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Heater Core or BIX ?

M

mohammedtaha

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 14, 2004
Messages
3,648
Which would be better ?

I'm currently using a heatercore that has a custom shroud on it. It performs remarkably well but I'm planning to either buy a dual heater core with a shroud or a BIX.2 / BIP.3

Help is appreciated.
 
I'm a big fan of heater cores, but if space and mounting are a concern, you might want to look at one the the BI radiators as they are somewhat smaller and easier to mount.
 
No, it will be externally mounted.

I don't like choking my pc parts .. I let them breathe ... :D

I think heatercores are the best ... but I'm not sure if the BIX would be better or a DD Dual heater core or a weapon heater core would be better ...

This can also be added to the sticky on top for info on best to avg to worst in the w/c world.
 
If you can tell from my pic, I'm a big fan of the Weapon heater cores and shrouds............. :eek: They are much better than the BIX II rad as that's what my first heater core replaced.

Weapon cores and shrouds:

dsc020077xi.jpg


BIX II radiator.

dsc017354iz.jpg
 
if you've got the space for it, go with a heater core.

Bonnnivilles can be had for great prices... a radiator of equal cooling capacity will cost @ least 3X the price of a good core.

However if minimal head loss and size are your driving requirements, you'll be happier with a nice heat exchanger (i.e. radiator).
 
Sorry about going OT but does Weapon have a website? I tried PM'ing him a while back but no respose. And he's hardly on here or other forums.
 
Try emailing Mike (the designer and maker of the shrouds) at wcmp@shaw.ca. I'm sure he can help you out with anything you need.
As for Weapon, he's a lawyer in real life and last I heard from him, he's extremely busy with little or no free time. But you can try emailing him at rchedister@gmail.com, I don't know how fast he'll answer though.
 
tcc said:
Sorry about going OT but does Weapon have a website? I tried PM'ing him a while back but no respose. And he's hardly on here or other forums.
Click to expand...

don't know what you want, but you can try pucking up a heater core from: 2Fresh
 
He is fishy about repsonded to your PM's man I sent a few in the past with no respose...just send it again
 
he's not a regular of this forum ..

he responded to my pm a long time ago and was very helpful..
 
yeah he stays busy the last i Pm'ed him was last week and he is busy redesigning his old shroud to fit other heatercores or something like that.
 
summer normally gives me a double whammy --- my caseload goes way up as people seem to enjoy going to court in summer for some reason and the demand for H2O gear takes a noticable jump as well -- as such, I have been hammered. :eek:

sorry for any delays in pm responses - this summer has been much worse than usual as one of our other attorneys went elsewhere and I had to pick up several of his cases which were already in progress and hotly contested. To make a long story short, I have been in court 5 for 5 during the week which doesn't leave much time for anything else --- Fortunately, we have another attorney starting soon so I there is light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. also, I have put new products on hold for the time being to give me a little more time for responding to PMs and emails. :)
 
weapon-- said:
. also, I have put new products on hold for the time being to give me a little more time for responding to PMs and emails. :)
Click to expand...

What does that mean ? Is it a new shroud ? Heater core ?

Is Mike aware of this ? I'm getting something from him ..
 
Well just to keep everyone up to date.

I decided to go with the Weapon Shroud and core but since I'm in Canada, Weapon directed me towards a friend of his, Mike, who makes them so I can avoid customs and high shipping costs.

Over the past week, I have had great communication with Mike and he has finished painting the core, 2-302, and the shrouds. Should be dried and cured up by Tuesday and shipped out.

I will be using 2 Shrouds for push/pull config. and it will be externally mounted.

As for the paint job, well, I'll keep that a secret until the parts arrive and I promise pics.
 
Glad you got it all figured out............... :eek: You should have contacted Mike in the first place..........his contact info was posted above as well. Mike is the one I go through and I live in the US, customs duty coming this way is nothing. You'll be very happy with the quality of the workmanship of the heater core and shroud................... :cool:
 
Bio-Hazard said:
Glad you got it all figured out............... :eek: You should have contacted Mike in the first place..........his contact info was posted above as well. Mike is the one I go through and I live in the US, customs duty coming this way is nothing. You'll be very happy with the quality of the workmanship of the heater core and shroud................... :cool:
Click to expand...

