My new toy just arrived v2

Mcseiam said:
I dont remember saying that the design is revolutionary, it is a design that works and works well.... there is nothing wrong with that

And dangerden does not offer a block in silver, THAT is what makes it unique.... if I wanted the same block that any individual with $30 and an idea to watercool could buy then I would have gone to the DD website 3 years ago when I started watercooling...

instead I went for swiftech in the beginning (a fact that I do not regret) and now have moved on to a manufacturer that blends style with performance - something that the folks at DD fail to deliver in every way


christ.....
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I understand that style is nice, but if in fact silver is better, then why dont they make it out of silver, and a good design like the RBX, rather than a decent design. like the maze1
 
DD isn't exactly revolutionary either...lol. They stole Cathar's White Water design to make the RBX. But looking at this wb...it really just looks like a maze design...in silver...and with more 90 degree turns that restrict flow than I see in most maze designs. I don't see how this would be a good performer since maze designs benefit most from high flow and 1/4" ID and 3/8" ID just doesn't give that...
 
boshi said:
I understand that style is nice, but if in fact silver is better, then why dont they make it out of silver, and a good design like the RBX, rather than a decent design. like the maze1
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because silver is expensive

I have already seen several people in this thread state they would never spend $170 on a waterblock and that is what a silver waterblock costs... copper is cheap to mill and cheap to acquire and thus is the popular choice

Silver exists as an option for those that want to spend the extra but it will never become the de facto standard
 
DD didn't steal the design of the Cascade to make the RBX, the two blocks are nothing alike. The White Water and the RBX however are pretty much the same block and DD on that one..... The TDX is offered in silver though you can find it on their website.

The best original idea DD has had is probably the accelerator nozzles, I think it was an ingenius idea. We might see a few other manufacturers "steal" that DD one day.

Once again, Nice block. Still testing?
 
Mcseiam said:
because silver is expensive

I have already seen several people in this thread state they would never spend $170 on a waterblock and that is what a silver waterblock costs... copper is cheap to mill and cheap to acquire and thus is the popular choice

Silver exists as an option for those that want to spend the extra but it will never become the de facto standard
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You really arent getting what I'm saying.

1) silver is better than copper for this application
2) the copper RBX/Cascade is better than the copper Maze1
3) a silver RBX/Cascade block would be better than a silver Maze1.

Doesnt it seem silly to go through all the trouble and expense of making it out of silver, and then use a mediocre design?

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with silver.
 
boshi said:
You really arent getting what I'm saying.

1) silver is better than copper for this application
2) the copper RBX/Cascade is better than the copper Maze1
3) a silver RBX/Cascade block would be better than a silver Maze1.

Doesnt it seem silly to go through all the trouble and expense of making it out of silver, and then use a mediocre design?

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with silver.
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I think you have some point in this, however, Aqua-computer can't just totally copy some design just because it is good (although some other companies have or have attempted to) , it would be pretty low just to manufacture a silver RBX / Cascade block. Not saying that it couldn't/ shouldn't be done, but I don't think it will happen for now. AC has come out with several blocks since then , and hopefully very soon we will see their improved designs in a silver edition :D
 
DaveX said:
I will use the DD TDX as an example. Joe C. tested it and found that the SS version had a higher pressure drop than the copper version. No design changes, just material.
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Pressure drop has nothing to do with the material the block is made from......
 
Johnie said:
The best original idea DD has had is probably the accelerator nozzles, I think it was an ingenius idea. We might see a few other manufacturers "steal" that DD one day.
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Actually,,,,,,, Cathar and a group of others on a different forum developed that idea long before DD "revolutionized" the world with those accelerator nozzles. Same could be said about those 12vdc pumps they carry. Cathar says something about them on overclockers forum and suddenly DD has them for sale. Funny as hell.
 
There isa problem with that.

German designs don't rely on insane flowrates and pump head...which is exactly what the cathar designs work off of. That would be a design mismatch, and your cooling would most likely be worse.

The reason koolance seems to work as well as it does despite the toothpick thin tubing and incredibly low flow rate is due to proper component matching. The german kits are all about that total system design as opposed to making a loop that has as much pressure and flow as possible to "muscle" through anything you hook onto it. It IS engineering, just in a more subtle way. Anyways that design is their old copper design, so what they kept it...it allows them to use their old tooling patterns...some nice cost savings right there.
 
mustang_steve, you sound like my kind of guy after reading your profile. Was in San Jose last week on business. Would've loved to enjoy a nice pale ale beer or two with someone other than myself.

