For the SMBUS reader you can order the chip @ radiospares, farnell or any other mail-order electronic retailer.
The internal diode is not perfect at all, but if you calibrate it you'll have a good precision. I do not know a way of reading the diode without having the CPU running though, so calibration may be tricky. I may be wrong on that one, if someone knows better please tell us.

Forget about drilling a hole in your mobo. They are all multi-layered, IIRC DDR ram requires 8 layers at least.

Pointing an airflow at a temp diode doesn't sound as a good idea... Air flow is chaotic, and it will throw off your readings.

Keep up the good job.

Please take your time to read the whole post, I need help with some issues and I would appreciate any information on these subjects very much.

Thanks for the warning, I tought it was only top and bottom layers.

In the city where I live I can't get any kind of thermal sensors, no thermistors, thermocouples, thermal diodes, nothing! I got a flat thermistor (very thin) from an old slot A motherboard, I couldn't find any specs for it so I did some testing, here is the result:
Temperature in celsius - resistance in Kohms
0 C - 29.1 K
36.5 C (body temp) - 6.95 K
100 C - 1.05 K

If anyone can help me identify/use it or has a schematic for a circuit that reads from this and converts the resistance to temperature (no PICs) it would be great.

I took my processor off and looked at the "inside"of the socket, there is no thermal sensor in there like I see in some other boards, there's just a bunch of surface mount resistors and a couple of very tiny 8 pin ICs, I assumed these were not temp sensing IC's because they're close to the borders of the socket instead of in the middle and the motherboard has more of these than I can count. Does that mean my mother board reads from the internal diode (I don't think so but I can't think of something else to explain the lack of a temp sensor in there)? I have a Soyo Dragon +.

The only idea I have left is getting one of those digital thermometers used to measure fever, take it apart, put a long wire in the thermistor and use it, after all my CPU temp at full load (measured by the mother board diode or whathever the hell there is in there is 37C) is almost the same as body temp . Any other ideas for temp measurement are also welcome.

Now changing subjects, the copper from the blocks didn't "like" the laque at all, it didn't "catch on" so there will be no laque, if you don't touch the block with your bare hands (we have fat and acid in our hands) it should be a long time without getting darker..

I have some pics of the finished blocks and tops, that are now painted, I know there are some dust spots in the painting but as I told you before, this is beta, it was applied 3 layers of base paint, 2 layers of the gray paint and 2 layers of laque to protect the painting. here they are:

http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/b1.jpg
http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/b2.jpg
http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/b3.jpg

There is something I forgot to mention. If you have been following this thread you saw the pictures I of the little "flaws" I posted before, those small metal accumulations were caused by a piece of each mold (some of them) that "broke" because the copper was poured a little too fast. The "broken" pieces of the molds had to go somewhere, most of it went to the bottom of the molds, not affecting the copper block, but in some blocks, some of it didn't have time to go all the way down before the copper got rigid so it stayed trapped in the copper, as I said, it was a really small ammount of molding material so it only affect the looks of the bottom of the block (some black spots), it doesn't affect performance at all because it's too little to do it. I tested all of the blocks, some of them had this some didn't and one of them had more than any other, this is the block oin the bottom left of the picture showing the blockis reflecting the money and they performed the same (at least no difference bigger than 1C, my thermal diode doesn't measure fraction of degrees).
I hope you like the blocks.

@MadDogMe: I would like to have one of those but they're too expensive for me right now, maybe when I start getting some good profit I'll get one.

@Mark_Knecht: I'm glad you liked it :)

@gmat:I have no international credit card yet, I'll get one as soon as I have the time to get some needed papers, this project is keeping me very busy. Also it would probably take some time before it got here. Temp measurement is tricky stuff :confused:

Thanks
Bruno

Only one word : AWESOME block.congratulations friend. Something tells me that i will testing one of thaat this weekend.
Congratulations again,
Eduardo

Brunno,
Hey man, them blocks are looking damn fine, they should perform well and I think that the testing method that you're doing is fine, no need to get all super techical, most people don't even have the test setup that you have laid out...

