Honestly is there no one that can help me with this?

 

So maybe I wasn't clear enough... I mean, surely there must be someone out there with a 7970 waterblock or even just someone replacing an air cooler on a 7970...?? In the image above I need to know the heights of the different colour coded components with respect to some reference, perhaps the height of the GPU contact in green. are the RAM chips and VRM's (red) the same height? Are they the same height as the GPU maybe? Also how deep do the cavities marked in blue in order to clear the caps and other components? Also what is the height of the thick part of the standoffs marked in yellow? With this information I can model the borrom of my block, the top is a completely custom design putting to work my understanding of heat flow through different media. Please people, for the sake of science!!!!

 

Just take all the measurements you need from your card at one time instead of hoping someone will do it for you... I doubt anyones gonna take the time to do it themselves.

 

I was hoping someone was gonna take apart their card anyway and could do it then. I guess i will have to do it myself. Do you know if there are any thermal pads under the stock sink? I will have to put it back together again to finish the design so I don't want to remove the sink if I won't be able to put it back on afterwards

 

Thermal pads can be reused. They are not very sticky.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by HungryDuck

I was hoping someone was gonna take apart their card anyway and could do it then. I guess i will have to do it myself. Do you know if there are any thermal pads under the stock sink? I will have to put it back together again to finish the design so I don't want to remove the sink if I won't be able to put it back on afterwards

Quote:

Originally Posted by skatpex99

Thermal pads can be reused. They are not very sticky.

^ This. However, you should exercise caution and patience when dealing with thermal pads. They generally break/tear very easily. They're not made to be handled roughly. So be careful when removing the stock cooler and you should be fine.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by ArkAngel666

^ This. However, you should exercise caution and patience when dealing with thermal pads. They generally break/tear very easily. They're not made to be handled roughly. So be careful when removing the stock cooler and you should be fine.

Thanks for that

So I was doing a bit of research on water block and general HSF cooling on the 7970 and it looks like just about everything uses thermal pads on the RAM and VRM's. Has anyone found a cooler that makes direct contact with these components? I had the idea of machining my block to make close contact to all components and only require some TIM, is there a reason everyone is using pads apart from allowing higher machining tolerances?

Also does anyone have experience with cool laboratory liquid pro TIM? I ordered some for my CPU but it arrived late so I used AS5 instead that I had on hand, the liquid pro doesn't agree with aluminium but is it any good on GPU's? Especially the naked silicon type like AMD cards.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by HungryDuck

Thanks for that

So I was doing a bit of research on water block and general HSF cooling on the 7970 and it looks like just about everything uses thermal pads on the RAM and VRM's. Has anyone found a cooler that makes direct contact with these components? I had the idea of machining my block to make close contact to all components and only require some TIM, is there a reason everyone is using pads apart from allowing higher machining tolerances?
Also does anyone have experience with cool laboratory liquid pro TIM? I ordered some for my CPU but it arrived late so I used AS5 instead that I had on hand, the liquid pro doesn't agree with aluminium but is it any good on GPU's? Especially the naked silicon type like AMD cards.

I don't know if I've ever seen any block on any card that makes direct contact to any parts on them. As a quick guess I'd assume that there must be a medium for heat transfer to take place otherwise chips and such would burn out under stress I would believe. That's just an uneducated guess though so don't take my word for it, but I don't think I'm far off the track.

 

Good Luck.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by ArkAngel666

I don't know if I've ever seen any block on any card that makes direct contact to any parts on them. As a quick guess I'd assume that there must be a medium for heat transfer to take place otherwise chips and such would burn out under stress I would believe. That's just an uneducated guess though so don't take my word for it, but I don't think I'm far off the track.

For sure there needs to be some medium! The role of the TIM is to fill the tiny microscopic gaps on the surface of the heat sink and chip so that no air gets trapped between them since air is a terrible heat conductor. Having said that, the best TIM's have thermal conductivities far below that of the heat sink itself so that is why it's important to use only a VERY THIN LAYER since the rate of heat conduction is worse through the TIM than through the chip and sink. The thicker the TIM layer the higher will be the temperature difference between the chip and the sink and the sink. Thermal pads have a thermal conductivity similar to TIM (maybe not the really good TIM's) but they are considerably thicker which is why I was hoping to do away with them. What I meant with direct contact was that the block/sink should touch the RAM and VRM's so that only a thin layer of TIM would be needed between them and so increasing the effectiveness of the cooling system

 

subbed because this is very interesting. post a request for someone to measure over in the water cooling forum, more chance of visibility and then you can keep us updated on your progress

and welcome to OCN.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nocturin

subbed because this is very interesting. post a request for someone to measure over in the water cooling forum, more chance of visibility and then you can keep us updated on your progress

and welcome to OCN.

Thanks man, I'll try that!

 

Part of the reason no ones volunteered is both the time requirement, and that many are selling waterblocks, so to give away a design is a bit... well... silly.
Be gentle with thermal pads,
Watch out more for the things that stick up as well as the things you need to cool!

 

why don't you just buy a water block? You can't go cheap with that sort of thing. Won't help you in the long run

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoL

Part of the reason no ones volunteered is both the time requirement, and that many are selling waterblocks, so to give away a design is a bit... well... silly.
Be gentle with thermal pads,
Watch out more for the things that stick up as well as the things you need to cool!

Yeah I know I need to watch out for the other components that stick out, I managed to ge some PCB models on sketchup but none has the VRM heights, RAM and GPU are there at 1mm and 0.5 mm respectively although I would like some confirmation on that
Quote:

Originally Posted by lacrossewacker

why don't you just buy a water block? You can't go cheap with that sort of thing. Won't help you in the long run

Going cheap is more of a welcome side effect of trying to build my own, the real reason is that I want to make something based on what i think should be effective and compare it's performance to retail blocks. Just because I can! Why else would i join OCN?

 

have you thought of the "transfer chambers" deign yet?

what kind of tolerance doe your friend 5-axis machine have?

materia?

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nocturin

have you thought of the "transfer chambers" deign yet?
what kind of tolerance doe your friend 5-axis machine have?
materia?

If by "transfer chambers" you mean the top of the block where the water actually flows then yes I have a few ideas that i will sketch up and run some simulations on soon as I have the measurements for the base. I'll probably try and do some finite element modeling to refine the final product before prototyping. Material will be copper. As for the machine's tolerances I'm not sure about hard numbers I;ll find out from my friend but I'm guessing it's quite tight because everyone is raving about this machine, it was recently aqcuired for prototyping designs for the mechanical engineering faculty so hopefully it does not dissapoint. I'm guessing accuracy will be sub 100um at least, probably a bit better.

 

there are awesome block designs by a few modders @ bittech

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nocturin

there are awesome block designs by a few modders @ bittech

I'll be sure to go have a look over there and steal some ideas

 

If my wife decides to let me live after I get the rest of my parts for my loop I can try to help you out, but that wouldn't be for another 3-4 weeks probably

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rickles

If my wife decides to let me live after I get the rest of my parts for my loop I can try to help you out, but that wouldn't be for another 3-4 weeks probably

Great! I have done some snooping online and found some sketchup drawings but they are all missing the VRM heights. Thanks for being willing to help, keep me posted!