has anyone thought of this before?

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KaizerDan

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Mixing a copper water block with a low profile heat sink design for SFF cases? just have the copper cuper tubes come out like this http://www.performance-pcs.com/cata...ge_scroll&products_id=20313&image_scroll_id=0 but hollow, so at the ends well sticking past the fins you can have a quick disconnect fitting like this http://www.koolance.com/water-cooling/product_info.php?product_id=882 to just plug into. just pop the tubes into your new sugo7 and it can be water cooled, or pull it off for a lan and leave it air cooled using the fan and fins? so long as the pipes coming off the block are copper well keeping solid contact with the copper block like this http://img234.imageshack.us/f/dsc007733gh.jpg/ but pulling a U turn and going over the block out toward the back of the case with fins off of the pipes and a fan blowing down?

If this has been done or thought of before im sorry for wasting thread space. but id like an easy option to water cool something like this http://www.computerbase.de/bildstrecke/28689/5/ with the disconect fittings coming out over the back IO panel
 
Are you saying a dual purpose heatsink with a waterblock and heatpipes?
 
I believe this has been tried many times in the past, with the conclusion being that if you want to go sub-ambient, it will hold you back essentially adding another heat source to the loop via ambient air inside the case.

As far as non-sub-ambient temps... not sure. Back when I saw this kind of stuff attempted, PC watercooling was still VERY homebrew, not a lot of folks really understood all of the complexities behind it, and even Danger Den and Swiftech products looked like something you could make at home.

:p
 
I'll provide a better alternative:
- A regular water block on the CPU.
- A basic radiator on the exhaust.
- T-connectors, one with a valve, providing two alternative routes for the cooling water; through the radiator in the case or to an external loop connected with self sealing snap fittings.

For stationary computing at home a large external radiator, potentially fan less, is used.
For portable computing the internal radiator is used.
 
that would be fairly easy to make, and in fact ive done something similar to that in the past. you wouldn't even need T connectors or other fancy valves or things like that. and you could simplify it even further by not using a second reservoir.

all you would need is a reservoir with 4 ports- two for your internal cooling loop, and two going to external break-away connections. then you get a very large volume container of water (like 5-10 gallons) and a small $40 pump. when you are at your desk- you plug in the two external connectors to this large reservoir of water and hit the pump, giving your computer a massive amount of heat absorbing potential, since it is a shared fluid loop. a 6 hour gaming marathon, instead of heating up 10oz of water and limiting you to what your radiator could radiate, would only slowly store the heat in the 10 gallon res, then when you take a break and the computer isnt generating more heat then the radiator can get rid of, the radiator can keep busy dumping the stored heat while you arent using the PC.

even if you kept your computer on 24/7, assuming you dont run folding@home or something, and even if you game 12 hours a day, all the heat stored in the reservoir would be flushed out over night, ready for more the next morning. i ran a setup like this for about 18 months, worked great.

btw this is probably a thread for the water cooling forum, not extreme cooling.
 
That is probably a more logical option, but i figured it would be taken more lightly under "extreme" as silly then a serious water cooling thread... that 10 gallon res is a very simple option, but i was thinking of something more easily portable that could sit ontop of its case like a triple fan radiator, but i guess it wouldnt be any better seeing as how youll still need the pump and res on the out side anyways...
 
ghost6303 said:
... you wouldn't even need T connectors or other fancy valves or things like that. and you could simplify it even further by not using a second reservoir.
... you get a very large volume container of water (like 5-10 gallons) and a small $40 pump.
Click to expand...
While that would certainly provide sufficient cooling, the extra pump would also add some noise that my solution tries very hard to get rid of.
 
i suppose you could get one good size pump and keep the convoluted T-valve setup and plumb it in a way to accomplish the same thing without a second pump. either way- im just throwing out ideas and examples.
 
I like the idea, and I was toying with something like this for my SFF computer. As I do not want to constantly haul around a large watercooling unit in addition to the SFF case, I wanted an external solution.

One possibility is that you could make some kind of fluid heat-exchanger setup that's attached to the internal loop on one side, and attached to external fittings on the other. The only thing is that it would still need an external pump for the external side of the loop, but in this way, you don't have to worry about losing any fluid or fluid contamination on the internal loop, the internal loop is isolated liquid-wise.

I'm still wondering what parts would be most cost-effective for this solution though, I don't have a fat wallet at the moment and I've always centered things around how cost-effective they are. Any additional ideas would be great.
 
Hauling around watercooling with a SFF case sucks.
I'm interested in hearing other thoughts too.
 
It's not a bad idea IMO, variations of which I've used in some conceptual designs. As long as you're not cooling your water to sub-ambient more dissipation area can only help.

A problem I see in the particular approach you suggest (part-time watercooling) is that the channels for the waterblock are going to displace the heatpipes or copper of the heatsink base, such that when the block is not connected to a loop it's going to have water (or worse, air) just sitting in it. And as we know water has poor thermal conductivity compared to copper or heatpipes, reducing the performance of the heatsink overall.

One possible solution would be to attach the waterblock to the top of the heatpipes/base (in a heatsink design that allows for it). Here, I knocked up a quick sketchup to give you an idea:

ChdWr.jpg

(Waterblock modded onto a Silverstone NT06)

What this does then is allow the heatsink to perform normally when not connected to a loop, with no drop in performance. Then when you hook it up to your water loop the low thermal resistance of the heatpipe/copper base (assuming proper surface mating) should provide performance fairly close to what you'd get if the water block were sitting directly on the cpu.
 
Thermaltake did something similar to what OP talk about though it wasn't a SFF hsf. It was some tower hsf that allow watercooling. Overall it didn't work so great. Just took up more space.
 
People like saving that extra slot when they WC. And this shall take it back, so it better do lots of cooling. So instead of the traditional overhead, what about splitting and going either side of the waterblock, maybe working with the ram HSF or something.
 
Wouldn't having a heatsink + waterblock combo actually be potentially better? First most of the heat would get absorbed into the water. Any remaining heat from that would be absorbed into the rest of the heatsinkwaterblock thingy. :eek:
 
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