Why Are Koolance Blocks Plated?

There is a golden rule among water cooling enthusiasts: "never mix copper and aluminum". Koolance absolutely agrees with this IF both metals are exposed to liquid in the same cooling system.

However, there are many methods for reducing the likelihood of corrosion. For example, Koolance liquid coolant contains strong anti-corrosives. Koolance also employs another major strategy: we coat all copper in gold or nickel.

Gold and nickel are extremely stable, and strongly resist oxidation and galvanic corrosion both inside and outside the block. This also means plating has an aesthetic advantage; it retains its luster. In contrast, bare copper oxidizes quickly and becomes blotchy with tarnish. (Note: the oxidized sample below was severely accelerated for thermal testing.)

Does Plating Affect Thermal Performance?

Copper's thermal conductivity is 26% greater than gold. Does this mean temperatures are 26% higher for gold-plated copper blocks? Keep in mind Koolance's plating is only microns thick. Thermal conductivity is the measure of heat through 1 meter of material. To verify if a thin plating of gold has a measurable impact on performance, Koolance produced identical copper slugs and plated one in gold.

Next, we coated both sides of the metal slugs with a thin layer of thermal paste. In each test, the metal discs were sandwiched between our CPU water block and a heat generator producing 200W. Temperatures were taken from inside the heat surface and on the coolant outlet.

Conclusion

The difference between the inlet water temperature and heat plate were within 20.2 to 20.4 °C for all samples, which falls well within testing tolerances. Koolance was the first PC water cooling company to gold-plate copper because the benefits of doing so are clear.