Possible ghetto Zalman heatpipe mod

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 3:05 am

I previously had my hard disk watercooled on the sides using a custom block I soldered from some copper sheet and copper pipes. This was all wrapped up in magic fleece and I was pretty happy with the low noise levels emitted, while the drive temperatures were great.

When I moved back to air cooling (I got fed up with the hassle of watercooling when my pump died), I ended up investing in a silentmaxx enclosure, which I don't think does as good a job of reducing drive noise as my old watercooled enclosure, while the drive temperatures are quite a bit higher.

It struck me that one of the things the zalman cooler does well is cooling the sides of the drive. If it was possible to solder a large aluminium heatsink onto the heatpipes, I think you could wrap the hard disk in some noise dampening foam, with it still cooled well by the heatpipes. Obviously, the zalman is still poor at reducing vibration vs. suspension, so I might have to suspend the whole thing.

Is this worth trying? If I'm not being clear, I can provide some high quality (:oops:) MS Paint drawings. It's also entirely possible that someone has already tried/suggested this, and that my forum search skills are too poor to have found it.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:02 am

Search the forums for bitumenbox. That is fairly close to your idea.

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:34 am

Brilliant - thanks for that link. I clearly haven't been lurking enough since I missed that. I'll post piccies up if I ever finish it, as well as comparing it to my silentmaxx enclosure.