Little [H]eavy [H]eatpipe V2

D

DeFex

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - June 2011
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Feb 13, 2001
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So i have been using this half finished silent HTPC project for quite a while now, and decided to upgrade the motherboard. (couldnt resist the asus p8z77 -i deluxe)

anyways my rather ugly but well working cooler for the i3 no longer fit,

Imgur album of old and new

and now its an i5 ivy i thought it ought to have a few more heatpipes.
I have a small cnc router, which is really meant for wood and plastic, but i thought i would give it a try with aluminum

(picture of it with a different spindle, it had a Bosch colt trim router to do this. (1/8 milling bit)
FJvmf.jpg


with 10000 RPM and slow feed (20 IPM) it cuts the aluminum accurately, but the finish on the sides is not that great, maybe i am using the wrong kind of bit, speed could be wrong, these things take a while to get right for a particular machine.

Here are the pieces done. the base is 9/16 solid aluminum and the top plate is 3/8ths. the base rests directly on the CPU.
It is designed to only occupy the "mounting bracket exclusion area" or whatever intel calls it, anyways it does not hit anything.

3U3x6.jpg


I need to thread the bolt holes and form the ends of the heatpipes to fit the holes for them, but you can see how it will fit together. (imagine it with all 5 heatpipes)

8YhDu.jpg


Once again the heatpipes came from one of those rather useless zalman hard drive coolers.(version 2 this time) they are good for getting heatpipes from. I did test the heatpipes to make sure they were not just empty copper pipes put there for show, they will get too hot to touch very quick if you put one end in boiling water!

if the chipset gets too hot:
I may add a couple more heatpipes, or even machine a replacement block for that chipset heatsink which connects directly to the left external heatsink. the last motherboard had no problems like that though i left it running for weeks on end, (sometimes encoding if something would not play, but mainly it just plays movies and older/lightweight games
 
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i dont know much about RC motors it came with the spindle.

ill only use that for PCB and small things
 
Watching this, seems interesting. I've always wanted a modern take on the old Zalman "Heatsink case" concept.
 
No, I wouldn't suggest novak anymore. CastleCreations is the leader in brushless technology. That also requires a totally different controller instead of a constant DC input. I would probably suggest a 5 pole quad magnet motor from some of the lesser known custom shops out there. It would smoke the crap out of anything else you can put on there in smoothness, torque, and consistency.
 
Just looking at this design I see two things I think would be an issue.

First, the heat pipes are off center to the processors core which means the main point of heat (the actual core of the CPU) will be bleeding out to nothing more than an aluminum slab. I would say to move the heat pipes more towards the center. Direct contact would be best!

Second, the heat sink being used seems like it wouldn't be efficient enough, the heat pipes are making minimum contact and are too close together. I would think the fins would have to be a lot thinner and closer together. So for something like this you'd need longer pipes spread more throughout the heat sink.

This is all speculation of course and I'd love to be proven wrong! :)
 
the aluminum base is really beefy, so it doesnt really matter that much, and i was kind of stuck with what i could do with those heatpipes. anyways i have some results.

Q0cWY.jpg


after general browsing, installing software, messing about with settings for about 4 hours it is at 38-40c

after watching a 1080p movie (100 min or so) it was at 45c (keep in mind the GPU is on the CPU chip)

after 20x intel burn test it was at 77c (interestingly around burntest number 3 it got up to 81c then settles down) maybe the heatpipes work better when they are hotter.) anyways the burn test results were consistent (44 gflops or whatever they are, i noted on badly cooled machines it can drop off badly)

the external heatsink is very good at cooling the heatpipes, it feels slightly warm all over, even the one on the other side and the front panel can get warm.

all in all "good enough for government work" im not cooling a massive gaming CPU, its meant for a mid range CPU to be cooled silently, not be the most efficient possible thing.

with anything im likely to do with it. and yes the stutter on some movies from the i3 is gone.

the only other thing that gets hot is the chipset heatsink, im going to take that stupid asus plate off it and see how it goes. if still too hot, ill build a bigger block to the left heatsink or something.
 
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I do think it might be fun just to build a massive aluminum piece that connects the CPU directly to the heatsinks, then i could make it adjustable for future CPUs which are bound to be in a different place on the motherboard.
 
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