About the "looks..." frankly, as I've always stated, I don't give too much a damn about looks of stuff. I'm ALL ABOUT PERFORMANCE. Looks, bah, that's some kid stuff/nerd "look at my WATER cooled OC'ing rig" mess that people use to inflate egos IMHO. It's nice, but it takes up YOUR time to do it, and adds unnecessary COST. If people want eye-candy, they can polish the blocks themselves, that's how I feel... Now lets talk about me purchasing one of your lovely blocks ASAP! PS- I want one of the one's with the ALL-copper construction! :) Thanks good luck!

Ciao!

What are the tops made of?, what are they covered in?. they're looking very good, at the price you're thinking of charging I'd say you have a niche cornered :) . I'd like to see the tops not quite as long,(IMO you don't need more than 5mm[at the most] past the edge of the mounting holes), and with the corners rounded.

What are the dimensions of the base of the block? (the side that goes on the cpu)

thanks!

I'm sorry for taking so much time to update you, I'm working on a water cooled PSU, I fried mine , since I only had one and it took me a few days to get a new one I had no PC for the last few days.

Please also take a look at the thread I'm starting on GPU water blocks, link here
.
Well about the blocks, I had 4 finished, one was already sold, one is for myself and the other 2, well I'll have to sell them to people from brazil (really sorry) because I pay $10 for each international money wire I receive, so even if I sold the 2 together I would still loose $10 out of $30. For the 2nd batch, using my merchant account at paysystems.com I'll wait until I sell like 10 blocks, to tell them to wire the money for me, so I only loose $1 for each block because of that damn international wire fee. I can't sell those 2 and leave the money in the US because I need it to buy material to make the 2nd batch. That sucks, I know but the 2nd batch should not take soo long to be ready, than I'll have like 20 blocks ready to sell.

I found a solution for precise (1C error) temp measurement, I got myself 4 of those $10 digital thermometers used to measure fever, they have some very small 50k thermistors in them, these are great because they can fit between the water block and the CPU if taken out of their metallic protection and they can also be used under water if you don't remove the metal casing from the thermometer. They're also good quality. So I have 4 50k thermistors and I'll be putting together something like this: http://www.benchtest.com/gp_Temp5.html, take a look at gp_temp1 for more details on how it works. So in a couple of days max I'll give you very precise C/W numbers, I'll be measuring water temp, radiator fan intake temp, and CPU, also this time I will include the whole 23 watts of my pump in the calculations, I only put 6W in my last calculations because I read the value from my 500L/h pump box instead of the 1200L/h I'm using. That should give us even better C/W numbers!

@Marvin: Thank you, for everything. Something tells me you already have one working on your PC :D

@V12|V12: Thanks! You have a point about the looks/performance thing, they will be sold as seen on the pics, I think they look pretty good and it doesn't take me so much time to polish all sides of them, just the bottom. All of them are all copper, except for the hose fittings that are brass, the top is painted copper. I'm very very sorry but you'll have to wait for the 2nd batch, as I explained in the beginning of this post I cannot afford to loose $10 out of $30, that would be selling them for $10 each :(.

@MadDogMe: The tops are made of copper, they're covered with 2 layers of base paint, 2 layers of grey paint and something I forgot the name in english on top to protect the painting.

@2old_honda: The base is 49x56 and the upper part is 61x56, as I said before the measurements may vary on the sides by 1 or even 2mm because, well I already explained earlier in this thread and it and you probably don't even want to know why :)

Thank you
Bruno Facca

Bruno,
Hey, good to here the update, is there any chance that I could get one of them blocks WITHOUT the protective base paint? I'm planning on coating mine with some clear Lacquer so that I can see all the wonderful copper etc... When do you think that the batch will be ready to send out? I've got the money ready and waiting! :)

So far, what C/W numbers have you been getting?

Again, sorry for taking so long to post back, my computer was all around the room in the last couple of days, I did a Vmod on my mobo, now it can give a Vcore of 2.10, it would only go to 1.85 before, I also exchanged the original northbridge HSF for one that is waaay bigger and undervolted it to 8V so even undervolted (and silent) it will still cool much better than the original, it's actually a modded K6 HSF.

I got my XP 1700+ running at 1713 MHz, it dissipates 120W including the pump, better for block testing than the 90W it dissipated earlier, I also added a thermistor under the core reporting temps trought the game port, as described in that benchtest.com article I posted before. I also added an properly insulated thermistor to my reservoir and another one with a long wire to measure radiator intake temp. That should give us some accurate enough temp measurements. I'll just have to finish
making the shroud for my new radiator to begin testing with the new thermistors. I'll post some pics as soon as I reassemble my water cooling rig, right now I have a loud heatsink/fan running, after getting used to the silence this noise is driving me crazy!

