AM4 Offset heatpipe cooler?

pillagenburn

pillagenburn

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Looking for an offset heatpipe cooler for my AM4 SFF build..... something that looks like the pic below but is inexpensive - anyone know of anything? or could anything be modded to do it?

1653603150673.png
 
nope, nope, nope and nope. years ago there were a few like that, sorta, but not inexpensive. you want something so specialized, youre gonna pay for it.
 
pendragon1 said:
nope, nope, nope and nope. years ago there were a few like that, sorta, but not inexpensive. you want something so specialized, youre gonna pay for it.
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I'm going to take a cheap cooler that looks similar-ish to this, pin it in a vise and bend it to the appropriate angle.

1653617496090.png
 
pendragon1 said:
i was going to suggest doing that to a C14 but price... that might work for a low/mid tier chip though.
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The other benefit here is that having the pipes pointing vertically (in my use-case) may actually increase cooling capacity of the cooler. These crappy 4 and 5-pipe coolers are all over ebay from $25-35.
 
for an idea of what I'm doing - I'm doing something simliar to this guy:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/e8f3b0/125l_3700x_micro_atx_sff_build_inwin_bk623_gtx/

Only I've mounted a full ATX motherboard in it (Asus x570 TUF somethingerother)

I've got a Mellanox 10gb card, 4-port gbe nic, 3900x and 64GB RAM running headless right now. Will be putting a quad nvme card with samsung PM9a1 SSD's in it running RAID-0 and one of these when/if I can afford it:

https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=267

Oh, in place of the SFX power supply I have a $25 400-watt flex-atx power supply out of a Hyve Zeus. I'm looking at a possible hot-swappable 1u power supply setup that may allow me to still use the lower PCI-E slot and fit nicely.
 
Oof, at 120mm, you might be able to squeeze an 80mm tower cooler in there...92mm at most. Are you planning to use that same case? Does it have a vent above the CPU? If so, a phat noctua l9 cooler (or similar) might be more suitable.
 
Nobu said:
Oof, at 120mm, you might be able to squeeze an 80mm tower cooler in there...92mm at most. Are you planning to use that same case? Does it have a vent above the CPU? If so, a phat noctua l9 cooler (or similar) might be more suitable.
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most of the cheap crappy ones are 92mm or less so that is what I will be using. I may have to angle it a bit to accommodate the length (which should be fine). The reason for this is so that I can get the 5.25" bay filled properly.

I might be able to get a redundant power setup from a HP DL320 g6 (or similar delta PSU)... which would be awesome.
 
pillagenburn said:
most of the cheap crappy ones are 92mm or less so that is what I will be using. I may have to angle it a bit to accommodate the length (which should be fine). The reason for this is so that I can get the 5.25" bay filled properly.

I might be able to get a redundant power setup from a HP DL320 g6 (or similar delta PSU)... which would be awesome.
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I looked at the product page a minute ago, and it says 71mm max height on the CPU cooler. You might be able to get a taller one in if you remove the shroud, though. The Noctua L9x65 would be just a bit short with the included fan. Just about any tower cooler will be too tall without modification.
 
Nobu said:
I looked at the product page a minute ago, and it says 71mm max height on the CPU cooler. You might be able to get a taller one in if you remove the shroud, though. The Noctua L9x65 would be just a bit short with the included fan. Just about any tower cooler will be too tall without modification.
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the shroud is looooooong gone.
 
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pillagenburn said:
the shroud is looooooong gone.
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So you have it already? What kind of height are we looking at with it removed? I'll look around and see if I can find anything promising. What I'm seeing from most pancake coolers is about 100mm minimum finstack width/height, which means at least that tall when bent upward, but there may be better options I haven't found yet.
 
Nobu said:
So you have it already? What kind of height are we looking at with it removed? I'll look around and see if I can find anything promising. What I'm seeing from most pancake coolers is about 100mm minimum finstack width/height, which means at least that tall when bent upward, but there may be better options I haven't found yet.
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I'm seeing roughly 140mm from the motherboard to the top of the case, so figure 130-135mm of available height from the top of the motherboard. Rough measurement.
 
I think it's going to be close - the board I have has VRM heatsinks right next to the CPU socket so the bend will have to be pretty aggressive. I'd way prefer that this thing bend straight up but if it has to be cocked off at an angle that would work too.

