Feser's New Lineup

[Waterlogged]

I've never seen anyone show that we've reached a theoretical limit for heat transfer through a radiator. I've seen it said a couple of time, but not shown. Have I missed this?

It seems as though they've applied an industrial solution with what seems to be some science in it. I'm very curious. I'm extremely curious to see if the possible improvement justifies the expected price tag. In my experience, good engineering effort can usually always come up with a better solution. The real problem is usually justifying the cost (including development time). If you take their previous line as a benchmark though, we may see anything spectacular except a price and another effective pre-release campaign.

OK, giving the benefit of the doubt, let's say these rads are copper tubes. It's still the same transfer method within the the loop as if you had an X-changer. Copper base block sucks the heat away from CPU and transfers to water, water then carries to copper tubes in rad where it transfers to the tubes which in turn transfer to air. . .this process hasn't changed...I can't really see where there is room for improvement using the same materials. The only wild card(s) here is the flow rate within the loop because it is now going through a round tube instead of a flattened oval one and how well the rifling can do it's job in creating turbulence within the entire tube...hmm, a thought just occurred to me as I was typing that. The flow may become laminar in a spiral motion if certain conditions are met, what those conditions are I'm not sure (high or low flow rate) just yet but, it does seem theoretically possible.

The Nano plating shouldn't even be considered as having any effect on thermal transfer because it's just that, plating on a nano level from the info I've been able to find.

[Chris Beard]

I think the making sure the water doesn't 'stick' to the outside of the walls is key. I think that's exactly what they're trying to do. I read something once about charging both sides of a metal plate when actively cooling it. The idea was to get the 'skin' of air to move accross the plate rather than sticking to it, at a molecular level. Apparently this worked really well - but it was a sort of non-comercial research thing.

I'm confused about the tubes - in the HWLabs link I posted they clearly said that the mixed metals problem was resolved by the nano-coating. But Skinnee says they're not alu in the water path so I guess I sit corrected

[Church]

At the end probably things won't get quiet down unless someone cuts one of their rads to see material used in tubes. Hearing here few times how much even 1x120 rad of theirs will cost .. it will take some time for brave to step up

[Elmy]

Someone here has a 100 dollars to blow on a 120X1 to cut it open. But it might not be necessary after we get some performance numbers. After it comes out that they are only a few degrees better and quite more expensive than the rest of the market the only ppl buying them will be the ppl with the biggest e-peen and noobs of the watercooling world.

[Church]

It's not just about performance, also how much maintenance and corrosion prevention will be needed with these rads. Also let me remind that using antifreeze type coolants (often used with mixed metal LC loops) might worsen a little bit cooling because of worse thermal properties then distilled. IF inner surface of rad watertubes is aluminium i'll probably wouldn't trust claims of feser about that being irrelevant because of their nano-mumbo-jumbo. Hasn't zalman claimed that anodised aluminium has no corrosion issues? Imho same story.

[Gamekiller]

I spoke with Martin from TFC today, yes Skinnee Labs will be the first review world-wide.

So skinnee has one

No aluminum in the water path.

and he said that ^

It's not just about performance, also how much maintenance and corrosion prevention will be needed with these rads. Also let me remind that using antifreeze type coolants (often used with mixed metal LC loops) might worsen a little bit cooling because of worse thermal properties then distilled. IF inner surface of rad watertubes is aluminium i'll probably wouldn't trust claims of feser about that being irrelevant because of their nano-mumbo-jumbo. Hasn't zalman claimed that anodised aluminium has no corrosion issues? Imho same story.

So there shouldn't be any alu touching water? That's just what I've gathered from this thread unless I missed something.

[meanmoe]

I think the making sure the water doesn't 'stick' to the outside of the walls is key. I think that's exactly what they're trying to do. I read something once about charging both sides of a metal plate when actively cooling it. The idea was to get the 'skin' of air to move accross the plate rather than sticking to it, at a molecular level. Apparently this worked really well - but it was a sort of non-comercial research thing.

I'm confused about the tubes - in the HWLabs link I posted they clearly said that the mixed metals problem was resolved by the nano-coating. But Skinnee says they're not alu in the water path so I guess I sit corrected

There was an update to that HWlabs article that said it's unknown. If Skinnee says there's none then there's none. Plus, why would they go to all the trouble and then make this mistake.