The Cascade/White Water designs do not rely on insane pumping pressures for their performance, although they are designed in a way that they will continue to make good use of stronger pumps if they are on offer.

Don't really want to get into the whole German vs ROW thing though. It's a horses for courses thing. When presented with thin tubing and weak pumps, this demands a different design approach than when presented with 3/8"-1/2" tubing and stronger pumps. The DIY market that gets targetted with the Cascade/White Water/RBX designs calls for a different strategy. Still, if I wanted to design a super-low-flow optimised block, that could be done - but who would buy it (outside of Germany)?

Again, it's about optimising the designs for the systems that people use. If you think that I don't go through a selection of pumping pressures and specifically optimise the designs for the target market, then think again.

For me, block design starts with a 1.5mH2O pressure head pump (Eheim 1048) and goes up from there. For the German blocks, that's where their design stops. Again, this is more a reflection of the pumps that people in each country have, as opposed to the design of the block demanding certain pumps.

Most German blocks are so restrictive and low-flow optimised that it becomes increasingly pointless to stick stronger pumps on them. Most "English" (UK, Australia, USA) blocks assume sufficient pumping pressure to justify their design style that allows them to take greater advantage of stronger pumps.

It's a rather dichotomus situation, and should not be taken as a reflection on the capability of block engineers in either camp to adequately design a block suitable for the other camp.
 
Cathar said:
Most German blocks are so restrictive and low-flow optimised that it becomes increasingly pointless to stick stronger pumps on them. Most "English" (UK, Australia, USA) blocks assume sufficient pumping pressure to justify their design style that allows them to take greater advantage of stronger pumps.
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THANK YOU. ive needed someone to put this out this way for so long.

oh yeh if youre ever on the east coast of the US I can take you up on a beer if you want, id be honored to meet the legendary cathar :)
 
Johnie said:
DD didn't steal the design of the Cascade to make the RBX, the two blocks are nothing alike.
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My bad, it was the Cathar's WW design they stole.

MrHappyGoLucky: Yeah I messed up on the silver comment, I never saw Joe C. state his errors in pressure drop with the SS TDX.
 
kronchev said:
http://www.dangerden.com/images/rbx/RBX_lg.jpg

http://www.dtekcustoms.com/ProductImages/waterblocks/WW-Polydiag.jpg

yes I see how they look a lot alike...3 barbs..copper...channels...but otherwise youre wrong.
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lmao...are you denying that DD stole copied Cathar's designs to make the RBX? micro-channels under the core...jet impingement...3 nozzles. Everybody in the w/c community knows that it is true. DD like follows Cathar around in different forums and pretty much copied designs from his development thread at OC-AU for his waterblocks.

guess DD never could get past their maze design...so they had to copy Cathar's jet impingement designs.

EDIT: BTW I do not hate DD. They were wrong in copying Cathar's designs so I would never buy a RBX from them. But I bought my Maze 4-1 gpu block kit from them and they have very fast and reliable service.
 
True, you can get 12mm fittings, but I have heard that having larger tubing won't really matter when the waterblock is made for 10mm, so you're really only getting 10mm flow through the waterblock. Is this true, or does anyone have any further insight?
 
Same goes for Swiftech blocks. They're 3/8", but you can put a 1/2" barb on them. Im not sure if it would make a difference or not with Aqua-Computer products, it didnt for me with Swiftech's.

I had a Swiftech CPU, NB, and GPU block in my last setup. Had 3/8" barbs, and 3/8" tubing. Changed it to 1/2" barbs and 1/2" tubing, and my temps were the same.

Maybe I didnt test it well enough, I dont know. Maybe it does make a difference, Im not saying 100% it doesnt, just in my basic test, it didnt.
 
Cathar said:
Most German blocks are so restrictive and low-flow optimised that it becomes increasingly pointless to stick stronger pumps on them. Most "English" (UK, Australia, USA) blocks assume sufficient pumping pressure to justify their design style that allows them to take greater advantage of stronger pumps.
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taken from the man himself...stumpy, more flow simply will not benefit these blocks. Think of it this way...unrestrictive designs like the Maze wb's benefit hugely from very high flow...the opposite is true for German wb's.
 
