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Loading ...Making a CPU Waterblock
gryphon
(new updates at bottom of page)
After getting frustrated with my overclocked CPU (AMD x2 5200, don’t laugh) overheating I’ve been looking into getting water cooling sorted out, however on my budget I quickly gave up on even a basic system using retail components, so I decided to try to make my own thinking it would give me a nice challenge.
The obvious choice of metal is copper for its conductivity. Fortunately my dad has a large barn, full of junk – ‘that might come in useful someday’. Looking through his box of spare metal I came across a few plates of copper that would do the job.
First I chose a thick (about 5mm) copper plate for the base of the cooler that would contact the CPU. I cut it to size using a hacksaw, not the fastest of jobs, and it left my arms aching – guess I should spend less time in front of my computer and more time modding it.
To make the cavity for the water to flow through I decided to use a section of pipe as it would be far easier than cutting a hole in another copper plate. To cut the pipe so that the cut end was square I used my dad’s lathe, but could not find the blades for it, so used it with a hacksaw which did a decent job.
I then took a rough measurement of my mobos connections for the heat sync, from here I measured out another piece of copper plate (3mm thick) for the top of the cooler. This is also the plate that will be bolted to the mobo. I cut it to size, again using a hacksaw (ouch) and tidied up the edges of all my pieces using a grind wheel, electric sander and wire wool until they looked relatively tidy. It is now almost ready to be soldered together, the only thing left to do is decide what size piping I’m going to use and drill in the connections.
Here is what ive got so far:
Inside:
Upside down, as it would be soldered together:
And a side view:
I have got a suitable radiator – the cabin heating radiator from a car – and I have various bits of silicone piping, but I still need to decide on a pump and a reservoir. Any suggestions are very welcome.
I plan to put the setup (assuming it is effective) inside a Coolermaster stacker 831 that I bought from ebuyer when it was on sale, not realising just how big it was (too big for my room), but I think it will be good for water cooling. It is the model with blue mesh and I find the blue colour looks very cheap. I want to repaint the mesh but am not quite sure how to go about it without totally ruining the looks… again, any advice appreciated.
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A short update – I’ve drilled and tapped (threaded) holes in the top plate for the tubing attachments, Pictures below. Ill be using 8mm ID tubing as that is the tubing ive got most of and luckily its also a standard in watercooling.
I’ve decided to use a small angle grinder disc connected to a drill (as I haven’t got a dremel/engraver) to cut grooves in the base of the cooler to direct waterflow and increase surface area. They should be sufficient. Hopefully I’ll get round to this tomorrow…
Tapping the holes:
The finished top plate:
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Reservoir and pump: I cancled the order for the XSPC dual 750 Pump/res in favor of getting a (much cheaper) fish tank pump from ebay and a resevoir. I was rather set on getting a drive bay reservior, but when i looked at them i can see no way of opening them to get the pump inside… As my computer is moved around a bit im wary of using a home made reservoir. Anyone know how these reservoirs are fixed together and how easy it is to take them appart?
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Back to the CPU block:
The next thing to do is increase the surface area… I used an angle grinder and a small (worn down) disc to cut grooves in the copper base, in the direction of flow. Hopefuly this will help direct the water aswell as increasing the surface area.
The Cut Grooves:
The only remaining thing to do is solder it all together. For this I first lapped all of the faces that were going to be soldered to ensure a good fit. I then smeared flux on the faces as an extra precaution (we used solder with flux in it). I then heated it up with a blow torch while my dad applied the solder. As the top plate was sightly warped we had to use a lot of solder in some places which didnt make it look very neat, but better a few lumps of solder than a leak.
I had to put in a few Pictures of the soldering: (they are a bit out of focus because if i used the flash the flame wasnt visible)
Here is a picture of the join:
Once it had cooled down a bit the metal was all oxidised and colourful (although the camera didnt pick it up with the flash, so no pics im afraid) so i polished it up with a bit of wire wool. I then put the pipe fittings on. Everythig went together and it looked like a waterblock (to my eyes at least, it doesnt realy resemble a retail waterblock).
Now for the tests… for leak testing i fitted some tubing to it, submersed it in a basin full of water, blocked one tube and blew through the other.
First Test:
Aargh, Leak!!!
