Radiator idea
 

I got a radiator idea and thought I pass it on to others. My idea consist of a 2" copper pipe capped on both ends. Cut in half length wise so you end up with to halves for bottom and top. Then cut another cap in half to fit in the top half three quaters of the length.

Now you need to copper plates the same length as the 2"copper pipe. 2.25 inches wide. Then as many copper pipes you can get ahold of that have a inside diameter of .25". The walls need to be thick enough so you can cut a thread on them their full length using a die. Now space as many pipes you can the length and width of the of the copper plates. Drill the holes in the copper plates. Just make the holes so their in a alternating pattern so that you end up with holes that are in a cris-cros pattern - taking advantage of all the space. Inside each pipe will be a 12g copper wire that's spiralled to fit inside the pipes to and turblance. Then just solder everything together.

I was thinking the threads would act as surface area just like fins would in a normal rad. Just like swiftech uses those threaded pins on their heatsink. This would let more cfm through to take full advantage of the normal axial fans we use alot better. The copper spiral 12 gauge wire for turbulance. You would probably get a better flow rate and less pressure drop than a normal rad.

What do you hardcore cooling folks think?

Got any paint pics or renderings of your idea?

Sounds plausable, but a LOT of work when you can buy a copper core radiator (heater core) for about $35 US.

I don't think your efficiency would go up much either.

There are others here that could probably give you numbers on that.

Money wise it's not cheap. I would probably spend atleast $35- $50 and then the tedious work. If it could get better performance than a heater core it might be worth it. Then again you probably wouldn't see the performance unless it was a higher than normal heat load.

Radiators are very rarely copper-cored. They are usually very thin brass, with copper fins. Brass is stronger and so can be thinner, and in cars, strong is good.

Why is more air flow good in this case? A single copper pipe with bare space on each side flows a heap of air. Air flow is only good when the air is working to cool....

Similarly, thick copper pipes require a delta-T to get the heat to flow through them into the air....

IMHO not a good idea... The critical function on a rad is surface area between the coolant and the airflow with as little metal interfering between them as possible. From all that I have seen there is nothing in the way of design that competes effectively with an automotive heater core type design, especially at the Delta T's that we are dealing with. If you want low flow resistance, use a single pass core such as the 2-342.

Creativity is good, and so is the willingness to go through a lot of work, but I think you might do better to work on a part of the system that will give you a better reward for your efforts (perhaps a really super block, though it will be hard to beat the Cascade or WW designs)

Gooserider

Back to the topic. I'd say that a rad like that would be really more work than it's worth, when like SYSCrusher said, you can pick up a heatercore for 30-35 bucks. If you want more surface area, cut the radiator off a refrigerator. Wait a minute, that sounds like an idea I can use.

Hey gooserider, this is off topic, but stay away from the IBM SCSI HDDs. I had four die at work, all within a year. They were all replaced by warranty, but the Seagates run forever. Just a little piece of friendly advice.

Not sure the reefer rad would work well - those are designed for very high DeltaT's w/ a different medium - The ones I saw all had very long small diameter tubes (High coolant flow resistance) with big gaps between the pipes, and widely spaced fins. (Good for airflow, but bad in terms of minimizing the thermal conduction distance. If I were going for big cooling area, I'd stay in the automotive world, skip the heater core, and go for a full size radiator. It would have really good coolant / air exchange surface, low coolant flow resistance, and about the same airflow resistance as a heatercore - presumably one would put either an electric automotive rad fan on it, or a bunch of 120mm's.
Normally I agree, I've been a Seagate user since my first 251-1 years ago. (and they were the brand of choice at my former employer where we were using them in "five nines" grade high reliability systems) However I just purchased a bunch of 9GB SCSI drives at a really good price, and the lot included a couple of IBM Ultrastar units - haven't tested them yet as I need a couple of SCA-80pin adapters... Will keep your comment in mind however, and not use them for anything critical.

Gooserider