Mcseiam said:
because silver is expensive
copper is cheap to mill and cheap to acquire and thus is the popular choice
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actually copper is a pretty hard material to mill compared to silver (or aluminum)
 
He didnt say it was easy to mill, he said it was cheap to mill and acquire.
 
DaveX said:
taken from the man himself...stumpy, more flow simply will not benefit these blocks. Think of it this way...unrestrictive designs like the Maze wb's benefit hugely from very high flow...the opposite is true for German wb's.
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That's what I was thinking, and why I got 3/8" ID tubing instead of 1/2 with adapters... no point to the larger tubing. Thanks.
 
Now i'm more interested in the silver block because i'm in the jewelry field and spent 6 years of my life in college taking art classes and am a finesilversmith and coppersmith. I've got access to a milling machine and silver. I'm waiting to see some more results and I might refine some scrap silver I have (don't worry I have enough) and mill a block based on the better designs, sorry I won't make them for people though, I don't have a ton of extra time.

You should be able to solder on different barbs quite easily, pick up some silver solder and torch it up, or maybe that's just my experience.

Looking forward to some more results and I'll post pics if and when I make one.
 
Cathar said:
mustang_steve, you sound like my kind of guy after reading your profile. Was in San Jose last week on business. Would've loved to enjoy a nice pale ale beer or two with someone other than myself.

Still, if I wanted to design a super-low-flow optimised block, that could be done - but who would buy it (outside of Germany)?
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Hey, next time your coming to SJ, send me a PM. I'll be more than glad to kick back a few pints with you.

I know I would be very interested in a block design like that myself. Given it may not be the popular choice, but for a quiet pc it would be great. Who knows, maybe you could get into the quiet thing as well. Plus when has my tastes ever been popular :p
 
bigbadgreen said:
Now i'm more interested in the silver block because i'm in the jewelry field and spent 6 years of my life in college taking art classes and am a finesilversmith and coppersmith. I've got access to a milling machine and silver. I'm waiting to see some more results and I might refine some scrap silver I have (don't worry I have enough) and mill a block based on the better designs, sorry I won't make them for people though, I don't have a ton of extra time.

You should be able to solder on different barbs quite easily, pick up some silver solder and torch it up, or maybe that's just my experience.

Looking forward to some more results and I'll post pics if and when I make one.
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Sounds like a pretty cool idea, keep us updated if ya do decide to mill one...
 
DaveX said:
lmao...are you denying that DD stole copied Cathar's designs to make the RBX? micro-channels under the core...jet impingement...3 nozzles. Everybody in the w/c community knows that it is true. DD like follows Cathar around in different forums and pretty much copied designs from his development thread at OC-AU for his waterblocks.

guess DD never could get past their maze design...so they had to copy Cathar's jet impingement designs.

EDIT: BTW I do not hate DD. They were wrong in copying Cathar's designs so I would never buy a RBX from them. But I bought my Maze 4-1 gpu block kit from them and they have very fast and reliable service.
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my entire post (all 3 lines of it) was about d-tek vs dangerden, please tell me why you chose to bring cathar into that?

also if they ripped him off so badly, why hasnt he said anything about it?
 
mustang_steve said:
Hey, next time your coming to SJ, send me a PM. I'll be more than glad to kick back a few pints with you.

I know I would be very interested in a block design like that myself. Given it may not be the popular choice, but for a quiet pc it would be great. Who knows, maybe you could get into the quiet thing as well. Plus when has my tastes ever been popular :p
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Sure thing.

Actually the next block design I have coming pretty much marries both worlds fairly well. Want to run it with a weak pump? Fine - it'll perform as well with an Eheim 1046 as the Cascade does with the DangerDen 12V pump. Want to run it with a strong pump? That's fine too - it'll continue to make good use of stronger pumps by showing continuing cooling improvement. In the final tweaking stages right now.
 
Hmm...sounds very tempting...I might just have a good reason to drop my wold swiftech 5000 block soon :D
 
fallguy said:
Time is money in almost every world. He said cheap, not hard.
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i dont know what youre even trying to say

copper is cheap stock-wise but is hard to machine. since you pay for the time it takes to mill, milling a block out of copper, even though the MATERIALS are cheap, can come out to be quite expensive due to labor.

so therefore it is NOT cheap to mill.
 
kronchev said:
my entire post (all 3 lines of it) was about d-tek vs dangerden, please tell me why you chose to bring cathar into that?

also if they ripped him off so badly, why hasnt he said anything about it?
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I am not speaking for Cathar...