As for the 2nd batch, I'll start working on it once I sell the 2 blocks I have on stock so I can buy some more copper

@V12|V12: Yes, I can get you with a raw copper top, I just wan't to let people know that this is an exception, if everyone would want their custom blocks I would be very screwed. :) Please let me know what kind of lacquer you're using, I need to try some and see wich one it's better.
As I said I'll start casting it once I sell these 2 I got, I already have someone to buy them so it shouldn't take long. I can't give you a date but If I would have to _guess_ I would say something like 2 weeks until I got them ready. As I said I really can't say I'm just guessing.

Thanks
Bruno

I didn't reply so far because I wanted to wait until I get the shroud ready so I could post some pics of the new rig, I got an all 6mm acrylic reservoir which I'm probably going start making some more to sell too if people like it.

The shroud is not ready yet because it involved a lot of work on making it, it's made of a cut/bended 8mm thick galvanized steel (or was that iron, whatever, it's the same material used in the common PC cases, only thicker). First I had to do the match to calculate the right angles and side sizes because my new rad is not square as the fan, it's 15x18cm. It was very hard to cut with metal cutting scissors (I think that's the name for the tool), those big plates wouldn't fit in my metal cutting machine that is mainly for cutting bars, after that bending it correctly also took some time, then I made the holes for the 120mm fans, wich also took lots of time because I don't own a dremel so they had to be made with the "several small holes side by side" method, toomrrow morning I'll weld it and paint both shrouds and the radiator (I got some heat conductive paint special for radiators from a radiator store so it won't affect performance).

Long story short, I'm not sure how long that paint takes to dry but my new testing rig should be ready by tomorrow night. Then I'll post all pics.

Thanks
Bruno Facca

A bulletproof shroud, no doubt! 8 mm steel...:rolleyes:

Keep at it, you'll find a better way:D

I think Bruno meant 0.8mm galvanized steel. There is no way he could cut 8.0mm (1/3 inch thick) steel with tin snips (metal cutting scissors).

Again, sorry for taking so much to update you. These last few weeks have been hell, I can't even sleep 8 hours as I'm used to. I burned the 2nd PSU this month (isn't that great?), this time the 450W power supply couldn't handle my PC so it overloaded and fried.

Here are the new specs for the water cooled test rig:

Athlon XP 1700+ AGOIA stable @ 1850MHz (2V, 12.5x, 148FSB)
Heat dissipation: 111W at 100%, 98W at 88%
Soyo Dragon Plus (Vmod)
256MB cheap DDR
Prolink Geforce 4 MX440 w/ TV out
2x Samsung 40GB SV4002H in RAID 0
1x Quantum 20GB LCT20 for backup
LG DVD ROM 16x
Samsung CDR 8x4x32
Pinnacle Capture/TV card PV-BT878P+ Rev. 10
Alcatel external ADSL modem 256k/128k
Lucent V92 internal modem
Dual PSUs: 300W for the 3 HDs and 2 optical drives.
450W for the Mobo, CPU, RAM, GPU and PCI cards.


As for the pics, I would take them now but I have to be somewhere in about 20 minutes so I'll take them tonight in my spare time (I haven't used this word in a while) That is if no plane crashes in the roof of my house or the PC doesn't catch on fire for no reason (with the luck I'm having lately hehe...)

Finally the test rig is all ready, the water cooling system, including the all acrylic reservoir and a prototype of the radiator are all working very nicely. All that I still have to do is calibrate the 3 50k thermistors that will be used (interfaced to MBM5) to measure water, radiator intake and CPU temp, I could put a thermistor right below the core by using the very thin wire that came connected to the thermistor itself in the thermometers I got them from. I'll also do this tonight.

As for benchmarks I can't do them today, the reason is I'm running my PC underclocked and with only 2 HDs running because my 450W PSU didn't arrive yet so I only got a 300W, If I push this processor any further this PSU might die on me too (enough of that). It should arrive tomorrow (sat).

