A full AIO, but with heat pipes, fins, and fans on the water block

[criznittle]

Does a hybrid AIO/Air Cooler exist?? I've looked around and haven't found one that quite does what i'm detailing.
You should get both the effects of the heat pipes and fins with fans removing heat, and the liquid flowing through the block to move heat to the radiator.

Someone must have attempted it by now, but would there be a real difference in heat dissipation?

I attached a very rough MS Paint depiction of what i'm talking about. (i know the heat pipes would run down to the bottom, but my ms paint skills don't allow for this to look right)

[criznittle]

There is a version that exists, but it's a real shoddy example of how not to do it.

 

[Firewrath9]

The heatsink wouldn't do anything. Only the bottom would be touching the water, which is like 40-45 degrees celsuis. Radiators expose more surface area to water, so another 120mm rad would be better. They tried this on the ASUS 1080 Ti Poseidon, it was an alright card.

[criznittle]

1 minute ago, Firewrath9 said:

The heatsink wouldn't do anything. Only the bottom would be touching the water, which is like 40-45 degrees celsuis. Radiators expose more surface area to water, so another 120mm rad would be better. They tried this on the ASUS 1080 Ti Poseidon, it was an alright card.

The heatsink would have to be designed to allow both the liquid and the heatpipes to make proper contact.

[foamygopher]

This is the closest thing you will ever get to that.

 

 

[Firewrath9]

48 minutes ago, criznittle said:

The heatsink would have to be designed to allow both the liquid and the heatpipes to make proper contact.

Heat pipes perform worse than microfins so it'd be worse than just an AIO

[criznittle]

1 hour ago, foamygopher said:

This is the closest thing you will ever get to that.

 

 

Bummer. That's kinda similar to what i described, but it's really just an AIO on top of the processor instead of a side of the case.

I wonder how well it would work to have the water flowing over both the contact and heat pipes, effectively dividing the cooling between the heatsink and the radiator.

Considering that no one is doing it, it must be either too costly to produce, or it just doesn't work. I'd certainly buy one though, if it offered better cooling than a typical AIO. It would be a unique look - having a beefy heatsink with tubes coming out of it, leading to a radiator.

[For Science!]

5 hours ago, criznittle said:

 

This has been asked before, but this is the first time I will give a proper answer to why this doesn't work. Firstly, the suggested solution is basically that of putting a vapor chamber (VC, conceptually the same as a heatpipe, but more suited for this context) underneath a waterblock (WB). The order is important and the VC must be underneth the WB (i.e. closest to the chip) and not the otherway around. This is simple since VC technology relies on heat vaporizing a small amount of liquid inside a hollow chamber and this vapor carries the heat to another location in the chamber for it to condense back down to liquid. In this case, the chip's heat is what is needed to vaporize the water inside the VC, and as soon as the vapor touches the surface in contact with the waterblock, it will condense back down.

 

So basically a finstack is meaningless in this setup since before the vapor has any chance of reaching the finstack via a heatpipe, all the vapor would have condensed back before being able to make it back. Similarily having the waterblock first is also senseless since the water is not hot enough to cause the vaporization within the VC, and so you just have more empty mass ontop of a waterblock that is perfectly capable.

 

After clearing this up, the question can be boiled down to: is a VC more efficient than a copper waterblock with micro fins? The question is somewhat valid since VC looks like itborrows on some aspects of "phase change cooling" and may give you the impression it may be better than just a slab of copper with water flowing through it. However do note that even if the answer was "yes", in this case it is still more complicated since you have an additional thermal layer to conduct across, but for now let us assume that it is very good (ie the VC will be soldered to the WB).

 

Now I will be quoting lots from the article below:

https://www.qats.com/cms/2010/12/10/vapor-chambers-and-their-use-in-thermal-management-part-2-of-2/

 

Now, right off the bat, there are some immediate flaws in the idea, since VC as alluded to above, needs some heat for it to even start working properly. If the insides of the VC are below 35 degrees, since its simply acting as an insulating layer for the WB, which is no good, whereas the WB will always remove heat from the chip as long as the water temperature is below the chip temperature.