Luckily this was just coming from the screw thread of one of the connectors. I wrapped a bit of PTFE tape around the thread and screwed it back in…
Fixed it, Panic over… 
Now i just have to get the rest of the loop up and running. I havnt yet ordered a res/pump, and im still not quite sure whether im going to get the XSPC one or get a fish tank pump… And ill have to wait until i go back to school (easter holidays atm) to get the distilled water.
Ill update when i get it running. Fingers crossed it will be effective.
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The res/pump arrived and i managed to get my hands on some de-ionised water so i’ve put it all together and found that my waterblock leaked around both pipe connections. Good job it was a test outside the case. Ive put a load of mastic around the connections and am getting bored waiting for it to set. In the mean time i’ve sleeved all of my cables, and the case is looking very neat, well, relatively neat.
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Leaks fixed and the computers up and running, unfortunatley the scan order with my 2 fans for the rad hasnt arrived yet (city link - they’ve said that they would deliver twice but apparently ‘were not in’ - ive spent 95% of the day in the room next to the door with the doorbell beside me). At the moment the only airflow is coming from a fan a couple of inches from the radiator and the temps are higher than they were with the old artic freezer 64. ( Overclocked and overvolted it now peaks at 62* after 20min of full load, it used to max out at 57*)
According to my last irate phonecall with city link the package ‘will’ arrive tomorrow…
oh yeh - my cameras out of batteries at the moment so pics will come when theyr charged. never buy a kodak z721is, they eat batteries.
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Package arrived - I now have akasa amber fans and a zalman fan controller. Everythings fitted and the temps have gone down a bit:
Idle at startup: 33*c
After 10min stress test: 54*c
After 20min stress test: 56*c
5min after stress test (idle) 45*c
This is with a 0.1v overvolt and a 17% overclock (2.6ghz to 3.0ghz) wich isnt a bad overclock considering its an amd chip.
Im a bit dissapointed with the temps but im not sure if its the block or the rad.
And here are some pics…
The radiator. (a bit hidden)
And the whole thing:
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After reading about how inaccurate on die temprature sensors can be I borrowed a Calibrated temprature sensor (accurate to 0.2*c) to find out what tempratures my system realy was running at.
As i couldnt actually get the probe on to the cpu i measured the temp of the waterblock (there wasnt a way of measuring water temp until the after reservoir).
I was suprised by the results. when everest reported a 29*c core temp the sensor reported 22.4*c and when everest showed a 62*c core temp, the temprature sensor gave a reading of 35.6*c. Im not sure if this is the on die sensor or if the block isnt quite square on the cpu. i plan to re-fit it with some artic silver pretty soon so ill see if that makes a difference.
Here are the readings i took: (on die ~ calibrated sensor. not sure if ive used the right symbol there…)
29*c ~ 22.4*c
54*c ~ 31.6*c
59*c ~ 33.0*c
62*c ~ 35.6*c
The temprature sensor:
I hope to make a gpu block next (8800GT) and add another radiator but i have AS exams coming up in a few weeks so i guess it will have to wait a bit.
nice job it looks realy well for being cut with a hacksaw i would suggest this for a pump and resivor (http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/product.php?productid=5310&cat=537&page=2)
because they are built together it would save space and it aint to expensive for the repaint on your case i would just sand of the old paint get some primer and the spray over it with spray paint
hope this helps
The hacksaw had a lot of help from a file, grindwheel and setsquare to get the edges neat.
The link you gave is cut off and gets an error message but in was looking into this resevoir/pump: (http://www.aqua-pcs.co.uk/xspc-
dual-750-bay-reservoir-pump—clear-1142-p.asp) although Ive seen a few negative reviews about it.
For painting the case my main concern is that its a mesh, and i don’t know if the paint will cover the holes, meaning id have to pop each one individually, which i wouldn’t look forward to.
EDIT:
Just went into comment management and got the full link - its the same reservoir/pump one i was looking at
i heard a couple of storys about the plastic in that pump/res cracking but could go for a thermaltake pump they are very cheap and i can tell you that they are pretty damm good my whole rig is cooled by thermaltake water cooling parts i was wwondering if you were going to put a channel on the inside of the block to aid thermal transfer you could probably do a simple on with a dremel engraver
I had planned to drill small holes (about 2mm, not all the way through) in the base of the waterblock… it wouldn’t aid flow but would increase surface area. I hadnt considered engraving, having never had any experience with it before i didnt think it would go deep enough to make a channel, guess i can borrow an engraver and experiment.
