Quick questions prior to watercooling

Okay so, I am FINALLY about to make the shift to begin watercooling and shut my R9290 up after hearing it for so long! I am busy sourcing parts for the system, such as blocks rads etc but I have some questions for you chaps.

I am in the Phanteks Enthoo Luxe and I am curious if anyone has experience with them and what size rads and what pumps/res fit nicely in this case.

Also which tubing should I use, hard or soft? I have a heat gun and all I will really need is the rubber insert and bend tools for hard and soft is easy. Also what size tubing and what size fittings should I use? How big of a role is the sizing of each etc. Also I have the X99-SLI motherboard which has yellow mostly allover it so I want to have yellow coolant in there so which coolant is best to use in the system?

That is a lot of questions but hey why not get them all at once.

Cheers lads

I don't have an Enthoo Luxe so I can't help you one that. You might want to have a look at the Project Logs section and see what people have done. You can see older projects if you change your options: User CP > Edit Options > Thread Display Options > Default Thread Age Cut Off

Soft tubing with compression fittings is easy. Hard tubing requires either bending it or getting stuff to line up with fittings so you can have straight runs. It's more work, requires practice at bending (budget for wasted tubing for your learning curve) but the results look good. As an introduction I'd probably go for soft as you'll make progress quickly and have confidence it's not going to leak/break/not line up. That said, people have jumped straight into hard tube before now. Frankly it depends how much patience you've got and/or how well you take set-backs.

Tubing size is largely down to aesthetics. The fittings have an Inner Diameter (ID) of about 10mm so if you're using anything narrower than that it can be restrictive. Most current stuff is 10mm or more. You may save a little on drag (friction of the fluid against the tubing) with larger tubing but it's not going to have any relevant effect. Thicker walled soft tubing is a bit more kink resistant but chunkier and doesn't go round corners as sharply. I'd maybe start with 13/10 as the tubing is readily available and so are the fittings.

Coolant is available pre-coloured or you can add dyes. Personally I'd go clear and colourless at least at first. Why? It's almost bound to spill, leak, squirt out at some point and as a friend of mine once wisely said, a colourless 'stain' on your carpet is going to look a whole lot less bad than an alien green stain. You can always change it once you've got everything settled.

With what you said about colour in mind, could you finish the loop clear and then add drops of dye into the reservoir once you know it's all good?

Absolutely. There are builds in the Project Logs where people have done exactly that so they can colour match the coolant to something else on the loop.

What you want to make sure of though is that you end up with a coolant with the right properties and the dye is compatible with it. Ideally you want non-conductive (or very low). It's true that after it's circulated a while it will be more conductive as it'll pick up particles, bit's of metals etc but at least while you're filling, leak testing and for a while afterwards it's a bit more forgiving of leaks.

You need some biocide (or to have it pre-mixed in) so that you don't start going algae. Another option is a silver kill coil but make sure it can't migrate round the loop and get stuck.

An anti-corrosive (again pre-mixed is common) is a good plan as it helps prevent galvanic corrosion if you have different metals in your loop.

Try to avoid ethylene glycol based coolants as they can react badly with some tubing. For example Mayhems XT1 and Primochill tubing cause problems. Mayhems own tubing tolerates it (it's PVC free) and Mayhems pre-mixed X1 doesn't have ethylene glycol in despite being very similarly named.
I tend to use XSPC EC6 clear which does all these and has been good for me. I haven't tried the Mayhems X1 but given that most of the dyes are Mayhem's it may be a good base to start with.

Cenedd said:

Absolutely. There are builds in the Project Logs where people have done exactly that so they can colour match the coolant to something else on the loop.

What you want to make sure of though is that you end up with a coolant with the right properties and the dye is compatible with it. Ideally you want non-conductive (or very low). It's true that after it's circulated a while it will be more conductive as it'll pick up particles, bit's of metals etc but at least while you're filling, leak testing and for a while afterwards it's a bit more forgiving of leaks.

You need some biocide (or to have it pre-mixed in) so that you don't start going algae. Another option is a silver kill coil but make sure it can't migrate round the loop and get stuck.

An anti-corrosive (again pre-mixed is common) is a good plan as it helps prevent galvanic corrosion if you have different metals in your loop.

Try to avoid ethylene glycol based coolants as they can react badly with some tubing. For example Mayhems XT1 and Primochill tubing cause problems. Mayhems own tubing tolerates it (it's PVC free) and Mayhems pre-mixed X1 doesn't have ethylene glycol in despite being very similarly named.
I tend to use XSPC EC6 clear which does all these and has been good for me. I haven't tried the Mayhems X1 but given that most of the dyes are Mayhem's it may be a good base to start with.

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Awesome advice, going to be a few months away for me but I'll definitely come back to this.