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Custom designing/building waterblock

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Gawd
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Oct 23, 2003
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Hello all, in the Socket A days I did some watercooling and explored machining blocks instead of using commercial ones. Got a general understanding of the styles of blocks, the materials used, and some of the design process needed.

I have access to a 4-axis CNC milling machine, CNC slantbed lathe, bridgeport and any expected tooling, maybe some other machine tools as well. This is as a result of being an engineering student at my university. These are available and are not leased for outside work, giving students full access and the time to get things done. Access to the software to design the blocks, detail for the CNC process, and may also be some thermal simulation software here as well.

I was curious if there is information available concerning modern block machining, card layouts and technical drawings, solidworks models of cards, and related details.
 
It would be a cool project for sure... but I doubt you'd do much, if any, better than a fully engineered/designed commercial unit that has hundreds of hours of work, not to mention, thousands of dollars poured into R&D.

You should be able to find mounting bolt patterns for most GPU heatsink's around the net with a google search. I would suggest, as a design engineer myself, picking up a GPU and test system that you don't mind losing in case of a failure... and also pick up a few 3rd party water blocks, open them up, and see what they're all doing and try to improve upon the design. It will also give you a good baseline to test your design against.
 
I didn't say I'm looking to upset the professionals, but rather that I have the chance to build my own sundae.

That is a good strategy to inspect other's blocks for recognizing great engineering in place. Mounting holes should be detailed out there somewhere as well, but more importantly would be things like component dimensions. I do consider taking some calipers and getting the details off a card of my own but sure would save a lot of the small work to have the data sheets.
 
yeah, you're probably OK just measuring with calipers. However, realistically, if this is a 'one off' design, you could probably do whatever you want as far as height, size, etc goes.

As far as components, are you planning on cooling the memory as well? I doubt you'd have to worry much about hitting other components on the card (if you're only doing the GPU itself), as long as the block isn't crazy huge.
 
Anyone finding the thread should know my dreams were promptly sent to the dumpster. Machining access for personal use is too limited to accommodate my parts while other senior projects and class related work is fabricated.

I'll build my own machine shop, with blackjack, and hookers.

In reality, I am now considering taking up a project to construct a CNC Milling machine at home. Something along the lines of this opensource design I found easily through searching. http://diylilcnc.org/bigshoulders/

If anyone has info on recent 2013 design and build logs for DIY CNC machines that would be useful. It is difficult to sort through a great deal of information quickly. I only very recently thought of this as an option and need further research to put forth a competent decision about it.
 
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