Cathar never comes to [H] much anyway... He invented the white water design...and later let Dtek manufacture them. Danger Den COPIED the design and started making the RBX. Cathar does wb design and manufacture as a hobby, not for profit. I don't think he would say anything outright to say they are basically good-for-nothing copiers but just about every w/c'er knows what happened. I post some at OCForums w/c section and not very much at Pro Forums...Danger Den was not very popular after copying Cathar to make the RBX! I think almost a year ago there was even a thread here in the O/C section about this...although the guy got flamed for telling everybody that DD copied Cathar. But that's because most of the people who posted in that thread didn't know wtf they were taking about.

copper is harder to mill...that's why most blocks either have aluminum or lucite tops for that matter. But it's also the only viable material for a base except for expensive silver.
 
DaveX said:
I am not speaking for Cathar...

Cathar never comes to [H] much anyway... He invented the white water design...and later let Dtek manufacture them. Danger Den COPIED the design and started making the RBX. Cathar does wb design and manufacture as a hobby, not for profit. I don't think he would say anything outright to say they are basically good-for-nothing copiers but just about every w/c'er knows what happened. I post some at OCForums w/c section and not very much at Pro Forums...Danger Den was not very popular after copying Cathar to make the RBX! I think almost a year ago there was even a thread here in the O/C section about this...although the guy got flamed for telling everybody that DD copied Cathar. But that's because most of the people who posted in that thread didn't know wtf they were taking about.

copper is harder to mill...that's why most blocks either have aluminum or lucite tops for that matter. But it's also the only viable material for a base except for expensive silver.
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The designs are similar but i hardly think that they were trying to cash in on Cathar's design. there are only so many designs that can work. he was just the first to discover it. maybe theyre bad people for copying his design, i dont know what they were thinking, he was thinking, Dtek was thinking, etc.
 
kronchev said:
The designs are similar but i hardly think that they were trying to cash in on Cathar's design. there are only so many designs that can work. he was just the first to discover it. maybe theyre bad people for copying his design, i dont know what they were thinking, he was thinking, Dtek was thinking, etc.
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Can we move on past the history. What's happened has now happened.

As a somewhat dire warning though. Water-cooling technology is coming to the end of the road in terms of continuing improvements. I have great trouble seeing how much can be gained beyond what I've got coming in the pipeline. This will very likely be the last block that I make as I'm all out of ideas, so if everyone leaps to copy it right away, then they better be prepared to accept that the market will enter into a maintaining stage whereby once the rush of upgrades are over sales will slow to a trickle with new adopters.

With the pressures of the OEM's now offering basic water-cooling setups, I can only see the size of the enthusiast market shrinking from this point onwards as the primary reason for why many switch to water, being noise, will be taken away.
 
Cathar said:
Can we move on past the history. What's happened has now happened.

As a somewhat dire warning though. Water-cooling technology is coming to the end of the road in terms of continuing improvements. I have great trouble seeing how much can be gained beyond what I've got coming in the pipeline. This will very likely be the last block that I make as I'm all out of ideas, so if everyone leaps to copy it right away, then they better be prepared to accept that the market will enter into a maintaining stage whereby once the rush of upgrades are over sales will slow to a trickle with new adopters.

With the pressures of the OEM's now offering basic water-cooling setups, I can only see the size of the enthusiast market shrinking from this point onwards as the primary reason for why many switch to water, being noise, will be taken away.
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I still see some room for improvment. Radiator design is possibly where we are headed next. We got teh cooling power, now we jsut have to figure out an easier to implement radiator design. We all know multi-rad setups are cost prohibitive, and also clutter up the case with excessive amounts of tubing. Large rad setups often require extensive case mods (like my removal of 5 3.5" bays in my Antec P-160). I do agree that block designs have seemed to reached that plateau, but I think radiators, pumps, and fill/bleed systems are next to be optimized.

