sourcing a copper heatsink

FatRakoon · 12 Jun 2016 at 19:41

Im on the lookout for a pair of heatsinks for my server.

The ones on it are Aluminium and they are 60mm x 50mm and are 10mm thick.

I have fitted a pair of 40mm fans onto them, and this has helped massively, but I realyl feel that a pair of copper sinks will be the real solution to my heat issues.

I have not been able to find any copper replacements.

I am looking for a thickness of at most 15mm but the size is fairly specific of 60x50

Anyone know where I can get these from?

Thanks in advance.

pastymuncher · 13 Jun 2016 at 16:39

Have you checked Ebay? I quite often pick up cheap copper 1u coolers to cut up as heatsinks and usually pay less than £6 each. The last pair I picked up were a pair of Dynatron C34's for £1.99 each.At 78x60x12mm they are a bit bigger than what you are looking for plus also for AMD sockets (you don't say which socket you need) but excellent value. You could always buy something a little longer/wider than you need and cut it down with a hacksaw.

FatRakoon · 14 Jun 2016 at 13:03

Sorry I dont need it for a specific socket, its for the heatsinks on the mobo, and they need to be 60x50x??mm - I did state that sorry.

Yes, it does look likely that I will buy bigger and grind down, and yes, I have seen a number of ebay options, but I was more hoping to buy without the need to grind down.

Ill have a look for some dynatron stuff but from what I have seen, they are copper plated at best and I dont want that.

pastymuncher · 14 Jun 2016 at 13:30

The ones I have bought are all solid copper and extremely heavy. I wouldn't have posted else as I saw you wanted copper. I have cut several of them down now and it only takes seconds with a cutting disk on a angle grinder. Easy enough to do with a hacksaw as well. All you need to do with either method is lightly file the cut edges to clean them up.

FatRakoon · 14 Jun 2016 at 17:41

I have not come across any at £1.99 thats for sure.

Any chance of a link or two?

pastymuncher · 14 Jun 2016 at 18:53

Just checked and the guy I got them from isn't a seller anymore. Not surprised really as there is no way he made any money on them and he had loads for sale. No other cheap ones either at the moment apart from a Cooljag that's up to £5.99 at this time. Well worth keeping an eye on ebay though.

What about a basic water loop? A couple of older gpu core only blocks maybe?

FatRakoon · 14 Jun 2016 at 19:35

Ah, so no wonder I failed to find.

Water loop? I had given that some thought actually... The CPUs are G34 and I am currently using a pair of huge Noctua coolers and they seem to be doing a great job, but they dont half dominate the thing when there is two of them.

This is an old pic in the Thermaltake Armor case.
As you can see, if I use a VGA card, then I dont have much room at all to cool the chipset heatsinks. Its currently not using any cards and instead using the O/B Matrox VGA but I would really love to use this setup as a main PC too, and not just as a Server because I am seriously struggling to justify buying the thing... It cost more than a small car for heavens sake.

pastymuncher · 15 Jun 2016 at 10:17

If you are thinking of using it as a main pc then going down the watercooling route is worth considering. The thing is, do you have room for the pump/rads/res? I reckon a couple of old style NB blocks would do the chipsets ok. The ones with the outlets on the very edge of the block. They are cheap enough second hand and something like the EK NB4 (there are different versions) would be ideal. Alternatively you could do what I did and adapt a block for your needs.

I needed a better way of cooling my gpu's vrm's so that I could get rid of the 200mm fan on the side panel. I picked up a set of brand new watercool heatkiller mb-set Asus Z87 LT vrm blocks from OCUK's Ebay outlet for the absolute bargain price of £9.99. I then bought a 200x500mm sheet of copper plate for a tenner and cut that to the size and shape that I needed to fit the card. I took the base off the longest of the two vrm blocks and marked the holes for the screws so that I could just screw the copper plate to the base of the block instead of the baseplate. It works a treat and no leaks either.

Alphacool does their Smart Motion cooling plates for chipsets as well but you would need to replace the baseplates because it doesn't look like they do any big enough. If you want to make a start there is a EK Supremacy cpu block ending today on ebay that's hasn't even hit £3 yet.

Armageus · 15 Jun 2016 at 10:51

FatRakoon said:
Water loop? I had given that some thought actually... The CPUs are G34 and I am currently using a pair of huge Noctua coolers and they seem to be doing a great job, but they dont half dominate the thing when there is two of them.

I assume those coolers can only be mounted that way (rather than turned 90 degree)? Because if they could be turned I would point them in a row to direct the heat all in the same direction.

FatRakoon said:
This is an old pic in the Thermaltake Armor case.
As you can see, if I use a VGA card, then I dont have much room at all to cool the chipset heatsinks. Its currently not using any cards and instead using the O/B Matrox VGA but I would really love to use this setup as a main PC too, and not just as a Server because I am seriously struggling to justify buying the thing... It cost more than a small car for heavens sake.

--snip--

Could probably do with another couple of pictures, as may help with suggesting a better airflow solution.

I assume the case has a front intake fan? In which case although probably difficult I would try and tidy those cables as much as possible to improve the airflow.

May be worth populating that rear fan mount (as an exhaust), as may help draw some of the cpu and ram heat out, and pull air through front to back and over the chipset.

I assume you have tried replacing the thermal paste on the chipset heatsinks with something better?

Rather than fitting the 40mm fans directly to the chipset heatsinks, I would see if you could fasten (e.g. with cableties) a 120mm fan above the chipset e.g.

(Excuse poor picture!)

Overall volume of air is generally more important than accurate direction, as being a server board they are generally designed for server cases that place the motherboard right at the front and blow air all the way through.

I 100% know the frustration though, as made the mistake of building a dual 771 xeon as a home PC in a normal case, and ended up doing something similiar (although seem to think I had 3 fans cable tied in the end!).