I would guess that the low surface area would lead to problems. At first it would cool very well because of the huge thermal mass, but once it reaches thermal equilibrium the cooling would be quite weak.
You’re looking at about a half hour per kilogram of copper to raise it by 50 °C with 100W of heat.
Actual delta from ambient to thermal limit will typically be a little higher than that, but so is processor wattage on mid-to-high performance CPUs, so I’m happy enough with that as a ballpark estimate.
Someone else estimated that block as 4.5kg, so you’ve got something close to two and a half hours of cooling from an ambient start.
If that block is roughly 4.5cm x 4.5cm x 25cm then the volume of it is about 500cm³ which translates to 4.5kg of copper. At 11€/kg that makes about 50 euros.
Probably around $150 worth of copper there, but you’ll have to spend about twice that to get it because it comes in a larger size you’ll have to cut down.
My guess is that will only work until it saturates with heat. Some liquid cooling setups are also like that, where the rad isn’t capable of dissipating heat fast enough to prevent the whole thing from overheating, but it’ll work fine for a while because the loop itself can absorb a bunch of heat before it stops being able to take any more. Then they probably blame the chip maker for running too hot even with liquid cooling when their liquid cooling setup is actually less effective than the stock cooler or their case has horrible airflow and would choke any size or number of rads. But their reservoir acts as a heat buffer, so it takes 30 mins to even realize that, but they’ve already concluded it works.
Weight, cost, and it’s probably not effective for the long haul. The mass of a copper ingot like that will work like a heatsink, but it has a very low surface area for the energy it can absorb. So it’ll heat up to a point that is uncomfortable for the CPU, then fail to radiate that energy out to the air effectively.
As a test-bench temporary heatsink, this is actually kind of inspired. No fans, to fussy clips, just stack a copper brick on the CPU, run some benchmarks, and then turn it all off.
Incredibly unwieldy. Real quick estimate of volume puts that at around 1.75kg of copper, so it wouldn’t be possible to mount in a vertical PC case orientation (ie the majority of consumer PC cases) without significant (expensive) modifications to both the mobo socket mount and the case, else its weight would snap the motherboard, or just slowly flex it until traces failed.
It may not even be able to be used vertically like that for very long or it will compress and damage the CPU / socket / mobo. Just as an example, the weight limit of the thermal solution (HSF/water chamber heatsink/etc) for socket LGA 1700 is 950g.
Copper is actually ~25-250X leas efficient at transferring heat than a heat pipe and convection is hundreds of times more efficient than radiation at transferring heat and the fins on a heat sink would have hundreds of times more surface area for dissipating heat all that is to say this might work but it would be orders of magnitude less efficient than a standard heat sink.
Looks nice. Why they don’t sell PCs with cooling like that? What are the downsides?
I would guess that the low surface area would lead to problems. At first it would cool very well because of the huge thermal mass, but once it reaches thermal equilibrium the cooling would be quite weak.
I’d also think moving your PC will rip your CPU right off the motherboard
The trick is not to move the PC, but rather the copper block, which just happens to have a PC attached to it.
So, you’re saying that putting blocks of copper on everything in a PC will automatically shed unnecessary parts, building a more efficient system?
So we need more copper?
Yes! The only way to increase the surface is to build a higher tower!
Theoretically… Hell yes!
We’re talking about copper, dumdum.
how long till it reaches thermal equilibrium? maybe it can endure a full load for an hour
You’re looking at about a half hour per kilogram of copper to raise it by 50 °C with 100W of heat.
Actual delta from ambient to thermal limit will typically be a little higher than that, but so is processor wattage on mid-to-high performance CPUs, so I’m happy enough with that as a ballpark estimate.
Someone else estimated that block as 4.5kg, so you’ve got something close to two and a half hours of cooling from an ambient start.
I was wondering about this too, but I’m not an engineer so I would have to look up how to calculate this
Do you have any idea how expensive a solid block of copper that big is?
Would you even notice, after buying the ram and storage?
If that block is roughly 4.5cm x 4.5cm x 25cm then the volume of it is about 500cm³ which translates to 4.5kg of copper. At 11€/kg that makes about 50 euros.
Cheaper than some noctua coolers.
If this were in an enclosure, would it cause the PCB to bow over time?
Yes but you save on manufacturing.
Despite the cost, it’s damn heavy.
and just stupid. Cooling fins of aluminum work better.
Copper isn’t that bad. It’s not cheap exactly, but it’s probably going to cost what an expensive CPU cooler already would.
but a CPU cooler will work better because it is active.
Well, yeah. Even a passive CPU cooler would probably work better.
Probably around $150 worth of copper there, but you’ll have to spend about twice that to get it because it comes in a larger size you’ll have to cut down.
What’s a solid block of copper cost? one banana?
My guess is that will only work until it saturates with heat. Some liquid cooling setups are also like that, where the rad isn’t capable of dissipating heat fast enough to prevent the whole thing from overheating, but it’ll work fine for a while because the loop itself can absorb a bunch of heat before it stops being able to take any more. Then they probably blame the chip maker for running too hot even with liquid cooling when their liquid cooling setup is actually less effective than the stock cooler or their case has horrible airflow and would choke any size or number of rads. But their reservoir acts as a heat buffer, so it takes 30 mins to even realize that, but they’ve already concluded it works.
And sometimes that even would be a good strategy for cases where there’s only short burst of higher heat output.
Weight, cost, and it’s probably not effective for the long haul. The mass of a copper ingot like that will work like a heatsink, but it has a very low surface area for the energy it can absorb. So it’ll heat up to a point that is uncomfortable for the CPU, then fail to radiate that energy out to the air effectively.
As a test-bench temporary heatsink, this is actually kind of inspired. No fans, to fussy clips, just stack a copper brick on the CPU, run some benchmarks, and then turn it all off.
Incredibly unwieldy. Real quick estimate of volume puts that at around 1.75kg of copper, so it wouldn’t be possible to mount in a vertical PC case orientation (ie the majority of consumer PC cases) without significant (expensive) modifications to both the mobo socket mount and the case, else its weight would snap the motherboard, or just slowly flex it until traces failed.
It may not even be able to be used vertically like that for very long or it will compress and damage the CPU / socket / mobo. Just as an example, the weight limit of the thermal solution (HSF/water chamber heatsink/etc) for socket LGA 1700 is 950g.
I assume it’s at least ~5 cm × 5 cm × 15 cm. Given the mass density of copper, 8.96 g/cm^3 , its mass is at least 3.36 kg.
i find your estimate to be overed
It begins with the question: How wide is the cpu?
Based on that dimension, it’s approximately 3× as tall.
(if you notice the space bar, i think it’s a tiny computer)
I’d say, the copper block is ~3 USB connectors wide
i’d say about 2, @2.4 cm total then…
125 mm
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Copper is actually ~25-250X leas efficient at transferring heat than a heat pipe and convection is hundreds of times more efficient than radiation at transferring heat and the fins on a heat sink would have hundreds of times more surface area for dissipating heat all that is to say this might work but it would be orders of magnitude less efficient than a standard heat sink.