silver plated copper tubing?

[shlokgtn7100]

Silver is the best metal for heat dissipation,after which is copper, can this type of tubing provide passive cooling to the coolant?? will it be better than acrylic,PETG etc??? silver plating over copper pipes is definitely possible.

[AresKrieger]

FYI when comparing copper vs silver thermal conductances silver does win but not by a large enough margin to justify the cost increase.

[Pandora]

kind of. while you could watercool with this it wont be enough to cool a system. there isnt a way you could fit enough tubing inside your case to make up for the lack of a radiator. honestly i believe the hassle wont be worth it. i would be surprised if you see a 1 degree drop in temperatures if you replaced your loops tubing with this.

[DXMember]

You'd need a really large coil of that

you would still need at least some kind of passive air going trough that coil, otherwise you'll end up with a heat bubble around the coil

 

even if the heat Exchange of the metal is really good you'll still be limited by the heatexchange of the air

 

and surface area is still the most important factor for any kind of heatsink

[Enderman]

thats not enough surface area to provide hundreds of watts of cooling

 

and just because it conducts heat better doesnt mean it magically pulls heat away from the copper tubing that's beneath

the tubing would have to be pure silver to be an improvement, not silver plated copper

the copper is still going to limit the transfer of heat between the fluid and the air

 

and you can already do passive cooling by just using a passive radiator

[shlokgtn7100]

Also silver being non reactive will stop copper from rusting or tarnishing,right??

[shlokgtn7100]

I don't want to eliminate radiators but tubing wise this could be the best performing,right??

[W-L]

Also silver being non reactive will stop copper from rusting or tarnishing,right??

 

Silver tarnishes readily like copper going black, so you would need to clear coat with a metal lacquer if you wanted to keep that bright finish if you have copper hardline. As others have said I wouldn't really consider the tubing to do much cooling since there isn't that much surface area. 

[spwath]

I don't want to eliminate radiators but tubing wise this could be the best performing,right??

No, it would be the same or worese than pure copper

[ToastyBear]

Also silver being non reactive will stop copper from rusting or tarnishing,right??

I think there is some misconception here. Elements such as gold is considered a noble metal and regarded as not very reactive. What they actually mean is this type of metal is not very reactive towards oxygen in air. This does not mean gold doesn't react to anything at all. Like any metal, gold can be used to make many many compounds. Silver is in the same boat, like literally, they are in the same metal series. Silver even tarnishes just in air.

 

So how reactive are metals towards other metals? Basically any metal can react with one another, no exceptions. The only question is how fast. You can google a chart with the "electrode potential" of each metal, and it would be measured in volts. Metals with different electrode potentials will steal or lose electrons to another metal. The greater the difference in electrode potential, the faster the reaction. Metals such as Nickle and Copper has similar electrical potential and thus shouldn't really do anything, or just really really slowly. Silver on the other than is very different from Copper and will corrode one another at an appreciable rate. A tiny silver coil wouldn't cause pits or breaks in the block but will probably tarnish the copper and silver.