Quote

However, if the vapor temperature is below a certain value, such as 35 ^oC, then the vapor space effective thermal conductivity will drop drastically, impacting the junction temperature.

 

Furthermore, if you have a very efficient way to remove the heat from the VC or a WB (which in this case we do, since water), then the conductivity across a solid copper block is as good as a VC of the same thickness.

Quote

In other words, if a large (80 x 80 mm) liquid cooled plate is used, a solid copper block will provide the same performance as a vapor chamber.

This of course then compounds onto the fact that with the VC+WB setup you have to worry about the interface between the VC and WB, whereas the WB only setup has one less layer.

[Mick Naughty]

Don’t see the point of it. What type of consumer could this possibly be geared towards?

[GeT_drAWPed]

This isn't quite what you're looking for, but it is a hybrid aio

Cryorig A40

[criznittle]

On 11/19/2019 at 7:31 AM, GeT_drAWPed said:

This isn't quite what you're looking for, but it is a hybrid aio

Cryorig A40

Ah, I think i've seen that one before - perhaps that's where the idea originated from, seeing that at some point.
iirc the reviews for its cooling ability weren't excellent.

 

On 11/19/2019 at 4:26 AM, For Science! said:

(edited for time)

Thanks for sharing - I didn't know the science behind why this wouldn't work, I just assumed one could split the cooling capabilities between the two and achieve slightly better thermals. I guess there's no design where you could achieve this?
That said, what about 1 water block 2 radiators? This sounds more plausible, and if you have the extra space for it, why not? 4 tubes, 2 in, 2 out - splitting the water and the cooling, you should achieve better results, no?

I'm just pondering how CPU cooling might advance in coming years as processors have more cores and become more power hungry. 360mm radiators can only push a 3900x so far, which isn't far at all.

 

On 11/19/2019 at 7:14 AM, Mick Naughty said:

Don’t see the point of it. What type of consumer could this possibly be geared towards?

I'd say it's geared towards those who would sacrifice looks and pay a little extra to squeeze out all of the performance they can - assuming you can get better clocks out of it. Otherwise, there's no point to it.

[Mick Naughty]

2 minutes ago, criznittle said:

I'd say it's geared towards those who would sacrifice looks and pay a little extra to squeeze out all of the performance they can - assuming you can get better clocks out of it. Otherwise, there's no point to it.

Sounds like regular water cooling to me.

[Letgomyleghoe]

On 11/18/2019 at 8:14 PM, criznittle said:

Does a hybrid AIO/Air Cooler exist?? I've looked around and haven't found one that quite does what i'm detailing.
You should get both the effects of the heat pipes and fins with fans removing heat, and the liquid flowing through the block to move heat to the radiator.

Someone must have attempted it by now, but would there be a real difference in heat dissipation?

I attached a very rough MS Paint depiction of what i'm talking about. (i know the heat pipes would run down to the bottom, but my ms paint skills don't allow for this to look right)

in the yee old days there was combos like that, on my moms computer she built on new years eve 2000 there is a combo water + air cooler that looks very similair to your design

[Deuteronomy93]

Maybe time for some DIY:

 

[criznittle]

On 11/22/2019 at 5:28 PM, Deuteronomy93 said:

Maybe time for some DIY:

 

lol yeah, i've seen this guy's work before, and this frankencooler. he does some fun creative stuff, but often times not very effective.
maybe he can do something similar to what i describe, though i imagine my version would require a wholly original design to work with any real gains.

 

On 11/22/2019 at 4:52 PM, scuff gang said:

in the yee old days there was combos like that, on my moms computer she built on new years eve 2000 there is a combo water + air cooler that looks very similair to your design

What, really? I'd love to see anything similar to it. So far, I can't find anything quite the same.