I like your solution but kind of wanted to share my rather silly idea. Certainly a great job though!!
Oh, they arenât, but if I were to do this I would make it the size of the fan and finstack of the heatsink and then run it really really slow at idle. The problem is that finding pumps that work at a reasonable level of power in that volume envelope is extremely difficult and I want the pump to be orientation agnostic and self priming in order to better lend it to the use case of a laptop. An impeller in theory would be better but it doesnât lend itself very well to a thin design and wouldnât work in certain orientations.
Yes, but Iâve seen the horror stories of desktop loops with mixed metals and am scared of that. If I am not trying to go for the same material I may as well do a magnesium top panel for weight reasons (1.7g/cubic centimeter vs 2.7g/cubic centimeter of aluminum). The price of stock to machine the top part out of aluminum would be $72 and for magnesium it would be closer to $180 but also way cooler. I could also do magnesium for the frame and aluminum for the finstack to min/max price as well.
You bring up a good point, but since I have access to a CNC, Iâd rather just buy the stock for all this and machine it myself.
I did some back of the napkin calculations on weight and it would be really bad if I did it full copper. Now Iâm thinking of doing maybe an aluminum/magnesium frame and an aluminum/copper heat spreader.
Asuming you prefil the loop and it doesnât leak what do you need slef priming for? And what do you need it to be direction agnostic for? Imo you would want to find the quietest pump you can find that fits. If itâs louder than the stock fan at min you got tough competition.
Well sometimes one has to overcome their fears to advance. Mixed metal loops are a solved problem and used pretty much everywhere, just use a suitable coolant.
Magnesium also has signifficantly lower thermal conductivity than alu and you may have a harder time finding a suitable coolant. Copper alu cooling systems are abundant and so are well provlen coolants, I donât know If I ever heard of a copper magnesium (or copper alu magnesium) one. Magnesium would definitely be pretty baller though.
Some of them also involed cnc, the soviets milled channels into copper, filled the channels with conductive wax and electroplated over that.
Did you also do some calculations on the performance? Intuitively I am not sure if you can beat the fan at min without a thick af lid with razor thin fins and a pump that is likely louder.
Why not use metal 3D print?
Well, if you have to worry about the orientation of the laptop at all times it limits the portability because youâll never not have air in the loop. I need it to be direction agnostic because most pumps are designed to work at 90 degree intervals and not at funny angles. I donât know of any pumps that would fit quite honestly, so I would be making one custom.
i suppose 
True, you right. Maybe magnesium for the frame that touches the back of the LCD so it doesnât put undue thermal stress on it? If I were to do magnesium I would electroplate it with copper or aluminum.
This is kind of crazy and could actually work. Assuming I masked off the other parts of the system for tolerance reasons I would probably deposit about 1/32 of aluminum onto it for durability reasons⌠thats kind of crazy. I could realistically make this 2.4mm thick (For reference the original top cover is 1mm thick).
No, because Iâm silly and donât want to have my bubble bursted by such things as âperformanceâ /j
in all honesty I donât know how accurately I could do the calculations even if I knew how
You can actually make airless loops pretty easily, aios do that all the time.
Again, in an airless loop orientation doesnât matter much, aios do that all the time too.
Itâs not that low a thermal conductivity to be a suitable insulator either XD.
Does alu or copper even stick to magnesium?
Well it did work for the soviets. Pretty high effort though compared to the 3d printing of today.
You could claw back some of that thickness by getting an oled panel if one in the right size existed. Then again oleds really donât like it warm.
Fair enough, tbh I really want to see this done even if I think it wonât work very well, it certainly would be cool af.
Also fair enough
Yes, but they arenât truly airless. This is why the pump should never be the highest point in a aio or custom cooling loop.
Yes, this is true, but magnesium alloy is about half of the conductivity as 6061 aluminum and lighter as well, so in theory one third instead of half of the heat would be going to the back of the screen. Its more about channeling more heat to the back of the laptop and not the back of the screen where it canât be dissipated.
It can be done.
I know it did but I just didnât think of this and itâs really interesting. I donât want to do 3d printing (even with metal) because SLS/SLA/FDM can leave small, performance decreasing voids in the part even at 100% infill. Also, metal additive manufacturing has a limited set of materials that tend to be more expensive than subtractive and then electroplating.
I really donât care about the extra 1.4 millimeter in terms of space savings. Itâs about weight mostly rather than space IMO. Also, maybe the full plate could be 1.8-1.6mm thick. On second thought, the inside wall doesnât really need to be thicker to prevent dents and the water channels can be thinner and wider in order to accommodate this.
Exactly. It would be more of a proof of concept. Iâve had this idea for awhile and wanted to make it (after all, the top cover is extra surface area)
At this point, this project idea is akin to a custom water cooling loop for a low-end desktop. Itâs not really worth the price to performance at this scale, requires more maintenance, and is dubious whether or not it will have a measurable performance improvement.
one more thing. While we have been arguing over what type of pump to use, maybe I could find a way to make the loop work by capillary action rather than a mechanical pump. I donât want it to be the low boiling point fluid style of pumpless liquid cooling because that requires that the block is the lowest point in the system which it may not always be, but maybe capillary action could work.
AIOs are actually usually fine with that and the main issue with having the pump at the highest part of a loop in a custom build is filling it is a pain, after itâs filled it works just fine (definitely never done that before XD).
Then why not make that bit out of POM or some other plastic, less galvanic corrosion concerns and less thermal conductivity. Also probably cheaper and easier to machine.
That might be cool but also would likely require a lot more research. Heatpipes use capillary action for the return flow afaik, not sure you can make that work both directions.
i donât want to have to worry about it and iâve seen some people have problems with it even though iâve never done it
because plastic isnât cool like metal lmao
no it would be in one direction in a loop and i think it could be kind of cool.
The sort of pump to use would be like they use in medical equipment with a flexible tube in a semicircular constraining space, and then run rollers around the inner side of the tube so it squashes the tube against the outer constraint. This type of pump is direction and orientation agnostic. There needs to be at least three rollers as at least two need to be squashing the pipe at any point in time. They rotate quite slowly, but you donât need a great liquid flow rate anyway.
Ah, yes, this is a Peristaltic pump that Iâm describing. These should be quiet, I donât see why they would be noisy. Should be practical to fit one of those in the space of a fan.
A much better cooling could be achieved on bending the heatpipe from the top to the bottom and put the fins on top to get a bigger contact surface to the waterblock. But I think I am not able to build this myself.
Does anyone know if there is some company that make custom heatpipes for an affordable price?