I've been thinking of building a hybrid cpu cooler by drilling into the heaptipes of a cheap air cooler and using a cheap $3 pump off eBay for better cpu cooling.
Has anyone tried anything like this before? Any advice before I start ordering things in?
The cooler will be something like pic related, the water will pass through the copper heatpipes.
http://s.aliexpress.com/6zERriYR
Still looking at heatsinks for the cpu, so far it looks like I can save around 10 dollars by ordering from China
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=221809121186&alt=web
That's the pump. Going to hook it up to the computer psu.
A little more than $3 but whatever.
Overall it should cost around 20 dollars, including the hoses, since I have a mate who does water filters and shit who's willing to help me out with that.
>>970820
You do realize that this is bound to leak everywhere, right?
>>970840
Not if I seal the joints properly
Linus tech tips had a budget water cooler video, Linus used a pump like >>970832 iirc.
Should work fine, but he uses a bunch of copper pipes instead of an prexisting heatsink.
Personally I like ops idea more.
>>970820
I think that there are clc units that are cheaper than your idea.
>>970858
Firstly
>no there isn't
Secondly
>where's your sense of fun and adventure?
I think using both would be defeating the purpose of liquid cooling, ie. dumping the heat outside the case, not inside
either use an air cooler, evaporative cooler, or liquid cooler...one, not all
>>970820
Uhh, friend? Those are solid copper. Also, even assuming that they aren't, the bottom where the copper makes contact is always flattened for maximum heat transfer.
Retard.
>>970820
I don't think this will work out well.
All in Ones (AIO) or Closed Loop Coolers (CLC) aren't much more expensive than $20 and have a non existent chance of leaking.
Not to mention, I don't see what your plan for a radiator is. You can't just cycle the water through a heatsink and expect it to cool any better than the fucking original heatsink.
There are some things you don't diy.
Hell theres a used H100 on amazon for $60, http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0051U7HMS/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used
that'll give you 100x better performance than anything you can niggercobble together.
>But muh learning and experience.
You can screw dogshit sculptures, and I guess learn something, it's still stupid fucking shit.
>>970871
>solid copper
They're actually not.
Do it OP be sure to use tap water too.
Please destroy your computer, we don't need anymore retards here.
>>970820
As long as your pump can support it. An increase in any surface area is going to increase your heat transfer its basic science!
>>970880
I also have a laptop, tablet, and 2 smartphones :D
>>970820
I actually think this is a pretty cool idea, why is it getting so much hate?
The radiator will be the cpu cooler, plus you can rig up another small radiator on the outside for extra cooling effect
I think i read somewhere that there is a special gas in heatpipes which transfers heat more easily than air. Might want to look into that friend.
>>970820
You should probably look up exactly how heatpipes work. This would be a downgrade. They're technically better than water, but, unlike water, they don't work well over arbitrary lengths of tube.
The advantage of water is that you can dump the heat outside the case with an arbitrarily large heatsink. You can also shape the heatsink such that there's much more area in contact with the working fluid. You can't do either of these things with what you're planning.
>>970972
Yeah but what if op uses a fishtank. That much water wouldn't heat up easily from just a cpu so it'll be pretty decent for cooling.
I am not an expert, but i think this is a very clever idea
I think being able to pull excess heat from the heatsinks could result in better cooling on the cpu
I am really interested in seeing this tested
>>971007
On second though it may have been a gas? I'm not sure but I dont think it turned out well since I havent heard anything in the past 6 months about it. Still its worth a try! Especially at such a low investment price for a makeshift prototype.
There was a fad a few years back - not sure if it is still a thing - for heat pipes to be manufactured with a coolant fluid inside, which was circulated by the temperature differential betwen areas of the pipes. Hence why heat pipes look lile theyre soldered shut at the ends.
>>971007
Op here. If I ever get around to it I'll definitely report back to diy.
>>970820
Sounds kinda pointless to me.
a heatpipe setup is not the same thing as a circulated-coolant system, and can't easily be modified to act like one.
>>970820
So essentially your going to run liquid through the pipes for liquid cooling. And drill a fan on it right?
>>971027
yeah thats called natural circulation. its based on the principle that in a vertical pipe cold water weighs more than warm water (difference in mass, causes difference in pressure) and is used in powerplants
>>970820
Why not just pick up a CPU water block? Then DIY the pump, hoses and radiator.
