Concept How expensive / difficult would it be to manufacture a custom radiator / heatsink?

teisysadmin

Caliper Novice
Original poster
Oct 15, 2018
26
20
I've been looking at my S4 Mini a lot and I've been contemplating what I could do with all of the extra volume inside of the case. I currently have an i7 8700k / 1080ti which both perform pretty well, but under heavy load they both end up throttling eventually.

I'm currently planning to get a riser cable and modify the GPU mounting bracket so that I can mount my GPU "upside down" in the chassis, as there is quite a bit of clearance behind the back of the GPU currently. I tore my stock fans off and replaced them with some Noctua A9x14s, but if the gpu were mounted the other way I could easily replace those with the thicker A9s which produce ~60% more airflow. I think that increase in airflow could viably prevent thermal throttling / allow me to tune the card a little better, so the modification should be well worth the cost / hassle.

As I've thought through what the inside of the case would look like with the gpu flipped upside down, it seems to me like there would be relatively tons of room left for seriously improved cooling hardware. Throw on some right angle adapters for ATX power / CPU power, get a lower height PCIe riser, potentially solder the G Unique PSU directly to the mobo, tear off the VRM heatsinks, and we're left with pretty ample vertical clearance. I haven't measured, but eyeballing it I would say that after making all of these modifications, I would have at least 25mm of clearance throughout the entire case, usually much more.

So, the unrealistic dreamer in me has been toying with the idea of designing an all in one monoblock. I saw a thread about someone designing / prototyping "comboblocks" consisting of a CPU monoblock with an integrated pump and reservoir for the S4 mini. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch to design a larger "comboblock" which would extend down to the gpu as long as I can successfully invert it.

I think that ideally, the entire block should be made from copper with very thin walls throughout. There would be ~10 copper pipes arcing over the upper half of this monoblock, and ~10 copper pipes arcing over the bottom half of the monoblock. Water would flow over the CPU die, through the pipes on the upper half of the assembly, then over the GPU, through the pipes on the bottom half, and then back. Aluminum fins would be cut and placed such that every last square inch of the chassis that isn't occupied by components is occupied by aluminum fins, and a 2 x 3 array of 92mm fans would be affixed to the top of this radiator / heatsink monstrosity. If money and time were no object, I would want to manufacture a replacement side panel with a maze cut inside of it to tie into this loop, since airflow on the "bottom" of the case would no longer be a concern, you might as well take advantage of the surface area on the outside of the chassis for a little extra passive cooling.

I'm curious to hear whether anyone thinks it would be possible to cram all of this in the space of an S4 at all, and some crude ballpark prices for materials + labor for this sort of a project.

As far as the relevance of this sort of project, I think that an S4 mini with a well cooled 1151 processor and 1080ti would easily hold the SFF performance crown for the next 2 - 3 years. 9th gen intel processors should work with coffee lake motherboards, and RTX 2080 offering only nominally more performance for the same price as a 1080ti with no mini variants on the market yet, it doesn't seem like there are any GPUs that are really poised to upset the 1080ti mini's title as the most powerful S4 compatible card soon. I guess an RTX2080ti mini would be a noticeable step up (though a smaller step than the 980ti to the 1080ti), but the price tag would presumably be pretty outrageous, and with nvidia putting dual fans on their stock cards I doubt many manufacturers are eager to skimp on cooling with mini versions soon.
 

Damascus

Master of Cramming
Feb 27, 2018
550
387
Depending on the shop you'll be looking at $200-400 all the way up to $1000+

To get accurate pricing you'll need to set up a basic 3d model and then just go ask a bunch of shops how much it'll run you.

Edit:

Re-read your idea, I would at least double, maybe triple my estimate of min cost and put the upper limits at $3k+
 
Last edited: