Koolance gone crazy?

[Top Nurse]

copper radiators are made from copper alloys not pure copper like our blocks. copper alone will corrode and foul much quicker than aluminum. attaching aluminum fins to aluminum pipes yeilds a much better thermal transfer than copper fins to copper pipes. copper tarnishes and turns color much faster than aluminum.
copper radiators are ok for DIY stuff, but when you move into the pro arena and need constant uptime without flushing coolant every 6 months (we do rackmount too) aluminum rads are the way to go.

So why not go with the most for the least and get a radiator that has copper tubes and aluminum fins?

 

[Justin_Diduch]

OK, i dont want to get into a flame war but i guess i already did so..... the fact that our systems go 24+ months on the same coolant is proof enough for me. if thats not enough you might want to look into how copper alloy fins are attached to copper pipes and what happens to that bond as time goes by. copper radiators are either soldered (not so much anymore) or the pipes are pressed into the fins. after time the constant expansion and contraction from heat lessens the contact between the fin and the pipe. aluminum radiators (like the ones Koolance makes) are brazed. that means aluminum is holding aluminum to aluminum. that bond is permanent and does not degrade over time (not to a measurable degree in our lives anyway) that nasty layer of oxidization is also an insulator. while i agree that aluminum oxidizes as well it is to an incredibly smaller degree and does not have nearly (like not even in the same solar system) the same insulatory properties. In the end we are all going to use what we want, but i want to use somthing that dosent make me flush the system out every 6 months and wont degrade in performance over time. to me that means aluminum radiators gold plated copper blocks and a nice monoethelene glycol sauce.

 

[BillR]

Slightly off topic but very much related, automotive companies went to aluminum radiators a long time ago. Of course there was the weight saving which is important but now they are able to use smaller radiators having greater cooling capacity, not to mention much longer intervals between “suggested” services.

On the other side of that heater cores are among the #1 replacement items after a few years of use, especially the copper and copper alloy units. Every automotive store everywhere stocks them as replacement parts, there has to be a reason for that, no?

High performance cars went to aluminum a very long time ago because of better thermal transfer from a smaller area.

Agreed not much “empirical” evidence, just facts of life

 

[zer0signal667]

OK, i dont want to get into a flame war but i guess i already did so..... the fact that our systems go 24+ months on the same coolant is proof enough for me. if thats not enough you might want to look into how copper alloy fins are attached to copper pipes and what happens to that bond as time goes by. copper radiators are either soldered (not so much anymore) or the pipes are pressed into the fins. after time the constant expansion and contraction from heat lessens the contact between the fin and the pipe. aluminum radiators (like the ones Koolance makes) are brazed. that means aluminum is holding aluminum to aluminum. that bond is permanent and does not degrade over time (not to a measurable degree in our lives anyway) that nasty layer of oxidization is also an insulator. while i agree that aluminum oxidizes as well it is to an incredibly smaller degree and does not have nearly (like not even in the same solar system) the same insulatory properties. In the end we are all going to use what we want, but i want to use somthing that dosent make me flush the system out every 6 months and wont degrade in performance over time. to me that means aluminum radiators gold plated copper blocks and a nice monoethelene glycol sauce.

When a layer of ANYthing is a few microns thick, its thermal resistance is all but negligible. Do you have numbers for the thermal conductivity of both oxides? And the radiators you speak of must go through huge temperature ranges and quite frequently to suffer fatigue from difference in expansion coefficients... Of course, using a heatercore like most people having copper radiators would make that a non-issue anyway.

 

[Justin_Diduch]

Slightly off topic but very much related, automotive companies went to aluminum radiators a long time ago. Of course there was the weight saving which is important but now they are able to use smaller radiators having greater cooling capacity, not to mention much longer intervals between “suggested” services.

On the other side of that heater cores are among the #1 replacement items after a few years of use, especially the copper and copper alloy units. Every automotive store everywhere stocks them as replacement parts, there has to be a reason for that, no?

High performance cars went to aluminum a very long time ago because of better thermal transfer from a smaller area.

Agreed not much “empirical” evidence, just facts of life

that just about covers it i think.... like he said not quite empirical evidince but not bad observational evidence. I am working on getting some real [H]ard evidence for you guys to digest. we have some stuff but it is not in electronic format. gimme some time and i will produce...

EDIT oh and BTW we are talking about 3 layesr of tarnish here....inside the tubes outside the tubes and on the fins.that means the heat needs to move through two layers of copper and three layers of tarnish...at most with aluminum you are going thru two layers of oxidization and one solid chunk of aluminum

 

[SpoogeMonkey]

So just baste the whole f@ckin thing in BBQ sauce, slow cook for 14hrs @ 220F and be done with it!!!

lol...ok now...play nice guys

 

[Justin_Diduch]

this needs to be consolidated into the Koolance gone crazy thread... i cant remember if ai was crazy first then smoked the crack or if the crack made me crazy, but either way its all about the same flame war at this point

 

[plywood99]

Slightly off topic but very much related, automotive companies went to aluminum radiators a long time ago. Of course there was the weight saving which is important but now they are able to use smaller radiators having greater cooling capacity, not to mention much longer intervals between “suggested” services.

On the other side of that heater cores are among the #1 replacement items after a few years of use, especially the copper and copper alloy units. Every automotive store everywhere stocks them as replacement parts, there has to be a reason for that, no?

High performance cars went to aluminum a very long time ago because of better thermal transfer from a smaller area.

Agreed not much “empirical” evidence, just facts of life

Come on now BillR, As mentioned by Zerosignal a pc setup does not experience the extreme temperature changes that an auto does. How many pc rads even experience a 20*c delta? And don't you think that the longer intervals for "services" has just a little to do with better antifreeze, corrosion inhibitors and such.

And of the 12 odd vehicles I've owned I replaced several starters, radiators, alternators, fuel pumps and ONE heatercore in my old Ford van. And that one was due to a bad water pump.

If you are refering to aluminum blocks for engines, there are other, better reasons for going with aluminum over cast iron, not just thermal properties.

 

[plywood99]

that just about covers it i think.... like he said not quite empirical evidince but not bad observational evidence. I am working on getting some real [H]ard evidence for you guys to digest. we have some stuff but it is not in electronic format. gimme some time and i will produce...

EDIT oh and BTW we are talking about 3 layesr of tarnish here....inside the tubes outside the tubes and on the fins.that means the heat needs to move through two layers of copper and three layers of tarnish...at most with aluminum you are going thru two layers of oxidization and one solid chunk of aluminum

Not trying to flame, but do you mist your rads with seawater? Really how much oxidation are you going to experience in a pc enviroment?

 

[Top Nurse]

Well I guess whenever a company that is selling a product for about $66 suddenly wants $96 then a lot of people sit right up and ask where's the coffee. In any product life cycle your costs should be going down because as your production ramps up your costs should be ramping down. So what everyone wants to know is why is your cost suddenly going out the door on a well established product line? After all we are looking at a 45% increase in price over essentially the same product. It doesn't matter to me or anyone else that you are giving away all these different mounts when we are going to probably lose the ones we don't use anyway. Or by the time we do want to change processors we will undoubtedly want a different block, right?

You guys got to admit that your not just catching flack about this from consumers, but your dealers as well. All this happy horeshit started when Koolance came out with a new "improved" Exos and promptly said that were raising prices 75%. Now maybe your new hotshot EXOS and CPU coolers are really worth that kind of money. I personally thought your CPU cooler designs were pretty good at the price range you were asking and I do have an original EXOS sitting right next to me. I also have no problems with a aluminum rad and gold plated coolers for several years now on non-Koolance coolant.

But as you say if the stuff is flying off the sheves so fast that you can't keep it in stock then I would be raising prices even more if I were you guys.

 

[Justin_Diduch]

like i said before the increased cost has to do with the additional clips, copper etc. glad to hear you are happy so far Top
nice to know someone still remembers the first page of this thread... kinda got into a metallurgy debate there
plywood: years i would like to think

 

[dennpett]

Thats what shocked me was the difference in pricing. I went to grab another cpu-300 when I saw the new pricing. What was the original list price on the cpu-300 was it 55-60 ?
I guess if you break it down 65 block only+15 for the 775 kit and 7 for the A64 kit=87 they are only charging an extra $9 for the extra copper.
It would be much nicer if they offered a block only kit and sold the other mounting kits.

 

[Igg]

You guys know YOU DON'T HAVE TO buy their blocks right?

If you don't like it buy something else?

Like me, I mated AC blocks with an Exos 2.

Damn people, just cool your own damn system and leave the others to cool theirs.