I'm going to look for one that has the smallest pipe-bend radius and the shortest fin-stack. It's going to have to be tight.
 
this is the best I've found so far but I'm going to keep looking.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325184993976

edit: the primary objective is to get it out of the way of the path of the 5.25" bay. The close-secondary objective is to improve the cooling capacity/capability of the case.

If all else fails I could remove a section of fins from the top and bend the pipe to accommodate (I have a pipe bender that will work with this diameter of pipe). I could epoxy or attach an aluminum heat-spreader plate at the top and use thermal pad on the top of the case. should be easy to do.

On another tinkering project I did, I made a custom heatpipe using copper Home Depot refrigerator tubing and acetone. I boiled the acetone, sealed the pipe and then used that heatpipe to transfer heat outside of the chassis to a waterblock. This was on a dual CPU board and the pipe ran across both CPU's.

It worked well for basically being a bunch of junk from home depot.
 
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Nobu said:
So you have it already? What kind of height are we looking at with it removed? I'll look around and see if I can find anything promising. What I'm seeing from most pancake coolers is about 100mm minimum finstack width/height, which means at least that tall when bent upward, but there may be better options I haven't found yet.
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ordered the cooler. We'll see how it goes. This one is especially tight, so I'll probably err on the side of using a wedge (small section of angle steel) and a mallet and punch to work the two apart. It's soft copper so it shouldn't split, but like with any metal you don't want to work it too much or you'll get pinholes or cracks. I'll put it pipe-down on a soft surface (carpet), insert the wedge and tap gently until I get it wide enough to hopefully work by hand.

Once it's together I'll take pictures so you can see how insane this thing is..... the ATX board basically fills out the whole case with a few cm left on the front... and full-height slots. You can fit a RX480-sized card in this thing if you look at the reddit post. The ATX form factor helps because of the additional PCI-E or m.2 slots. I imagine you could get a more expensive board that's loaded with m.2 slots or even a threadripper or Epyc.

This case cost me $55 shipped.............. If I can work a 1u redundant power supply in without much modification then this will (IMO) be the best SFF case out there period.
 
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The only problem with bending heatpipes is that, just like tubing, they tend to kink.

If you get a kink or even just a spot where the tube collapses in on itself a little bit, you can kiss the functionality of that tube goodbye.

Bending also messes with the calculated internal vacuum so too much bend and the heatpipe won't work properly.
 
Also the insides of the pipes often have a semi porous ish coating in them. If it’s breaks apart when bent, it could really change how effective the cooler is.
 
I think you should just get a Big Shuriken 3 Rev. B. that will undoubtedly work better than using a cheap half broken heatsink.

3900x run hot (why choose a 3900x for this setup?). Then try undervolting the 3900x. or restrict the 3900x power usage or just set it to throttle at 85c or something.
 
chameleoneel said:
I think you should just get a Big Shuriken 3 Rev. B. that will undoubtedly work better than using a cheap half broken heatsink.

3900x run hot (why choose a 3900x for this setup?). Then try undervolting the 3900x. or restrict the 3900x power usage or just set it to throttle at 85c or something.
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Throttling does work pretty well with my 5600g, and I don't loose much perf.
 
jmilcher said:
Also the insides of the pipes often have a semi porous ish coating in them. If it’s breaks apart when bent, it could really change how effective the cooler is.
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I believe this has to do with the wicking mechanism for when the pipes are installed in sub-optimal orientations (i.e. upside-down, horizontally etc). My use-case will have these running vertically so this should be optimal
 
chameleoneel said:
I think you should just get a Big Shuriken 3 Rev. B. that will undoubtedly work better than using a cheap half broken heatsink.

3900x run hot (why choose a 3900x for this setup?). Then try undervolting the 3900x. or restrict the 3900x power usage or just set it to throttle at 85c or something.
Click to expand...

this is an ESXi box running multiple servers... and I had it laying around. No overheating currently.

The big shuriken 3 rev. B is too tall and too big - it will interfere with the 5.25 bay which is what I'm trying to avoid.
 
I have a Noctua D9L on one of my AM4 CPUs that does ok. It's only 110mm tall and would probably work fine if you limited the TDP of the CPU.

Although it sounds like you want something to bend around where the 5.25 bay is. Hard to visualize. Do you have the same case as the reddit thread you posted? Maybe you could find something like an old HSF out of a Shuttle XPC box?
 