Thanks.
Awesome looking project. One thing to bear in mind is that most watercooling blocks have either lots of pins or lots of channels inside the main chamber, in order to massively increase the surface area the water is exposed to inside the block’s chamber - this image on EK’s site shows what I mean: http://ekwaterblocks.com/slike/NB4-intel.jpg
Still, I’ll be watching this mod with interest.
well the higher you turn the speed on the engraver the deeper it will go plus if it dosent look deep enough you could just go over it again theres a good guide on this website about how to engrave its how i learnt its in the features section and in hands on guides that picture alex give would be a good idea if you had any copper left you could cut realy thin fins and solder them to the bottom that would work to
My first idea was to solder copper fins to it but to fix it all together im planning to use a blowtorch and plumbing solder, so any soldering i do has to be all at once and relativley final. i am considering now using a small angle grinder to cut grooves in it… i realy need a dremel, but the earliest i can borrow one is at the end of next week, i was hoping to go a bit faster than that. Ill say when i find an alternative…
Thanks karas and alex
high pump volumes can be got from small submersible FISH TANK water pumps, plus they are designed for long LONG periods of continuous use…just an idea but maybe sinking one into a resavoir that you can see through might look cool, if you take off the filter(wont be needed) and paint the impellor it would look great, you would be able to see it working.
somthing smaller than this even http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180227337323&ih=008&category=46312&ssPageName=WDVW&rd=1
let me know how you get on Dude
thanks for the fish tank pump idea, the problem is ive just placed an order for a pump/reservoir… I wonder if I can cancel it.
Most water cooling pumps seem to give flow rates of about 700lph (correct me if im wrong), so I’d need a slightly bigger pump than that, but it would definatley be cheaper than buying an official one.
Ill look into it.
well done it looks realy good cant wait for the temp results hope you post some as for the pump i would go with the one that has the highest lph i would give you the best temp results
I cant wait either, unfortunatley i have to.
Im going to get the XSPC res/pump afterall because my computer is moved between my parents houses on a regular basis and i would rather it didnt leak. Also the pump will use a 12v supply against a 240v supply (for the fish tank pump) that i would very likley forget to plug in sometime. The XSPC gives 700lph, should be good enough.
those temps dont seem all that bad my system usaly idles at about 33 aswell wat did you use to stress test your rig and i have to say the block loooks awesome buts wats the white gunk and i might be wrong but i would think that using right angle barbs would reduce flow rate
The reason im dissapointed with the temps is that they’re only 1 degree cooler than with a £15 artic freezer and its a lot more noisy. It idles at 46, its at 33 right at startup, when the water is still cold… I used everest for the stress test. (it does do both cores)
The white ‘gunk’ is the mastic that i used to seal the threads, i can probably cut most of it off but i don’t really want to risk it dripping on my mobo.
If i used straight barbs then the pipes would have to be a lot longer to curve around to them wich would create a lot more resistance, so i dont think it makes much difference.
I have to try this… Nice work!
you’d need a HUGE bit o copper to make a 8800 gt gpu block. needs 2 be full cover or a load of little ramsinks
I was thinking about full cover with a 2 or 3mm copper plate. hopefuly i can use the cam machine at school - then i can use a thick acryllic cover to create a flow pattern. i think that the card would snap if i put a simmilar (but bigger) version of my cpu block on it. (the block i made weighs almost 700g, and doesnt seem extremley effective).
I was wondering about getting a smallish copper northbridge cooler, lapping the bottom and soldering it onto the plate to get good surface area… but ill start a new post for this project when it starts.
Thanks for the feedback
Oh, and… great time for the mag to cover water cooling, 1 month too late… 
However it has awakened me as to why my systems so noisy - i havnt cushioned the pump/res, unfortunatley its such a tight fit in the drivebay that theres no way i can get even silicone washers in there. I dont realy fancy modding such an expensive case… (you’ll notice i decided against re-painting it) as my previous mod attempts have been ok but have hardly looked clean and tidy, and at the moment i quite like that about the case.
Hmm, this ‘comment’ is big enough to be a blog update.