Not really Extreme...

[Daveburt714]

Just thought I'd share my work for a Saturday...

I have this old '86 Chevette heater core that I built my first water cooling rig with (~ 2001?).
The performance of it was actually damn good, so decided to keep it and upgrade my bench rig today...
First off, I decided to change it to a Push/Pull configuration. The heater core is 6"x6" but 140mm fans are only slightly smaller, so I bought 2 140mm NZXT fans and and set it up like that...

Building the extension cables for the pump and fans took more time than anything else!
I was hoping to get some time to test it tonight, but it's late... At least everything seems to be working OK and My test bench will be ready to go next time around.

Here's a few pics of my new WC Test bench:






Oh well... I know it's nothing impressive, but I spent quite a few hours building the shelf, wiring the cables and re-doing the hoses...
Plus, if I change hardware, I have the coathanger thing to hang the block on while I work on the rig.

[Petra]

Even though the fans are about the same size as the HC, build some shrouds to give some space between the HC's face and the fans (it'll improve performance a bit). Here's what I ended up building for a heater core several years ago: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...-a-heater-core....

[GliderHR]

&d try to seal the border of the fans to the radiator fins with a foam seal (like for windows) to minimize pressure lost.
btw - your rig looks good

[Daveburt714]

That was a great job you did with those shrouds Petra! Not sure I could do work that nice...
When I originally built that cooler I used a Tupperware sandwich box as a shroud with a 120mm fan (and weather stripping) in a push only config.
Later, I upgraded the fan to one of those thick Scythe 3000rpm screamers with the same shroud.

All along though, the performance of that (cheap/copper) heater core seemed to dissipate heat well, so I've never been able to get rid of it...
I'm sure adding shroud's would help, but I ran the bench rig (FX-8350/ASRock EX9) for 7 days @ 4.7 during SCW.
It never through any errors, and max temps were ~62c socket and 54c cores with the current fan only config.

I'm getting a little OT here, but a friend of mine bought an electric AC/furnace for his garage.
He's not using the a/c part so he offered to give me the condenser coils for helping him install the furnace...
Being the ghetto cooling nerd that I am, I'm thinking of putting the coils in my attic with a box (window) fan for winter use.
I'm just not sure my little pump will be able to push the water up another 4 feet...

Do you think it could handle it?

[Splave]

pretty cool if you ask me homebrew ftw

[Ace123]

Reminds me of when people first started water cooling, people were going to napa buying heater cores to all kinds of stuff. I remember seeing a guy use a huge oil or tranny cooler and a house fan.