Pics would definitely help. I have a feeling that there may be a cooler from a Dell that might be made to work.
 
Does the stuff you are putting in the drive bay totally cover the CPU socket, or does it just slightly interfere or what?
 
picture taking is not my specialty, but this is what I'm working with....
 

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cyclone3d said:
What about this:
https://bleepbox.com/product/alpenf...d-92mm-single-fan-cpu-air-cooler-84000000156/View attachment 477720

Or this - not sure of the mount of this one as it doesn't specify AM4. It also comes in a black varient.
https://www.frozencpu.com/products/...ooler_LGA_775_115x_1366_2011_AM2_AM2_AM3.html
View attachment 477726
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Both too big. Ideally this would be a 5 or 6 pipe cooler that runs to the back exhaust port on the case... So if you took that second cooler and chopped the horizontal side of the pipes off that would be more like what im after
 
pillagenburn said:
Id rather not watercool. I want something i dont have to ever think about.
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What is your concern about using an AIO? It's far less involved than custom water cooling, and it seems like much less of a risk than trying to fit in a tower cooler that you'd have to modify and risk damaging.
Is it the possibility of leaks you'd be worried about? Or something else perhaps?
 
JonCZ said:
What is your concern about using an AIO? It's far less involved than custom water cooling, and it seems like much less of a risk than trying to fit in a tower cooler that you'd have to modify and risk damaging.
Is it the possibility of leaks you'd be worried about? Or something else perhaps?
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Im worried about leaks; its a peace of mind thing.
 
pillagenburn said:
Im worried about leaks; its a peace of mind thing.
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The quality of AIOs today have increased so much over years past, and leaks are extremely rare. Plus many of them are filled with non-conductive cooling so in the event of a leak, they'll make a bit of a mess but won't short out your components and destroy them. I would do some research and give them consideration to maybe dispel your worries. Just my two cents.
 
JonCZ said:
The quality of AIOs today have increased so much over years past, and leaks are extremely rare. Plus many of them are filled with non-conductive cooling so in the event of a leak, they'll make a bit of a mess but won't short out your components and destroy them. I would do some research and give them consideration to maybe dispel your worries. Just my two cents.
Click to expand...

Ill look into this thanks for the heads up on non-conductive fluid. Likely some oil based concoction which i tend to think would be harder on the pump but i dunno.
 
pillagenburn said:
Both too big. Ideally this would be a 5 or 6 pipe cooler that runs to the back exhaust port on the case... So if you took that second cooler and chopped the horizontal side of the pipes off that would be more like what im after
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How much space do you have between the board and the drive bay? The first one I linked is pretty much the lowest profile cooler available.
 
cyclone3d said:
How much space do you have between the board and the drive bay? The first one I linked is pretty much the lowest profile cooler available.
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the space is roughly the size of a factory AMD wraith cooler base heatsink (i.e. without the fan and shroud) I can't measure it right now because I'm in the middle of doing something really important with it lol.
 
pillagenburn said:
the space is roughly the size of a factory AMD wraith cooler base heatsink (i.e. without the fan and shroud) I can't measure it right now because I'm in the middle of doing something really important with it lol.
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Pillage would it be easier to remove the 5 1/2 bay and reroute it instead of cobbling a cpu cooler? Just asking because the case screams modification worthy. :)
 
What about using a slim optical drive? That would free up almost all the 5.25" bay space.
 
pillagenburn said:
the space is roughly the size of a factory AMD wraith cooler base heatsink (i.e. without the fan and shroud) I can't measure it right now because I'm in the middle of doing something really important with it lol.
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Are you 100% sure the first one I linked to won't work?
 
I might add if you need an optical drive for occasional use but not frequently, get an external one. I used an external drive with my SFF build years ago and it was wonderful.
 
JonCZ said:
I might add if you need an optical drive for occasional use but not frequently, get an external one. I used an external drive with my SFF build years ago and it was wonderful.
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cyclone3d said:
What about using a slim optical drive? That would free up almost all the 5.25" bay space.
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So i dont need the 5.25 drive bay for an optical drive. I need the 5.25 bay to mount one of these:

1653794194259.png


Also, using a top-down style of cooler, even super low-profile, will likely see the bottom of this thing ^ as an obstruction to air flow and the RAM would probably end up baking under heavy load.
 
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