>>970820
>for better cpu cooling.
Heatpipes use a phase-changing refrigerant. You're not going to get better cooling by replacing that with water.
>>971027
>a fad a few years back - not sure if it is still a thing
Oh, for god's sake, stop talking.
>Hey, I don't know shit about this topic, but golly, I'm going to help out anyway.
>>970871
>solid copper
>my sides
>>971108
Pretty sure he will.
Until the water heats up that is.
>>970972
while the thermal performance of water would be lower than that of the standard coolant inside the heatpipe, the fact that op can use the pump to force faster circulation than what is natural inside a sealed heatpipe might actually make his idea work.
I guess it's worth trying
>>971030 please do, I want to know if it actually works
>>971109
You're right. Only experts and masters should post on /diy/, not amateurs like the board was intended for.
>>971076
Probably not /diy/ enough.
I think op is in it more for the adventure and curiosity.
>>971027
You're almost correct about how heatpipes work, but wrong about it being a 'fad'.
All heatpipes transfer heat by means of a fluid changing phase. Condensed liquid is returned to the hot end sometimes by gravity, but more often by capillary action. That is what a heatpipe is.
This makes heatpipes much better at conducting heat (in one direction) than a solid piece of metal the same diameter. They're not good at radiating heat though, only conducting it, which is why heatsinks use heatpipes to transfer heat to the fins, instead of being constructed entirely from heatpipes.
Cutting the pipes open and running water though them would drastically reduce performance of the heatsink, since the phase change transfers heat a lot faster than a circulating fluid.
OP should look up what heat pipes actually are before they try to improve on them. If you want to make a hybrid cooler, you can solder a waterblock to the top of the heatsink fins.
>>971237
But the heatpipes are directly in contact with the cpu.
>>971246
Yes... and?
>>971237
Ah. Assumed it a fad since it was in a pile of marketing crap i leafed through extolling the virtues of a breakthrough in heatpipe technology blah blah thermal transfer yada yada just like liquid cooling. Just assumed modern ones had quietly shifted to something /better/ than the overblown hype in the marketing.
>>971250
You're missing the point entirely.
>>971279
If you pump water through the heatpipes then you just have an inefficient waterblock with a tiny radiator attached to it.
I'm not sure what point I'm missing, but I seem to be missing it.
>>971284
Nah that's exactly the point. The radiator is the cpu block and with cool water running through it + 2 fans in push/pull it'll be a pretty powerful cooling system.
Plus if the water starts getting warm just drop a couple of ice cubes in there
>>971047
>Heatpipes are mostly hollow, I don't see why it wouldn't work
It would work, but not very well. The "wick" layer is the problem - it is not designed for circulating liquid coolant; it's designed as a nucleation point for a stagnant, saturated coolant to evaporate and condense in. So when you try and shoehorn this heat transfer device into a forced-convective application, by pumping water through it, you still have this thick, stagnant layer of water within the wick that is effectively insulating the warm copper surface of the heat pipe from the free-flowing cold water in the center of it.
Will it cool more effectively than an ordinary heat pipe? Maybe. But it will be substantially less effective than a simple thin-walled copper pipe.
Not to mention the whole issue of fouling. As if an insulating layer of stagnant water weren't bad enough, imagine what will happen when that copper wick starts to corrode and calcify.
>>971322
But wouldn't the pump force a constant flow of water?
>>971187
Just drop a couple of ice cubes into the water reservoir?
>>971717
Yeah, but the cool water will just follow the path of least resistance through the center of the heat pipe, while the warm water retained within the wick remains mostly undisturbed by this passing flow. If you either removed the wick entirely, or packed the core of the heat pipe full of obstructive material to force the water to flow through the wick part instead, then you could probably achieve a substantial improvement in heat transfer (though in the latter case, with a greater head loss and pump effort required).
Now, if you were building your own refrigerator cycle to cool the CPU below ambient, THAT would benefit from an evaporative heat exchanger like a heatpipe. But not a simple liquid-phase heat exchanger.
>>970820
your heat pipes dont have this. you need this. you need the surface area. why is it impossible to get a heat block if you are willing to shill for all the other components?
