Ultimate home made water block (in steps)
 

Hi
First of all I wanna wish every one HAPPY NEW YEAR.
Today I was in so very good mood that I decided to make WB that would be better than most of the CNC machined ones. So this is a small tutorial of how I made it.
1. Little acad drawing of chanell with all positions of where I was gonna drill.
2. I took 1:1 print and glued it to piece of Cu.
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimate/sketch.JPG
Soory for blurry pic. then I punched points in block (51x60x15mm) for holes.
3. Here I finnished drilling. I used 6mm drilling bit (check the top of the bit) and drilled 11mm deep
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimate/f%20drilling.JPG
4. Next and the hardest part of machinnig was milling the chanells.
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimate/milling.JPG
I used HAC (human analog controll) mill. I changed the bit with 5mm milling one and start milling in 2mm steps. On this pic I finnished my first 2mm step
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimate/mill1.JPG
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimate/mill2.JPG
I was pretty satsfied with finnished result, here:
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimat...hed%20mill.JPG
5. Then I made the top and cut two pieces of 14mm Cu pipe for connections.
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimat...0soldering.JPG
6. I place the top on the base and start soldering everything.
7. Grinding and lapping everything.
And here is the finnished product.
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimate/base%20fin.JPG
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimate/finished%201.JPG
http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/Ultimate/finished.JPG

It took me 4h to make this WB.

seriously nice

I saw it on [H] earlier today, the only questions I have are:

how is it mounted? ( I presume through the 4 mobo holes and through those 4 holes on the top plate)
can it handle 2x 40mm pelts? (with an extra cold plate of course)
how much copper is there at the bottom of the channels? like from water to cpu core.
do you think flow through the two channels will be about the same? I think that the inner channel will get much more water.

damned nice work there man

Thanks, yes WB is mounted through 4 holes on the top , it can't handle two TEC because it's not big enough (60*50mm) , the base is 3.5mm thick, and the flow is very good in both channels (I made plexy top with connections and visualy check the flow )

ok, cool, do you think it would be possible to remove some of that solder to make it look better, or not really?

Yes, of course it would, but my dremel is in the service, so I couldn't finished those tiny details.

ok cool.

do you have any plans for a coldplate and pelt arrangement?

I made this wb for myself, and I don't run TECs anymore, but if someone ask me make him custom one, I could do it ,with cold plate screwed to the base (for 1 up to 50x50 TEC) and what ever wish.
But I don't know what price to ask for that kind of hand home made work,around 60$, definetly not cheap, but no CNC machine can make that kind of random surface, which is so good for heat transfer.

For my serial block, I'll focus on my own spiral design http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/spiralni%20blok%20top.JPG
I talked to my friend who machined this wb, and he'll make all the modification that the first prototype lacks, also will make Cu version. And yes this wb could take two 40*40 TECs with cold plate screwed to base.