If you have a copper water block don't use the Aluminum core.
Don't mix it with copper!!!
the alluminum will corode a litle bit creating Aluminum oxide which will protect the aluminum tubing. but it will make the copper dicintergrate. and in 6 months you will have a hole in your CPU block or in much less time a hole in your heater core if you run both cores. then you will be replacing oyur motherboard, video card, and anything else that get's shorted...
not worth it.
but don't take my word on it. do a little bit of research on "Galvanic Corrosion"
I wasn't going to, but I must step in to make some corrections.
If MadHacker had actually read up on "Galvanic Corrosion"
, he would have noticed that Aluminum is more anodic than copper and would therefore serve to
lessen the corrosion of the copper CPU/GPU blocks. So, yes, aluminum and copper do not mix, but if they are mixed, it is the aluminum that will be corroded and
NOT the copper.
Additionally, depending on what kind of cooling fluid you have in your system (i.e. if the fluid is non-conductive), it is possible that the copper/brass/aluminum/etc could be electrically isolated, and therefore there would be no chance for galvanic corrosion to occur. (remember that the metals need to be electrically connected for dissimilar metal corrosion to occur)
Now for a [edit] not so [/edit] short lesson on thermodynamics (heat transfer):
The transfer of heat works similar to a bunch of resistors (or insulators) that slow the movement of heat and would follow a path similar to this:
R1 - Heat must move within the fluid to get to the interior surface of the rad
R2 - Heat must transfer from the fluid to the rad material at the interface (fluid to metal)
R3 - Heat must move within the rad material from the fluid surface to get to the air surface of the rad
R4 - Heat must transfer from the rad material into the air at the air interface (metal to air)
R5 - Heat must move within the air to the general air of the room
The total heat transfer of the system would be proportional to 1/(R1+R2+R3+R4+R5), so minimizing the resistance to heat transfer of any one of these would improve the system.
Lets compare each "resistance" for the two rads in question:
R1 - the best way to move heat within a fluid is
stirring and turbulence=stirring. The TOP rad has the best internal mixing hands down.
R2 - the key word here is
surface area, and again the TOP rad has by far the greater surface area between the rad and the fluid.
R3 - copper is a better heat conductor than aluminum, and both are better than lead. Without actually doing the calculations it's hard to say which rad would do better. BUT, since R3 is going to be the smallest resistance of all the Rs (probably by several orders of magnitude) it's probably safe to say that it really doesn't make that much of a difference! (it
would make a difference if we were comparing identical designs of different material, but we're not, so it doesn't)
R4 - like R2,
surface area is one of the key variables here, but it's also going to be dependant on the fans in use and the air flow through the rad. We've already stated the TOP rad wins on surface area. As for air flow, IMHO they will both flow fairly well.
R5 - completely dependant on the fans and the flow rate through them.
Sorry for the novel/lecture, but it's not as simple as saying this one has 6 passes so it's better, or this one's made of copper so it's better.
However, I stick by my original recommendation that the TOP rad will perform better.
Patiently waiting for Grizely1 to get his pump and post some results.