Last but not least, I have been working on the model of the 2nd batch of the block, it's almost ready, I'm also working on the model for the GPU block for the Geforce 3/4, that's why I bought the GF4, to test this new block that's coming in a few weeks.

I'll post back tonight.

@FuzzyFace, bigben2k: I guess I would need a couple of tons of force to cut a 8mm galvanized steel sheet with tin snips :). It was a typo, it's 0.8mm as you said.

Thanks
Bruno Facca

Here are the pics, finally :D :

http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/rig1.jpg
http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/rig2.jpg
http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/rig3.jpg
http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/rig4.jpg
The radiator was painted by me using thermally conductive paint and as I said before, the shroud is made of 0.8mm galvanized steel, it was calculated so the fans stay 3cm away from the rad, I haven't really read any studies on that but I think that's a good distance.
http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/rig5.jpg
http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/rig6.jpg
http://www.advancedcoolingsolutions.net/bruno/rig7.jpg
In this last pic I tried to demonstrate how little the flow restriction is with this block, you can see the water hits the wall opposite to the inlet of the reservoir with some good pressure, the video shows that much better than a pic but I didn't think people would go to the trouble of downloading it so..

The reservoir (like this one) will be available with the 2nd batch of the block and I'm trying to work something out for the rads, as I can't be making these shrouds manually or it would take forever.

Please post any comments/questions you have

Thanks
Bruno Facca

Be nice to find some Allen~bolts to fix the tops on with, rounded top ones or drill an insert so they're flush with the surface...
I'd like to see the tops cut down a bit, have the holes come out in a curve by themselves...

_[O]___[O]_


Kinda thing but with some nice curves...~~

Laquer has to be put on VERY thinly, otherwise it'll run all over the place!, might help to keep the Copper warm before you spray it :) ...

Nice work though, keep it up!...

I'm working my ass off to get 15-20 blocks ready in a couple of weeks, I know it's not much but it's a start. I'm also talking to some people who may do part of thre finishing work (sanding) for me so I would be able to produce much more in a smaller ammount of time, because sanding is what takes most time. So far things are running smoothly.

I got a problem about measuring temperatures. The setup from benchtest.com I told you I made to measure the temps had too much fluctuation and I couldn't calibrate it because I couldn't think of any ways to provide 3 constant temps for calibrating the thermistors, one of them could be my reservoir once the temp is stabilized, I tried 0ºC as the low temp but the 50K thermistor went nuts, values fluctuating from top to bottom, also insulating the thermistors so they don't get wet (even using a finger from a silicone glove) will probably insulate some of the heat too so I had no success trying to calibrate it. I'm trying toi get my hands on a digidoc 5 but that damn thing is very expensive here. If you have any ideas to help me with this temp measurement stuff please post them or else I'll probably go crazy over this. I really want some accurate C/W numbers . :confused: :confused: :confused:

@MadDogMe: In the next batch, the one I plan on having by a couple of weeks there will be a place for the head of the screws, I already did one block like this and it looks much better. About the allen bolts, they're very unusual here in brazil so it would be hard to implement them.
That idea for the holes looks nice, Ã*t's hard to do something like that but I'll see if I can do it.

Thanks
Bruno Facca

I can't afford to be taking this long to calibrate some simple temp sensors so I ordered a Digidoc 5, it will take 14 days to arrive, just in time to test the 2nd batch.

Changes/new features in the final version will be:

- Thinner top to reduce weight, actually 4.75mm (strong enough and a lot lighter than the 6mm actual tops)

- 3 hose fittings instead of 2, the water will enter right above the core and exit by the other 2 hose fittings at the ends of the channels. Than should increase performance by *a lot* because the flow will be a lot faster (hot water will exit quickly) and the cold water hitting strongly (low flow restriction=strong flow) above the core will "rip off" the heat way better than just passing on top of it.

- Allen bolts instead of common bolts for the top

- Hose fittings in natural brass color (shiny). Besides looking good, the paint in the hose fittings is peeling off a little after putting and removing hoses several times.

- No lacquer (did I ever spelled this right?) on top of the painting because according to some tests I made it doesn't protect much the painting and it gives that ugly shine so the painting will not shine (no specular reflections). What's the name for this kind of painting in english?

- Holes in the top so the screw heads stay at the same level as the top surface, this is very simple and improves the look by a lot.

