Our answer to Zalman: 0dBA project, rev.1

IV. Corrections of mistakes.
Now, when I’ve got experience I come to the conclusion that if I could begin the work again I would do everything differently. Of course, I won’t reassemble the finished system but if you want to do something like this you should study this information. So, my capital error was overestimation the heat-conducting features of aluminum, I should say that they are very bad. You can’t absolutely remove aluminum (the main radiator is made of it), but you should use more heat-exchanging devices (and heat pipes) and you should place them evenly on a radiator base. To make a device similar to mine you’d better use bigtower cases. Such cases are the best for such a kind of construction:

Excuse me for the knotty drawing, but I hope you’ve got the idea. The radiator is installed above the mother board, that’s how all the surface of its base is available. Thermo blocks 1, 2 and 3 are transmission type: some of its heat is going to a radiator, to which their base is screwed to and the rest heat is conducted to thermo blocks 4, 5 and 6. As a result the heat is evenly spread throughout the radiator and you could lower the temperature up to 10C from my result. And you’d better make heat-exchanging devices from copper, but because this scheme is more effective than my current one you can make them from aluminum. You shouldn’t forget about to carry off the heat from the back side of the mother board – for that you can use processor radiator. There is one more advantage of such a construction – instead of using one big radiator you can use several small, for example one, that is cooling down a video card. One is for each thermo block or for each branch. They are small, but they have complex ribbings and you can buy them everywhere. But there are some minuses: you’ll need two times as many heat pipes and heat-exchanging devices. But the result is worth it.

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02.10.2005
Mortis