[deeppow]

ouikikazz,

I would guess you realize much of this but I'll start without assuming that. I use OC Joe top picture as a reference for now.

The top of the block represents the cpu and its mounting board (I might argue the board shouldn't be copper but lets not for now). The wings are the mounting lugs, not sufficient for some water blocks.

After that, the shape of the block is somewhat arbitrary but OC Joe has just made the basic block in the shape of the cpu board. Basically, the bigger the block the more stable (slow) your system. Down side of that is it takes a long time to change the blocks temperature.

Insulation is to minimize heat losses, the more insulation the better. Don't know how OC Joe calibrates his block for heat losses but there are straight forward procedures.

There should be a reasonable amount of flexibility in selecting heaters. Bigger heaters will of course allow fast heating of the block to a desired temperature. Heat supplied to the block must be more than the heat loss. Once at temp then less power to the heaters is required. You do need to consider electrical isolation of the heaters from the block, this is a consideration as you start trying to measure cpu temperatures using TC/thermistors.

That is a quick summary of the basics, I believe.

By the way, I don't build these things.