As BillA pointed out, I've tried to incorporate the best of the best into one block, and finding out that it may not be possible to have everything.
In any rig, there is certainly a limit to the cooling ability, and it is dictated mostly by the "gradients" that BillA previously mentionned. In short, for as long as there is any kind of material between the heat source and the cooling fluid, there will be a difference in temperature, but more importantly there will be a hot side and a cold side to the baseplate. The baseplate is what really defines the limitations of the temp (along with the TIM joint, of course).
One thing that Radius does well is optimize the flow speed for the hot spot (over the core). You just can't get better than that (jet inpingement excluded). The baseplate is at a minimal thickness (2mm, which may be reduced to 1mm), which is just about optimal for the fin pattern, but not necessarily the thinnest of all design, and that's one of the limitations of Radius: White Water has continuous fins, where most of Radius' fins are "broken", for flow reasons.
I've specified that the baseplate will also have tiny holes over it, about the size of a 1 mm drill bit head, similar to the drill-press blocks and the Swiftech unit: it increases the surface area.
One thing that is unique, is the seperating res. Many people have thought about making something like it, but I've never seen one. It's advantaged by minimal restrictions, but disadvantaged by it's enormous size.
As for the pump heat, the motor is isolated (direct-drive of a magnet assembly), so that's not an issue (except that it will need a good vent). The pumping heat is still somewhat nebulous to me, as I'm finding out that there's heat from the propeller, as well as from the restrictions throughout the loop, which means that the nozzle at the entrance of the block will generate heat, but it should be relatively small compared to the heat that it will take away.
In any case, I am trying to achieve a Reynolds number (a dimensionless number indicating wether the flow is laminar or turbulent) in excess of 4000, which corresponds with turbulent flow, which is needed for the extra cooling ability. Of course I would need to optimize the flow and block so that the flow is turbulent only in the critical area: over the core. So far, it looks like my pump can't achieve that on its own, and so turbulators will have to compensate for what the pump can't do. Also, as has been pointed out earlier, it's far more efficient to add turbulators, than to use a very powerfull pump.
I'll be trying out a CFD program, to see if I can graph the flow within Radius. It should at least help me optimize the outlet for a balanced flow.
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