Cooling How bad is it to use aluminum radiators with copper blocks?

[1461748123]

I've always wondered how bad could this go.
To my knowledge, mixing metal is a bad idea, every watercooling forum talks about how bad it is and it will junk up the blocks or even have corrosions that cost leaks.
But most or even all of the AIO coolers use copper block + aluminum radiator! And they don't seem to fail easily as well.

 

[Josh | NFC]

It's true that most low end AIOs use aluminum radiators and copper base plates, but they also have a very high failure rate and low life expectancy. Because everything is sealed and you throw the whole thing out anyway, I guess they think they can get away with it. If you ever look for AIO teardowns on YouTube you can see corrosion and nastiess building up in these systems, even though they use corrosion inhibitors.

Corrosion from mixing metals is a real thing. I've made some errors here in my long history of liquid cooling...such as using silver and nickel in the same loop...and the results were really bad.

If you run very strong corrosion inhibitors of the right type you can get away with mixing metals for a while but it makes more sense to just use aluminum for your blocks. The only reason I think Corsair and the other AIO manufactures use copper cold plates is for marketing purposes. Aluminum blocks were a thing for a while in the early days of PC liquid cooling and they worked perfectly fine. In fact much of the server liquid cooling I have seen have been with aluminum blocks.

But you don't need to take my word for it. You can google image search and get all the PC galvanic corrosion gore you want!

 

[1461748123]

It's true that most low end AIOs use aluminum radiators and copper base plates, but they also have a very high failure rate and low life expectancy. Because everything is sealed and you throw the whole thing out anyway, I guess they think they can get away with it. If you ever look for AIO teardowns on YouTube you can see corrosion and nastiess building up in these systems, even though they use corrosion inhibitors.

Corrosion from mixing metals is a real thing. I've made some errors here in my long history of liquid cooling...such as using silver and nickel in the same loop...and the results were really bad.

If you run very strong corrosion inhibitors of the right type you can get away with mixing metals for a while but it makes more sense to just use aluminum for your blocks. The only reason I think Corsair and the other AIO manufactures use copper cold plates is for marketing purposes. Aluminum blocks were a thing for a while in the early days of PC liquid cooling and they worked perfectly fine. In fact much of the server liquid cooling I have seen have been with aluminum blocks.

But you don't need to take my word for it. You can google image search and get all the PC galvanic corrosion gore you want!

Thanks for the respond I found someone selling several AIO radiators that are dirt cheap and in a perfect form factor to fit in the S4M. Its 40mmx40mmx280mm. I'm wondering should I risk using one of those or just stick with my dual 40x40x120mm radiators. I guess I will pass on the AIO

 

[SeñorDonut]

Thanks for the respond I found someone selling several AIO radiators that are dirt cheap and in a perfect form factor to fit in the S4M. Its 40mmx40mmx280mm. I'm wondering should I risk using one of those or just stick with my dual 40x40x120mm radiators. I guess I will pass on the AIO

The radiator part may not have mixed metals, perhaps you could take the AIO apart and only use part of it.