Hypothetical Cooling.

I think it would need a really astonishing fan for it to work well, as the resistance to airflow would be considerable.

Open cell copper foam inside a waterblock is something worth considering though. Not a chance I'm able to make any though
 
JonJ678 said:
I think it would need a really astonishing fan for it to work well, as the resistance to airflow would be considerable.

Open cell copper foam inside a waterblock is something worth considering though. Not a chance I'm able to make any though
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This.

Also, you'd have to look into how flaky it is, can't risk having aluminium filings dropping off and landing on other components.
 
Metal foam doesn't exactly shed little bits of metal under such ow pressures, it's made by bubbling gas through the metal as it solidifies.

Were it a concern, briefly turning a pressure washer on it would remove anything that a water cooling pump possibly could do.

Main argument against is financial, I dread to think how hard it must be to make consistent foamed copper.
 
I think it would suck.

The air would just heat up in the cells and you would be stuffed.
Putting a fan on wouldn't help as it's just provides to much resistance.

even in water the resistance would be huge.
 
Well there's only one way to find out...

It wouldn't be that hard to take the fins of a heatsink and drill holes in the foam for the heatpipes...
 
What? The idea here was a large block of foamed metal. Just using a small piece for the base of a normal heatsink would absolutely ruin temperatures

Resistance depends on the size of the holes, it's probably possible to make a waterblock which outperforms the current ones significantly based around foamed copper with the appropriate distribution of bubbles. It would absolutely love pressure, and probably take more than a ddc to get the performance out of it. However a prototype would cost considerably more than just using phase, and I can't see it being brought to market for less than a few hundred even if a lot were expected to sell
 
Hmm, would make an interesting project for a DIYer. Just not sure where you can get hold of small quantities of it, although a company called Metafoam already claims that it's used in heatpipes and as cooling for electronics, which, I'm assuming, refers to much larger scale uses than a CPU heatsink. Still, it's worth experimenting with.
 
It would become terminally blocked with dust within weeks. Fancy taking it off every couple of weeks to rinse under the tap? Plus, how are you going to efficiently bond the heat pipes to what is essentially a randon mesh? The dust alone make this a non starter surely?
 
Bubo said:
It would become terminally blocked with dust within weeks. Fancy taking it off every couple of weeks to rinse under the tap? Plus, how are you going to efficiently bond the heat pipes to what is essentially a randon mesh? The dust alone make this a non starter surely?
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Waterblocks. :p
 
What, you suggesting attaching some of this stuff to a water block? That's even more daft. As far as I can tell the OP is talking about a normal fan sink made out of this stuff.
 
Bubo said:
What, you suggesting attaching some of this stuff to a water block? That's even more daft. As far as I can tell the OP is talking about a normal fan sink made out of this stuff.
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Yup. The idea came to me lying in bed, so I decided to check out if the foam existed. I pictured something along the lines of a TRUE but with open-cell copper/aluminium foam. I imagine it would cling to the heatpipes quite well if the drill holes were the right size. And if it really obstructs airflow that much you could just drill some smaller holes through it to help air pass through.

Surface area would be fantastic and heat would travel quickly through the thinness of the metal.

The only real problem with testing it, is finding small amounts of the stuff, and having to find the right density of foam/cell size etc etc.
 
I'm pretty sure air is a lost cause here, fans wont push through it.

@Bubo, nearly. Most waterblocks have an array of slits or pins to increase surface area over the core. The idea is using this instead. At its most crude, take a cast rectangular block, so the edges are solid copper and the middle is foamed, drill two 11.8mm holes in the top and pump water in one and let it come out the other.

Enormous surface area, possibly a really mad amount of restriction. The design would obviously be refined to a smaller amount of foamed copper over the core rather than just spraying in one hold and hoping for the best.

So no, not just strapping it onto the top of a waterblock. That would be daft
 
Or even just replace the 1mm of fins/pins with 1mm of foam on a cental inlet style block.
should cut down on restriction but make for very turblent water (removeing need for impingment plate)
Getting a good thermal connection to the baseplate will be the problem
 
It all depends on how much air was passed through the metal while it was cooling. Not much and the air isn't going to get through, too much and the surface area won't be big enough. Certainly worth experimenting though.
 
shadowscotland said:
Getting a good thermal connection to the baseplate will be the problem
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That's the cunning part to using the casting. Foamed plastic is used as artificial wood, it's only foamed on the inside because the edge was up against a mould. It fractures strangely but is otherwise fairly convincing. So as long as you used a piece of this for the baseplate, and milled around the edge to render it flat, you'd have a copper square with however thick a layer of foamed copper you liked prodtruding in the centre


^You don't pass air through it, anything with oxygen in pumped through molten metals is very obviously going to oxidise madly

I still don't really believe you can do this with copper, but I don't know if it's still sticky when molten or not
 
Natima said:
Yup. The idea came to me lying in bed, so I decided to check out if the foam existed. I pictured something along the lines of a TRUE but with open-cell copper/aluminium foam. I imagine it would cling to the heatpipes quite well if the drill holes were the right size. And if it really obstructs airflow that much you could just drill some smaller holes through it to help air pass through.

Surface area would be fantastic and heat would travel quickly through the thinness of the metal.

The only real problem with testing it, is finding small amounts of the stuff, and having to find the right density of foam/cell size etc etc.
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Did you miss the bit in the Wiki article where it said conductivity would be negatively impacted?

The cost involved with metal foams would be - as already posted - prohibitive. Then would come the inevitable issues associated with machining such a block/heatsink.

Good cooling relies on transferring the heat from the contact point with the CPU. This could be achieved through copper heatpipes transferring the heat to the aluminimum foam. Getting the heat out of that particular element efficiently would be the hard bit: like any other foam, the bubbles don't necessarily line up. Even if you drill holes in the sucker, that won't make it anywhere near as good as a TRUE/etc.

To facilitate ultimate transfer away from the CPU die, the material needs to be as conductive as possible: a directional graphite block would be infinitely better for heat transfer, and pumping water through this would be better still.

there is a reason alunimium foam is not used in thermal applications at this point...
 
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