Right. After the original Direct Die article, it opened up a whole can-o-worms and many a night Dr Surlyjoe and I were discussing how to enhance on things and general issues. This article will hopefully cover a couple of issues and after more testing show how good Direct Die is compared to the Danger Den Copper Block.

Is it Safe?

This is the scenario. Duron 600, chipped to F***. I then LAP all the epoxy of it to bare silicon. Direct Die Cool it. Leave on 24/7 at 100% load folding protiens. I'd say if it survives that, it can survive ANYTHING! lol

A whole month goes by and it's 100% stable. Then becuase I used tap water, limescale built up and it stopped working. I then disassembled the thing and lapped it some more to get rid of limescale and ran it on a heatsink fine. So direct die wasn't the problem, just limescale. I think we can all say it's SAFE!!

Why does it work?

Copper blocks rely on the copper removing the heat from the die and the water removes the heat from the copper. Why not skip the copper stage and go from the die straight to the water!! The copper adds thermal resistance. The water is obviously effecient enough to take the heat and it's MOVING so has the effect of more surface area!

My first experiment with D2D was pretty poor, then I found the key component was the little bit of tube I put inside. It was a peice of 6mm tubing insde the barb that directed the water about 2mm above the die. This down in tube size must have created more pressure so when it hit the core it quickly took the heat away. This made a HUGE difference! Now also take into account my pump is the Senfu Pump which we all know is not the best pump in the world and I was still getting excellent results!!

The Testing: Danger Den V Direct Die

Before I start, I just want to thank Danger Den for sending me this unit for testing, seeing as it's not getting a proper review and I'm just really using it as a base line from now on to compare my own designs too. The Danger Den block is well known for being one of the best copper blocks available which is why I think it makes a good comparison. It uses the 4 holes that all Socket A boards now have (shown below) and fits easily. The only downside I found to it is that the top barb is very close to the nylon screw.

As you can see here on the left, we have your classic Sunny D cooling solution epoxied to the chip using 3/8" hosing with barbs. On the right we have the Danger Den, I have converted the block using 3/8" push fits which means the Danger Den infact has more water flow. Apart from that the setup is the same AM35-EC board with the Senfu Pump.

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