>>970820
On a realted note, Is the medium inside heatpipes dangerous? How would one dipose it?
>>971905
Would running water through it for a while remove the wick? Or running acid through it?
Also thanks for being one of the few posters who raise legitimate concerns to the concept and aren't a dick about it.
>>971923
>Would running water through it for a while remove the wick?
No. Not at anything less than pressure wash levels, anyways (if even that).
>Or running acid through it?
Seems risky, but I suppose it could work. Just bear in mind that your etchant will attack the walls as well.
But frankly, I really don't think it's worth bothering with a heat pipe in the first place. Seems more reasonable to me to just buy some thin-walled tubing stock and mash it flat, or even just some copper sheet and make your own simple water block.
>>971910
Fancy, but is it really that important? You don't generally see cooling fins inside the coolant passages of a car engine. Seems to me that, unlike with air, water itself might convect better than the metal fins could conduct, or nearly so.
Then again, I guess engines are usually cast out of alloys that don't really conduct as well as copper does. Maybe I should run through an actual forced-convection problem in the morning and see how things actually stack up. Who knows, it might actually be worth leaving the wick in there to act as a heatsink (and blocking the center to force water to flow through it, as mentioned above of course).
>>971931
car engines actually do have cooling fins. but not in the way you are thinking. they have a sand cast finish which increases turbulence and increases the surface area. the primary purpose of the cooling system in a water cooled internal combustion engine is to prevent different parts of the massive 300kg of steel they're made of from expanding at different rates. because the top of the cylinder experiences more heat than the bottom of the cylinder. because the head is now made of light weight aluminium while the block can still be made of steel. if the combustion tight metal to metal seals fail due to warp then it wont work. the surfaces are machined down to 0.001" tolerances so that they will form a seal.
the biggest challenge in an engine is wicking away the extreme differences in heat production. sure beyond a certain point the cylinders will expand and weld the pistons but when you want an engine to run for 30 years or more without major internal work you're looking at building it to be as solid as possible.
the engine engine acts as a heat sink. all ~300kg of steel that it is made of. the coolant wicks away that heat and disipates it through the radiator. the differentials in coolant and block temperature also make a huge difference. ever touched an exhaust manifold on a running engine?
now compare this to a tiny 100g plate of copper sealed with elastic rubber that doesnt need to handle extreme temperatures and its not really the same thing. also, you're trying to keep a temperature differential as low as possible with the actual CPU die. in a car it doesnt matter if a part of the engine is 100 degrees hotter than another part. the top of a piston can get above 200C while the coolant stays around 80C. there's also an oil cooler interface. oil cools and lubricates.
>>971931
or here's an example of a diesel fuel heat exchanger.
>>971940
>300kg steel
>>971931
What if I buy a couple of copper pipes and solder them to my cpu?
>>971975
A good cpu cooler isn't expensive. You can pick up a gammax 300 for around 10-15 dollars in the states iirc.
>>971940
>engine block
>steel
This isn't 1920.
And the finish isn't there to "increase turbulence". The effect of the actual engine being in contact with the air is almost nothing compared to the radiator. The cast finish is left because removing it would cost money and there's no reason to do so.
>>971931
>Fancy, but is it really that important?
Yes. Laminar flow is the enemy of effective heat transfer in a liquid cooling system. Fins create turbulence and come with additional surface area, free of charge.
>You don't generally see cooling fins inside the coolant passages of a car engine.
Because it's nowhere near as critical. It doesn't matter that the temperature difference between the engine and ambient, just that the engine remains within normal operating temperature. Strictly speaking, extremely good cooling would cause problems with warping from thermal expansion being much less significant near coolant channels.
That's not the case with a CPU. Ricerfags want the path from die to working liquid to be as free from thermal resistance as possible, which means copper blocks (I'm surprised nobody makes one out of solid silver, DESU), fin/pin grids, engineered flow of coolant...the works.
>>972232
whatever, i call any iron alloy steel.
yah but having that rough finish does increase turbulence and surface area inside the cooling jacket. that's why I compared it to cooling fins in a heat exchanger. you're not going to find people polishing their cooling jackets.
>>971923
acid will melt the copper too == pinhole leaks
>>971975
>he thinks solid copper is better than based AS FUCK Vapor Chambers
wew lad
