extra headache of trying to keep the flat uniform across the entire plate (to avoid gaps which would cause problems as noted in an earlier post) and impose an added flow restriction. IMNSHO it wouldn't be worth the hassle.
See comments above, same logic applies! Keep it simple, avoid the hassles. As an added downside, I'm not sure you would have enough room in a 5.25" cage for such a build, it might be to wide.

Gooserider

Lies! :) I've run custom fittings like that for literally years and never had any problems with them being even remotely fragile ...and believe me when I say the solder joints were "creative" ;)

A quick conversion says 6.3mm = 0.2480315 inch [international, U.S.] ...so yeah, approximately 1/4"

Listen to Goose - he's def. right with the whole KISS principle. My HD waterblock consists of a couple of copper plates screwed to the sides of the HD's with some 3/8" (10mm O/D) tubing (badly) soldered to the sides. Even something as crude as that will keep two 7,200 Seagate Barracuda's at ~3-4 degrees above coolant temperature. The extra hassle just isn't worth it IMHO :shrug:

Fragile is a relative term G33K. Much also depends on the skill and workmanship of the person making the joint, the relative surface areas of the surfaces being joined, etc. Lots of variables.

It IS possible to make custom fittings of all sorts, I've done it in the past and will probably do it again in the future. I have also seen custom fittings fail, sometimes after being put in service for lengthy periods. If possible I prefer to use stock fittings as they are far less of a risk for problems, and much stronger. (I'll put a stock fitting and one of yours the same size to a destruction test, want to bet which lets go first?)

In the case being discussed, I see several factors -
1. The desired result can be achieved with stock fittings.
2. By the time the proposed custom fitting had been made and then reamed out internally to reduce flow restriction I suspect the joint area remaining would not have been enough for good strength.
3. No insult intended, but judging by the other questions being asked, I suspect the skill set of the person asking might not be up to the task of making a good joint. - I tend to be conservative when giving advice in these forums, and stick with solid reliable techniques that any reasonably competent person should be able to use w/o problems. I know there are expert craftspersons who can successfully use more advanced / higher risk techniques to do really neat stuff, but that they generally aren't the folks asking for advice :D

Gooserider

Indeed I am very new to this but learning quickly :)
Just fin soldering 10 copper 90's to some smaller pipe - the elbows were the socket type, not the street one, which would have been better.. They all have good joints but some of them have lots of solder around the outside which I need to clean off.

Also just made a heatsink from sheet copper. 15 pieces 45*15mm peices of sheet tinned and then clamped together, and heated again to join them. They are only joined at the bottom - I will bend the top parts of each fin apart for better air to copper ratio. Its very top heavy - the outside fins will be bent all the way round to stabilise it against the card. The bottom is filled flat and soldered to another peice of sheet of the same size. This is to cool a chip giving about 5-10w under the heatspreader of my 9700np. Im pleased with how it came out but I could have done it better. It would look better if I didnt reuse scrap copper from another project, so no pics :P

going to make my hdd cooler soon. Heres my plan:
Use flattened copper pipe to make sheet (my dad can squash it at work)
make two sides of the pipe flat for better strength/conduction - the ends will be left how they are to make hose easy to attach.
the only thing I need now is the hole locations for the drive, I dont have a spare to get measurements from. The drives im using will be maxtor dmp9

here ya go...
only measured with a ruler...
http://www3.telus.net/MadHacker/HD.jpg

thanks, Ill try to start making it tomorrow :) (will have pics!)

The stoc.... oh alright, mine (and probably a LOT sooner too)! Fair points, well made :)

I know what you mean, but pushing people to try things should always be encouraged in my opinion. I wouldn't call myself skilled, but comparing what I was capable of when I started water-cooling to what I can do now, there's a big difference. Most of it's due to me trying 'crazy' ideas that my buddies all said would fail / leak / destroy my house ;)

My progress....

Got the annealed copper sheet, also messed up one of them, so I left it for 4 mins on the gas stove of my cooker, and managed to get it glowing bright red :D so now its soft enough for me to start again.
The problem is bending them all the same. they bend easly, but theres no way atm to get them the same. Im thinking of maybe making a mold in clay of how I want it. Then to anneal tehse the most I can, then hitting them into the mold, how well that would workI dont know, and I doubt clay would be much good either, unless I could get these to anneal more.

Maybe try wood for a mould if you can - it's less likely to shatter than clay.

I would tend to agree on making the die for shaping the copper out of wood or possibly steel. You might also get better results if you can make a pair of 'male and female' molds that you can press the sheet in between rather than just beating it into one with a hammer.

Another thing to consider is that you will probably want a 'reference edge' on the mold that you fasten your part to so that the material in the bend all comes from the other part. This should give you better results than just random bending. (or make the raw peices oversize and trim to fit)

Gooserider

decided random bending was easyest. I thought I could get my dad to make a mold by squasing a steel rod into some aluminuim but decided against that (aluminim strong enough?). Today I soldered it together after giving up witht he random bending :)
In the pics you can see they are bent different amounts but I think there close enough after bending them more with plyers and squashing the ends flat in a vice. The ends need trimming a bit I cut them about 1/2" oversize. Also might cut the 15mm pipe off the ends and put 12mm pipe in for the barbs

Looks like good work, should do the job well.

Gooserider