Thinking about making waterblocks

Hello, my people. I have a huge array of machinery in my garage, and access to much, much more at industrial levels, and I have been wanting to put my milling skills to good use, and make some waterblocks.


Now, the manufacturing itself isn't an issue, but design and features are. I'd probably focus mostly on CPU and especially GPU blocks, for GPUs, like mine, that are non-reference, and have one, or no manufactures of waterblocks. I may dabble in mainboard blocks, or even RAM blocks, but I'm mostly looking into CPU and GPU blocks right now.

What aesthetics do you guys want to see in blocks, feature wise, and aesthetically? I am a huge fan of raw copper, either a mirror finish, or even a brushed-type look, but nickel plating looks really nice too. There are even some acrylic blocs that don't look bad. Do you want removeable/swapable jet plates, for different CPUs and such? I want a really diverse mounting system, that works with essentially every socket in and out of use. I think I may mirror the MIPS style of block in terms of a flat, super clean aesthetic, but I may try lots of different looks.

What do you think I could sell these for? I'm thinknig the standard $75 for CPU blocks, and $110 for GPU blocks, which will be FC.


Let me know what you think, and what you want!

Cheers :)

Full cover block for the Asus HD 7870 DCIIv2 would be pretty nice. The v2 isn't a reference card and water block manufacturers are stubborn and wont build blocks for non-reference cards, unless there is demand for it.

What do you want aesthetically, though? A full copper block would be awesome, but not to everyone's taste, or color scheme.

I'm really leaning towards a brushed copper aesthetic, with super clean and flat blocks. Finall, something that would match Noctua!

As for GPU FC blocks, do you want an EK style, which is a super square, almost entire covering of the PCB, or semething like a Heatkiller GPU block, with angles, and more like 70 to 65% of the PCB covered?

I think that a completely plain, flat colored GPU block would actually look nice. No logos or lables, or fancy designs. Just flat. 

Its simple, and would look awesome. 

I'm really a sucker for full copper as an entire slab of copper is thermically more conductive than the copper base plate/aluminum slab water block construction of consumer grade thermal solutions availible today. You get thermal transition inefficiencies when you go from a copper plate into a aluminum waterway as the heat the coolant absorbs is through whichever metallic medium it runs through. The copper base plates tranfer a large portion of the heat but the entire assembly absorbs heat from whatever components on the PCB they are touching as well.

Ideally, I like a water block that covers all of the important components, GPU VRM, RAM VRM, RAM itself. Which in the case of the HD 7870 DCIIv2 encompasses pretty much the entire PCB.

I'm a huge fan of clean blocks, as well.

I have decided that my "band" or "image" will be the full copper blocks, a thing not that common today. Brushed copper will probably be the main look I go for, but I will have some polished copper as well.

I think that would look great. By the time you get a store up and running, ill probably have enough saved to expand my loop. :D.

Will probably do a seperate loop for my gpu, though. If I have this case. Maybe a single 120 rad for my GPU..

Oo, well, I'm about to get a new computer setup soon... I may eventually go full closed-loop setup (or open-loop setup, whichever one means the custom setup) and I really like brushed metal looks.... Im going to do this as I would really like to overclock, eventually... But I cant spend like $500 on the entire setup, I'd have to buy everything separately, over time...

Oh, and when you do get these ready for sell, post some pictures? :o that'd be awesome. And something like the phobya acrylic waterblock, where you can see the fluids, would be pretty cool, so if I was to use a red fluid, it'd show red... Or if I used a clear one, it'd be clear.... Yeah, a see-through waterBlock would be cool.

The development process will be well documented here in a build log :)

It can easily cost much less than $500, too. $300 if you buy creatively.

I got my kit for $144. Decent for Just CPU, will need to upgrade for GPU, though.

I'd get a 240 for your GPU, just for some serious room for overclocking, unless it is a thick 120, with nice fans.

I have a voltage locked 7950 :( Not limited by heat, lol.

Fine, have it your way.

Which 7950 is it?

Heh, well, I keep seeing so many high-end closed-loop systems go up to like, $1000. So, yeah... I don't know much about watercooling yet, as I'm not doing a ton of research on it... I do know what's required if I wanted to make one, but otherwise, I'm clueless. 

You can easily drop 2k or more on a loop, or you could get a $144 kit.

Bloop.

Damn Sapphire, making non referance shit.

So, I finally found my copper blocks. They're old 12,000 Amp grounds I got from a friend that worked at Toyota, years and years ago. They've been sitting in my garage for years, now.

Great, high-quality, very thick blocks of copper to work with. 12 fucking thousand Amps; that's a lot of current (not power, that's different. It's current, or I). Great blocks to start with; I had forgotten that I even had them.

Drop me a price :P once you get the hang of it.