Well, this was over a month ago, when I contacted Weapon. He told me to contact Mike, so that's what I did. Mike is definitely a good guy to deal with and his responses are always prompt.

Can't wait to get it .
 
Yes, thank you for the contact info. Bio-Hazard.

I have talked to him and am thinking of getting a used single 120mm heatercore and shroud from him. I would like to get a dual but space restriction does not permit me :(
 
I'm sure you all will be extremely happy with his products, I know I am. I've had his shrouds from when he put out his first prototypes and they have just gotten better and better. The new shrouds also have a nice case mounting feature that make it extremely easy to mount the combo in the case or to shrouds together in a push putt fashion.

In the pic, you can see the 4-40 threaded rod connecting the complete combo together and the combo is fastened to the case via the fan mount holes.

DSC01846.JPG


UFO%20(81).JPG
 
very nice.

Well, as promised, I will post pics of my shroud/core when I get them and then later on I will post in the Work log a little log on how I mounted it externally ;) ...

I'm sure everything will look good together once I'm done :D
 
SignalSoldier said:
He is fishy about repsonded to your PM's man I sent a few in the past with no respose...just send it again
Click to expand...


Well, I have been up and down on the computers...getting the Mach II back up and running and messing with the 7800GTX....I am here daily now. :)
 
So the heatercore arrived 1 week after it was shipped. Mike did an astounding job. It's the prettiest thing I have ever seen. I'm at work and I will be taking pictures later to show you what it looks like. The packing job was also excellent.

Awesome work indeed.
 
Told you Mike was a super guy. I'm still using 2 of his core/shrouds in my main rig. Did you get the 5/8 barb option or just stick with the standard 1/2 inch? I'm using the 5/8 for a bit better flow in the dual radiator setup, they have great flow, you have to stretch 1/2 tubes of them by heating the tubing like you do when you us 7/16 tubing with 1/2 inch barbs. Makes for a super good seal.

dsc017775sq.jpg
 
yesiree, 5/8's ... he advised me to go that way ...

oh it's pretty .. i promise pics by tonite or tomorrow morning.
 
The silver looks pretty good, something a little different than the rest of the black coolers............ :D
 
Exactly ... I noticed everyone uses black ... So I was happy he painted it Aluminum silver for me :D
 
Not to Hijack ur thread but whats more effective running you fans on the inside or outside your shroud?? I currently have mine set up outside (same shroud)
 
I'd have to say outside, you should have a back spacing equal to the diamiter of the center hub but not less than 1 inch for best performance............. :eek: At least that's what a thermal engineer told me, but there are a lot of other factor that can effect that also, such as typr of radiator, type of fan and along with that goes CFM and air pressure. So I just go as deep as I can get away with............... :eek:
 
Yeah, install the fans outside the shroud.

Because I'm more on the silent side, I got 2 shrouds and I will probabaly have 4 Nexus fans, 2 Push and 2 Pull, to provide good air flow through the radiator.
 
I also have 2 shrouds per core and I tried the dual fan deal with my setup and it didn't improve temps at all, so I took them out, but I'm running a dual radiator setup and turn my fans totally off when I'm not gaming or running some sort of stress test (that's a silent system). With the radiator fans off, I just have 2 120 Evercool fans turned down to 6v for fresh air and exhaust.
 
SignalSoldier said:
Not to Hijack ur thread but whats more effective running you fans on the inside or outside your shroud?? I currently have mine set up outside (same shroud)
Click to expand...

The fans are definitely more effective when mounted to the outside of the shroud. We designed the shroud so that the standoff between the shroud and the face of the core (i.e. the fins) would be just a bit over 40mm which is a fairly good balance between space concerns and optimal airflow. All of the sides of the shroud are slightly angled so that the shroud is basically a venturi design (kinda like an air inlet on a carb :) ) -- that helps smooth airflow through the shroud and core. Additionally, it has a center divider plate that separates the interior of the shroud into dual chambers to keep the airflow from the fans from fighting against one another.

