HW Legend

salucard ha scritto:
Black_Owl ha scritto:
Interesting info on these rads. I am looking to get a couple for me too... but.... but I believe they have some "no-no" points for me.

First of all, the material: stainless steel looses miserabily against copper in the battle for thermal transfer. The liquid will not be able to pass the heat through the stainless stell tube to the aluminum fins as fast as with a copper tube

Second, the weight: these are real massive radiators, with 1kg for the single fan model. Considering that usually people tend nowadays to buy models of 2-3 fans, that is some 4 kgs of radiator + liquid you need to hang on the wall of the case, via little screws. Depending on your setup, I see some pretty darn work to do to secure those rads safely. But that is only my opinion...

Third: the thickness: 105mm is way too much to make a full integrated system, I guess. I only see the chance to get these rads outside, and bring the tubing inside through wall openings or through the PCI slots in the back of the case. Some may like it, some not. It is a matter of personal choice, of course, but me myself, I prefer, in case of a normal PC, to integrate the whole bunch inside the case. Gotta see when I get my hands on one of these babies where I can put it in in my Antec 900.

Fourth: is thermalfins the real owner of the design of these rads? I have done some research, and apparently TFC has issued, and has been awarded, a patent for a similar design. I know Thermalfins and TFC were cooperating for the Admiral series of radiators, but I lost the thread when TFC stopped posting "big news" about those rads. As far as I know, they never went into production. So is Thermalfins making them with "permission" of TFC? Or is there some substantial difference between the patent filed by TFC and these rads, that did see the light?

The first three point are, of course, my personal opinions, bundymania, but knowing your contacts, I would like to get an answer from you to the fourth point, if possible. Even in PVT.

Awaiting for your repost.

Black_Owl
wow hadn't noticed about inner tube pipes, it's a bad idea replacing stainless steel with copper, the best after silver; it's a shame that thermalfins (or TFC) has used that material to made those beasts, it means less performances; at this point the price is also not justified...
For dimensions IMHO there aren't any problems, becouse users that wold buy this radiator, certainly will have a big pc case, as a little devil, xigmatek elysium, xspc h2 ect.

well for me the only problem is between price and adopted materials, so thank you for enlightened my blinded sight...

Just because you've got a big case, that does not necessarily mean that EVERYBODY has got one too... and if they manufactured a single fan radiator, chances are that the are targeting also those who want to make a full integrated loop. As the majority of the cases I see online.

Anyway, to state that performances are bad only because they use stainless steel instead of copper tubes is not entirely correct: it depends on te wall thickness, too. If they really use 0.2mm wall thickness for the inner tube, instead of a 1mm copper tube, much probably heat will be transferred from liquid to the aluminum fins faster than what we might expect.

Taking in consideration the pure cost of materials, stainless stell pipes are way cheaper than pure copper pipes. So what we are going to pay here is not for the material itself, but for the project, the development, and hopefully, the performance gap such radiators will eventually grant on top of traditional radiators.

We cannot take anything for granted until we test directly one of those rads.

Black_OWl

I'm sorry but I have to disappoint some of your words, I just post a scheme of thermal conductivity to enlight you about metallic conductivity for OHM's second law

Materiale

stainless steel

 [Wm-1K-1]

46/50

Materiale

copper

 [Wm-1K-1]

380

Materiale

silver

 [Wm-1K-1]

405

As we can see conductivity of the stainless steel it's truly lower than conductivity of copper or silver, so conclusion is that though stainless steel pipe is thicker than copper pipe, is anyway impossible that stainless steel can reach better performances than copper, thinking about that we also say that the reason of large dimensions of this radiator are for equilibrating different type of material that has been used on this radiator, about that we also find another reasonù: design of thermal fins; conclusion is: we pay for trademark and for an useless engineering that can only work with same performance of a classic radiator, worst than full copper radiator...

Naturally I said that in theoretical mode, so the only way to find the truth is testing and comparing this radiator with other classic radiators...

salucard ha scritto:I'm sorry but I have to disappoint some of your words, I just post a scheme of thermal conductivity to enlight you about metallic conductivity for OHM's second law

Material  [Wm-1K-1]

stainless steel 46/50

copper 380

silver 405

As we can see conductivity of the stainless steel it's truly lower than conductivity of copper or silver, so conclusion is that though stainless steel pipe is thicker than copper pipe, is anyway impossible that stainless steel can reach better performances than copper, thinking about that we also say that the reason of large dimensions of this radiator are for equilibrating different type of material that has been used on this radiator, about that we also find another reasonù: design of thermal fins; conclusion is: we pay for trademark and for an useless engineering that can only work with same performance of a classic radiator, worst than full copper radiator...

Naturally I said that in theoretical mode, so the only way to find the truth is testing and comparing this radiator with other classic radiators...

Salucard, before posting, take care to read well my post: I stated that in case the wall thickness of the stainless steel pipes is LOWER (and not higher) of the correspondet copper pipe, the minor distance and material heat would be forced to travel through could compensate the worse thermal conductivity of stainless steel against copper.

_________

Salucard, non ti offendere, ma mi sa che hai frainteso il mio discorso: il materiale usato in questo radiatore è acciaio inossidabile perchè, anche se è vero che la conducibilità termica di questo materiale, rispetto al rame, è decisamente inferiore (e sinceramente, postarmi i valori non serve, li so a memoria visto che ci ho lavorato quasi 15 anni con il raffreddamento a liquido...) la scelta è ricaduta sull'acciaio inossidabile per un puro calcolo di COSTO del materiale puro e sua reperibilità. Per ovviare al problema della minor conducibilità termica, il costruttore ha ben pensato di usare tubi di spessore decisamente inferiore rispetto a quanto si farebbe con tubi in rame, scegliendo 0.2mm invece dei soliti 0.5-0.75mm (e ripeto, riferito solo ed esclusivamente allo spessore delle pareti, non al diametro interno/esterno dei tubi stessi).

Ci sono poi una miriade di variabili da prendere in conto, successivamente: che tipo di accoppiamento tra i due tubi (interno in acciaio inox e esterno in alluminio) hanno usato? Hannno usato materiale termoconduttivo tra i due? se no, esiste un gap tra i due? di che misura? come viene riempito?

Analizzando poi il brevetto cui facevo riferimento, che per forza di cose omette certi dettagli puramente tecnici (e probabilmente frutto di segreti industriali) si capisce che i costi di produzione, la reperibilità della materia prima, ed infine il peso complessivo del prodotto hanno avuto un "peso" (mi si perdoni la ripetizione) ben più importante del fattore di conducibilità termica del materiale in sé. Per ovviare a questo, molto probabilmente, hanno deciso anche di produrre radiatori decisamente più spessi della norma.

Black_Owl

per chi ci segue e ha difficoltà a seguire:

Materiale--------------------------------------Conducibilità termica a 20° C (W/mK)
Acciaio con 5% Ni-----------------------------29
Acciaio con 30% Ni---------------------------105
Alluminio--------------------------------------210
Rame (8300 Kg/m3)-------------------------302
Rame (8900 Kg/m3)-------------------------395
Argento---------------------------------------420

Altri metalli "preziosi":
Oro--------------------------------------------299
Diamante naturale--------------------------2000

Please, let's keep on track with the spirit of the thread opened by Bundymania

Rimaniamo IT, per favore, discussioni tecniche sono sempre benvenute, ma in luoghi appositi.

Black_Owl