Also, the phenomenon of water 'sticking' to the sides of the radiator is due to a fluid boundary layer. To increase heat transfer you'd want to reduce the boundary layer. Here's a decent primer with history on it by J.D. Anderson Jr. He's written a number of good fluids and aerodynamics books. I have 4 of his books on my book shelf.
http://www.aps.org/units/dfd/resourc...no12p42_48.pdf

[Monkey Puzzled]

this nano coating on molecular level will make a real revolution in watercooling, just imagine that from now never corrosion will happen if mix copper with alu

You realise it's almost certainly marketing BS, right?

It would be nice to see some proper testing done. The tubes look very very thick compared to flattened tubes in most current radiators. Either The internal bore is massive, which will greatly lessen heat transfer to the radiator cooling surface (since so much water is away from the metal surface), or else the cold-pressing of aluminium over copper pipe inside means the tube walls together are really thick, which will mean a larger temperature gradient across that wall. Either way doesn't look great for heat transfer.

As for claims of "round tubes for easier airflow across them"... that's just laughable tbh.

Why are they using aluminium anyway? It has much worse thermal conductivity than copper. Why are we expected to pay over the odds for a an inferior material?

The rifling idea sounds good. The rest sounds crap.

[MagisD]

Aluminum has better thermal transfer but other problems aka corrorsion inability to be made into fitting etc costeffectively. So you end up mixing metals and that's just a timebomb in you comp.

That's why companies kept trying to use it but unless you can do you entire loop with it. As in there the best parts on the market it fails.

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[lowfat]

Aluminum has better thermal transfer but other problems aka corrorsion inability to be made into fitting etc costeffectively. So you end up mixing metals and that's just a timebomb in you comp.

That's why companies kept trying to use it but unless you can do you entire loop with it. As in there the best parts on the market it fails.

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No it doesn't. The only benenfit of aluminum is weight and cost.

[Monkey Puzzled]

Aluminum has better thermal transfer but other problems aka corrorsion inability to be made into fitting etc costeffectively. So you end up mixing metals and that's just a timebomb in you comp.

That's why companies kept trying to use it but unless you can do you entire loop with it. As in there the best parts on the market it fails.

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No. Companies use aluminium because it's cheap and easy to machine/manufacture. It's also much lighter. It has worse thermal transfer; about twice as poor as copper.

[Waterlogged]

No it doesn't. The only benenfit of aluminum is weight and cost.

No. Companies use aluminium because it's cheap and easy to machine/manufacture. It's also much lighter. It has worse thermal transfer; about twice as poor as copper.

Actually, only 1 rad has used copper tubes and fins, that was the X-Changer. Everything else used brass tubes, copper fins and aluminum does have a higher thermal transfer than brass.

[MagisD]

Ok so I was mistaken. Gona have google more.

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[turtletrax]

So far the only person that has any sort of contact with feser said no Alu in flowpath.

[Monkey Puzzled]

Actually, only 1 rad has used copper tubes and fins, that was the X-Changer. Everything else used brass tubes, copper fins and aluminum does have a higher thermal transfer than brass.

True, though I don't think I ever said otherwise. Didn't testing show though that there's very little measurable difference between the X-changer and say a pa radiator? The distance the heat has to go through brass is tiny to get to the fins, and the surface area of the tubes is very small compared to that of the copper fins, so brass probably doesn't make much difference.

[Factotum]

copper or not?

[Monkey Puzzled]

Not I reckon.

Going by their figures from the volume held by different sized radiators in the admiral line-up, the cooling tubes each have an inner diameter of roughly 1.13cm (they've rounded the figures they give slightly so difficult to be completely exact). That's really large, and with 22 of them in parallel (for the Admiral Monsta, 14 for the standard)the water speed is going to be pretty slow. Pressure drop is also probably going to be high if it has turbulent flow throughout the radiator due to the turboswirly rifling TM. Even if it does introduce turbulent flow (and given that the water is going to be travelling slowly as it goes from the watercooling tubing to 22 or 14 large bore tubes that might not be the case), lots of water is going to be far away from the pipe surface and not transferring heat effectively. I expect they've tested it to death to ensure it does get turbulent flow at normal watercooling flowrates though... Could be tested for by setting up a loop whilst measuring water pressure and flowrate and carefully adjusting the voltage until the pressure and flow suddenly drop as the water becomes turbulent.