Brief bit of theory on shroud design and standoff...
An average 120mm fan has a center hub that is somewhere between 1.75" - 2" in diameter. If you mount the fans directly to the core, the area directly beneath the fan hub will be a nice large dead air spot with greatly reduced airflow when compared to the rest of the fins on the core. While that may not sound like an large amount of surface area at first, find a cup or other round object that is around 2" in diameter and then put two of them on the face of the heatercore -- it takes out a very noticable amount of surface area right in the center of the core. I have tested smaller cores with a proper shroud against larger ones with fans mounted squarely to the face of the core and the difference a properly designed shroud can make is relatively amazing. The shroud can account for about a 35-40% increase in overall cooling performance over the same sized core with no shroud.

Drop back to prehistoric weapon shroud design (circa December 2003) for just a sec here:
hcwshroudfans1.jpg

While that was constructed of acrylics with nothing more than a dremel, an acrylic etching blade, #16 weld-on, some paint and way too much spare time on my hands, the basics are pretty much the same. The standoff was a bit lower (i.e. 35mm) but it was still packing the venturi design as well as optimized fan cutouts and a central divider plate. That was my first attempt at tweaking the design for the '77 b'ville with ac core (aka 2-302, GDI 399078) but that one had a few dozen predecessors like the 5th version of a caprice shroud and the 7th or 8th version of a chevette single 120 shroud before the jump to dual 120 cores (ah...the good old days when a single 120 core would cool almost everything. lol)
dual 120 caprice while it was still in the works (errr...2000 I think):
hc2.jpg


really ancient history - chevette single 120 shroud...it looks a little war-torn as it was moved through about 4 cases but it still works great (1999)
arsglcore.jpg


Anyway, the point from all of those shrouds (which were all very effective in their day) is that certain factors add up to good performance when it comes to shrouds:
1. The right amount of standoff between core and fans
2. Venturi design to help smooth out airflow
3. fan cutouts, chamber divider and seals for optimal airflow

If you screw up any one of those, performance will start taking a nose dive. If you mount the fans on the inside of the shroud, you basically screw up all three of them.

Alternatively, if you continue to tweak shroud design and core mods you end up cranking more and more performance out of the old standby heatercores. As far as that is concerned, the next evolution of both core mods and shrouds is underway. The next step beyond that is a heat exchanger that I am designing from the ground up specifically for computer cooling (ground up = raw materials, gauges, fin structure, tank design tweaked for computer cooling) - no ETA as of yet but the initial test results are very promising. :D The summer litigation rush is almost over -- time to fire up the shop again ;)

weap

shrdcoreblumet.jpg


*edit to repair pre-coffee typos.
 
Nice to see this thread is still alive...

I will be starting a log soon .. I will be externally mounting my water cooling parts and it should look pretty nice ...

You will just have to wait and see ;) ...
 
hmm so now i must go buy a dual 120mm shroud for my swiftech kit....

thanks weap, thanks.
 
There's not really any shrouds out there for the Swiftech type radiators. You might try the thin ones made for the BI serise, but they are very very thin and IMHO, the cost is way to high for the performance gain. That's why I have heater cores and shrouds in my main system, MAX cooling performance. I got my parts from Weapons partner............ :D Dual core and dual shrouds, Even with my system OC'd I can run it totally passive during normal use making for a 100% silent system.............. :eek:
 
oh noes! no shroudd love for me!?! :(

oh wells. the only thing makin noise really in ma system is this power supply. but it would be nice to get the performance gains of the shrouding.
 
You can always try making one your self.............. :D They aren't really all that hard really............. :eek:
 
Maybe if enough ppl want one, we can convince Weapon to design a shroud for the rad in the Apex kit :D I would certainly get one......I don't feel like messing up my nice looking rad with fiberglass resin n crap.
 
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