[Marco]

Just a few comments as I read along:

The block can also give a margin of safety, since it generally has a large mass of Copper it can act like a heat battery, and soak up heat if the flow is stopped.

Don't neglect the water content of the block in soaking heat!

Contrast their specific heat capacities (in J kg^-1 K^-1):
Copper: ~390
Water: ~4200

Next look at their densities (in kg m^-3):
Copper: ~8920
Water: ~1000

Since we are dealing with volumes, let's re-express the heat capacity in terms of energy per unit volume per unit temperature (in kJ m^-3 K^-1):
Copper: ~3479
Water: ~4200

As you can see water requires more energy per unit volume to bring about the same change in temperature. Since most modern blocks probably have by volume a similar amount of copper and water space, the water present is also significant in absorbing heat. I know this is nitpicking, but it's just for the record.

This will only work till the copper reaches its heat soak point when overall temps will start to increase very rapidly. ( the entire time frame for most blocks is no more than 5 - 60 seconds between a cut flow and a fried chip on high power CPU's.

Heat soak point? What is that?
Rapid rise in temperatures? The chip produces heat at a relatively steady rate. In fact, the rate of temperature increase should actually slow down as temperature increases as the difference in temperature between the block and the ambient increases, meaning heat is lost at a greater rate to the ambient. Since the heat capacity of the block does not change, the temperature of the block is only affected by absolute heat gain, which is the sum of heat inputs (only from chip in this case) minus sum of heat outputs (loss to environment). Heatsinks, having more surface area, reach a balance between the two at a lower temperature difference with the environment.
Furthermore I don't know if my chip counts as high-end any more, it's a TBird 1ghz. When run at 1.45@1.75v it could run half an hour before locking up at nearing 80 to 90c, but with no immediate damage. In fact it is running now at 1.54@2.10v. This is on a homemade cross-drilled block, with flow completely stopped (don't ask how this happened )

The Liquid that enters the block/evaporator is very compressed, and has a very low boiling point.

If anything the higher the pressure the higher the boiling point. the issue here is the pressure change. That's why what is a gas at standard temperature and pressure is liquefied under high pressure. It's the drop in pressure that causes it to boil off, taking with it its latent heat of fusion.

The Coolant in all cases has picked up ~90% of the heat from the heat source.

How do you arrive at the figure for this and parasitic heat loss? Are they guesstimates or calculation-backed?

heat in either liquid or gas form

Fine, nitpicking again, but I think this is stretching einstein's energy-mass relation a bit far...

In water cooling I would venture a guess that a good deal of heat is lost in the hoses, reservoir, and any places its in contact with a case side or something.

Sorry, nitpicking again, but didn't you previously estabish this as being 10% of heat from source?

Given that silicone and vinyl are not good heat conductors, they do carry some of the heat to the surface where it is dissipated in the air.

Ok, being even more anal now, picking on grammar. Wouldn't "although" make alot more sense than "given"?

So with that said the Radiator on a H2O rig moves a lot of the heat but has a much easier job of it since there is a much higher mass between it and the core to loose heat at different stages.

If so much heat is lost along the way, why do you need a radiator in the first place? If 10% is lost along the way, there is still 90% for the radiator to dissipate. It may be somewhat easier, but I think much is stretching it a bit far.

The water coming back from a radiator on a H2O rig really may not be much cooler than the incoming coolant into the radiator. This is a factor of how effective the radiator is for the volume/speed/type of coolant you are moving through it. Of course the closer to ambient the better.

I think it's important to note at this point that the difference in temperature across the radiator itself is going to be actually rather small. Water in the entire loop should ideally be at as similar a temperature at possible, as that is the temperature at which heat loss in the radiator(and along the way) exactly matches heat gain in the waterblock.

The condensers main operation is to cool the hot gas that was boiled up from the evaporator. Once the gas is cooled down it re-condenses into liquid, so the flow back to the evaporator is a cooler, and liquid form.

I think you are missing one component in discussing your phase-change system, the compressor. I understand that the article is about making the process as simple as possible to understand, but still this description presents a rather inaccurate picture.

You could try using an analogy where you compare the coolant to a sponge. In the compressor you "squeeze" the heat out of the spone, the condenser "dries up" this heat, allowing the coolant to "soak in" the heat from the heat source.

Haha. Reading on I see that Brian uses exactly this analogy

Side note- pH, love how you integrated environmental chem into the bong discussion

Pump: Pumps dont mind warm coolant, and introduce a few watts of heat themselves to the coolant, so its good to have it BEFORE the heat exchanger.

This is a point I always like to contend. Its not that water will suddenly jump a few degrees between before and after the pump. It's that the pump adds another heat source to the water, raising the temperature the water has to be at to dissipate the heat. I lay before you a challenge, measure the water temperature before and after your pump. Is it even perceivably different? I'll venture as far as saying no.
What does this mean? It doesn't really matter where the pump is, the deltaT across it is negligible. It's not a sudden rise in temperature across it, it's the added heat that it contributes that raises the equilibrium temperature. This implies that the pump can pretty much go anywhere.

The rule of thumb is to keep the line delivering the cooled coolant to the WaterBlock as short, direct, and away from hot objects as much as possible.

Back to the point above about relatively stable temperatures in the entire cooling system given normal flow rates (read eheim/danner/etc. as opposed to senfu). If you can experimentally prove otherwise I will withdraw my statements and do your laundry for a week.



Well that's it. Sorry if some of my points above sound a bit nitpicky, just trying to throw up some ideas for constructive discussion. Please don't take this personally, it isn't meant to be personal!

Overall it just seems to me that the overview is a bit confused, the specific articles are solid and well-written. Will serve as an outstanding primer for newbies.

Thumbs up on an excellent job!