It also doesn't look like there's much cooling surface area of the fins around the tubes;-they look pretty stubby and big gaps between the finned tubes for airflow to go instead of over the fins. Plus the air's not going to cool the fin area behind tubes very well because they're so fat they are a major obstacle to air-flow, no matter how much they insist big fat round tubes are easier for air to get round than the 1-2mm of flattened tubes. And it's aluminium. And it sounds very much like they've just acid treated the inner aluminium rifled tube to pit it and then nickel-plated it and called it "nano-technology". Pretty major drawback though if users have to compromise cooling by using anti-freeze in their loop. I guess time will tell how resistant that plating is.

It's great to see a company being innovative, but this product seems flawed in lots of ways. Would love to be proved wrong though.

[Tex707]

<snip>

Also, the phenomenon of water 'sticking' to the sides of the radiator is due to a fluid boundary layer. To increase heat transfer you'd want to reduce the boundary layer.

<snip>

I think that's exactly what they are trying to achieve with these radiators.

Please check out Hayden Swirl Cool radiators with Inner-swirl turbulators.

[AceBaran]

At least it gave all of us a nice thinking and debate \o/

[Kaldskryke]

Actually, only 1 rad has used copper tubes and fins, that was the X-Changer. Everything else used brass tubes, copper fins and aluminum does have a higher thermal transfer than brass.

Indeed. The conductivity of brass is ~110 W/mK, aluminum 250, copper 400. There could certainly be situations where there is enough brass and not enough copper that the average conductivity of the two metals is worse than aluminum.

On a one-dimensional basis, you can see by inspection that the ratio is about 50%. Most radiators have brass tubes that have much thinner walls than the length of the copper fins, so unless the brazing is particularly restrictive this should be more efficient than solid aluminum by a fair bit.

[Factotum]

for analytic: High finned tubes

[meanmoe]

True, though I don't think I ever said otherwise. Didn't testing show though that there's very little measurable difference between the X-changer and say a pa radiator? The distance the heat has to go through brass is tiny to get to the fins, and the surface area of the tubes is very small compared to that of the copper fins, so brass probably doesn't make much difference.

It's in the equation, but it most likely has less to do with distance. It's probably because the thermal resistance due to the convective boundary, water to copper and brass to air, is much greater than that of the copper to brass. but I'm just speculating... Waterlogged was speculating earlier that the brass to air term that dominates... Maybe feser knows

Indeed. The conductivity of brass is ~110 W/mK, aluminum 250, copper 400. There could certainly be situations where there is enough brass and not enough copper that the average conductivity of the two metals is worse than aluminum.

Than homogeneous Al? Why would you average?

...

XS needs a resident thermodynamicist...

[Martinm210]

It's in the equation, but it most likely has less to do with distance. It's probably because the thermal resistance due to the convective boundary, water to copper and brass to air, is much greater than that of the copper to brass. but I'm just speculating... Waterlogged was speculating earlier that the brass to air term dominates... Maybe feser knows



Than homogeneous Al? Why would you average?

...

XS needs a resident thermodynamicist...

I think there is also the soldered joint, including the solder itself or worse yet..the lack of solder. If the QC isn't kept up, I've seen some rads with every few fins or so loose without contact....and that can't be good on heat transfer either I would assume...but I'm no thermal guy either..that was actually the only math related class I dropped in college....

[meanmoe]

The way I was taught to look at it though is as a system, the broken joint wouldn't matter as much as long as it was attached - this probably isn't all that correct if there are a number of them. The solder would of course add a lot to the resistance because it scales like electrical resistance by material. That's why homogeneous is almost always better for heat transfer. Are the copper fins on the Xchanger soldered? If so, then that may have been another contributing reason to why it didn't show much difference.

I had only one true thermo class and one heat transfer class in undergrad... If not for schaums, I don't think I would've made it through them.

[MpG]

Well, the whole "All Aluminum >> Copper/brass/solder construction" concept was pushed pretty aggressively by Koolance during their darker times, and that sure didn't work out too well. I'm not sure any of our commonly used radiators could be said to be bad enough that they would get into that sort of situation.