For rads right now we have teh traditional tube with bonded fin type rads (black ice, and a few other brands), and heatercores. They both do the same thing, but are assemble slightly different. In the past we had the AC style ones (pipe coiling through fins), and some other very crude designs. There are a few passive "heatsink" designs I'm amazed havent taken off in a case design...having a PC-60 with the entire right side being a massive passive radiator would have been great.

As far as pumps...the majority of 12v pumps either are very low flow, or have vibration issues. Maybe in the future we would have a pump that is in it's own vibration damped enclosure?

Resvoirs or fillbleed system.....I would love to see more double shutoff quick connect setups for fill/bleed. I really do think if those double shutoff connects ever get more affordable, closed loops will be all the rage as opposed to the current trend of using resevoirs.

Given the designs improvements may or may not have anything to do with cooling..but we can find things to improve it. Who knows...maybe in five years something we all didn't know might surface itself? Might be some kind of cool alloy or something.
 
Regarding radiators - this really does come down to an air-flow issue.

Let's assume 100W of heat to dissipate that enters the liquid from the CPU and pump. 1m³ of air has a thermal capacity of ~1250J/C.

1 CFM = 0.0283m³/min

Per second, 1CFM of air has a thermal capacity of 0.59W/C. 50CFM, which is about what a pair of 100CFM fans at full-power on a single heater-core in push-pull mode will do, has a C/W of around 0.034, or at 100% radiator efficiency, the 100W of heat will cause the water to rise by 3.4C.

Now running two 100CFM fans at 12V isn't exactly noise friendly, so really we are fighting entropy here. Good radiators at low air-flow can be up to 80% efficient or so, so really no matter what we do, we are forced to use those large dual radiators that you hate in order to get our water temps down to 3-4C above ambient at acceptable noise levels.

What I'm saying here is that there really isn't a lot left to gain for radiatiors. We are forced by the heat capacity of air to use the dual-fan heater-cores, and no amount of improvements in radiatior efficiency is going to change that.

For pumps, I pretty much agree. There are some gains left here still, but noise issues aside, the Laing D4 (DangerDen 12V) pump really is getting pretty close to the best that we can expect from centrifugal pumps. The mechanism in it is so elegant and effective. I totally adore it from a design point of view. All that it really needs is to be made more user friendly (lower noise, easier to mount, a little higher RPM's in stock form).

Getting back to radiators. I believe that there are some gains here to be made in the fans that we use. Rather than the noisy axial fans we know and love, I believe that there exists the opportunity to replace them with more user-friendly, lower-noise, higher-pressure blower fans, which can push more air-flow through resistance than axial fans can, and do it with less noise. Doing so probably would allow for ~80CFM through something like a DTekPro sized core and achieve ~3C above ambient water temps.

I do totally agree on the status of reservoirs. Would like to see more intelligently designed fill/bleed reservoirs that can be hard-mounted inside the case somewhere, and which can be sealed totally so the case can be moved around without fear of leakage, and can work with the case in a number of orientations (flat on side, upright, etc).

Regarding tubing clutter, I do agree too. I believe that we can get back to 3/8" or 10mm ID tubing and still not sacrifice performance in any significant fashion, so long as the blocks are designed to work well at 0.5-1.0gpm flow rates.

Much of it all comes down to trade-offs. If you want the low water temps, you need the air-flow, and along with that comes noise. Quite possible to design blocks that perform well with weak pumps, but you also want to provide for the "power users" who want to stick an Iwaki pump on the block and get good returns with unmatched block performance.

I do believe that with the newer 62mm 300W TEC's, that there exists the potential to offer an in-line water-chiller product that chills the water down to the dew point using PWM control of the TEC's, and an electronic hygrometer, and then the side of the case can be used to passively cool the second cooling loop that's cooling the hot-side of the TEC's. A little more mass inside the case with some more tubing, but if offered as an integrated solution, would provide for low-noise while giving condensation free lowest-possible water-temperatures.
 
PWM control of pelts? wow I never even thought of that. theyre not sensative to that kind of power fluxuation? damn good idea right there...

I was looking at the new TEC's on ebay, if I get some cash I think Ill get one and build a PWM circuit. I dont have a hygrometer and that seems pretty advanced to get that all together, but I think I could get a proof of concept unit completed if I had some money


as for blower fans, Cathar every blower I've seen has had crappy CFM ratings (I know, I know not important), but theyve all been 50dB rated. Thats LOUD. Maybe I just was looking at crappy models...
 
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