I think the performance for the final version will be great, I'm very anxious to test it!

I hope you remember (see beginning of the thread if you don't) I said the $15 price is for the 50 units (wich will probably cover the people from the forums) because my profit is very small at this price. It will probably go up to $20 or $22 after that.

Thanks
Bruno Facca

Satin or Matt, the shiney one is Gloss...

Go on Bruno!

I believe that all the work you’ve made for this block deserves more money. You could charge $30 or even more and it’s still going to be the cheapest block in the market. I don’t think you are going to loose customers with that kind of price.

First of all, disregard any additional spacing, my keyboard's space button is locking sometimes :).

People seem to dislike the 2 outlets idea. It's not that complicated, all you would have to do is use a Y connection after the block, after that you would have a single hose as usual. I think this modification could improve the block's performance by a few degrees celsius, maybe even more. I tought of making some with 2 and some with 3 hoise fittings but I already have the AMD version and the P4 vesrion, each one has 1/2 and 3/8 variety so that would be too much variety for me. I guess you will have to vote :).

Do you prefer:

1 inlet and 2 outlets with significantly improved performance (you would have to use a Y connector)

or

1 inlet and 1 outlet. More practical but inferior performance.

Or I can just wa it until I have some ready, make one of each, test, tell you the results and then you vote...

What you think?

@MadDogMe: Matt I think, thanks.

@nicozeg: At $22 my profit will be good, no need to be more expensive than that. Of course, if, with the new president, the dolar value starts to fall that would be a whole other story, but I think that's very unlikely because, I guess, the brazilian economy was never worst that it actually is.

Thanks
Bruno Facca

With your block design I think one entry (over the core) and two exits would give the best performance. Two exits into a ‘Y’ or a manifold would be easy to do.

There's something else I want your opinions about :
I tought about making the top in a more "live" color, like blue, a nice blue of course. What you think?
For the people who has cases of other colors, such as green or red, would a blue block be a problem because "it wouldn't match your case"?
This doesn't really matter for me but if I'm going to paint it anyway, I can use any color... Please give me some feedback on this.

Things are going smoothly in the production, I think I'll be able to have them ready in around 10 days.

@FuzzyFace: I believe so too. Once I get a couple of blocks ready I'll do some testing and post the results.

Thanks
Bruno Facca

Lexan/plexiglass as well maybe?, don't know how it'd look with gloop for a sealant though:shrug: ...

Bruno, I don't believe that there's any point in painting it any color, if you're not going to have a transparent version. The metalic look seems to be the most appropriate. Use a clear lacker on top of the metal.

As a marketing tip, black is often used to convey a high value. Since you're block isn't expensive, I'd go with white...

@MadDogMe: It would look nice but it would be too much work, also we don't have lexan here and plexiglass breaks too easily.

@bigben2k: I think it's nice to have some contrast, it also gives a more "industrial" look, when I see somethin that is all "raw" copper it looks like something homemade to me (unless it's all polished). Of course that's just my opinion but there's also another thing to be considered: It's faster to paint it than to give it a nice copper finnish.
And hey, just because it's cheap it doen't mean it can't look expensive :)

In case someone got the discussion in the half of it, we're only talking about the top here. The block will have the "brushed/shiny copper loook".

Thanks
Bruno

I'd do a few different/basic colours and let people choose,but matt black is my favorite!, all my madmax~esk motorbikes/scooters when I was younger were matt black...

Here's an idea I had (which you can use!): etch some decorative patterns on the exterior copper, THEN cover it with a lacquer.

The production proccess is excellent so far, I spent some more money (that I actually couldn't) to have some new pins I designed done in stainless steel for the model, these pins should make a big difference in performance. I also ordered some better casting gear so tha casting proccess goes smoother. Disconsidering the hole in my bank account I'm pretty happy about the resuts so far.

Ican't provide more than one color (I wish I could) because, if I made tops of 2 different colors, that would double the variety, I would have like 8 kinds of tops to have in stock here and that would drive me crazy.

@MadDogMe: I like black too. I'm between blue, gray and black.

@bigben2k: That would probably look very nice but it would take too much time.

Thanks
Bruno Facca

If it's got to be one colour, and if clear laquer is out because of cleaning solder, ect, then Black it is! :) ...

BRUNo............How much are you planning to sell em' for?