Dripping with style or floody disaster?

LePhuronn said:

Such a shame, that loop is lovely looking.

From the research I was doing a while ago, crossflow radiators aren't as good simply because the coolant isn't in the radiator for as long as a normal radiator. From what I gather, the flow goes in, gets split between the 2 internal pipes and then combines before exiting. Normal rads have a "U" shape thing going on so the coolant gets double exposure to air flow.

Looking at your proposed changes though, I think you'd struggle getting a 240 in the front with the 360 as I don't think you can drop it down to where you indicate and still have 2 fans on it - is there an intake that far down?

And to be honest, even with a crossflow rad I'm surprised your coolant temp is as high as it is. I'm not sure that just upping the rad thickness will help enough on its own. Can you turn your pump up a bit to see if that helps? Bump the fans up a bit too?

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It is a bit annoying after spending all that time planning to get a decent looking loop, but oh well, live & learn and avoid thin crossflows!

That's pretty much the same as I read, but also read people saying they used them and their temps were hardly any different to using a 'normal' rad... Guess it's the same as anything, should have listened to the pro's and not random opinions

Yeah a 240mm will definitely fit in the front with the top of the rad exactly where it is now, there's another 120mm fan below where the rad is atm and the front will easily take a 360mm. All you have to do is remove the small cover under the current radiator and slide out the 2 HDD brackets

The coolant usually peaks at around the high 30's - 40°C when playing demanding games, but for some reason the wet weather effects in Project Cars seem to absolutely hammer the GPU and put an extra few degrees on it within a couple of minutes. Unfortunately I've already got the fans making more noise than I'd like, with the front rad, intake and top rad fans running at 90%+ most of the time. Pump is currently on 35% which was more of a guess of what was needed than scientific! Thought as most ran the Vario on a setting of around 2/5 then 35% should be OK

Cenedd said:

Also worth checking the temp probes for accuracy. I've just replaced a Phyobia G1/4 temp probe as it was either off or a different spec to the Aquaero probes. Difference increased as things got hotter with two others reading around 35 when this one read 40. The new one is much closed but the three (res, flow and pump) still aren't within a degree.

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Ah, that's not a bad shout! guess I'll need to get some boiling water and dip the end in while I have the PC running... *goes looking for leftover plug to fill the hole* It's an XSPC temperature probe, not sure what sort of reputation they've got but will test it when I get 10 minutes

I might not be able to afford the new radiators yet, but that hasn't stopped a MASSIVE order from coming in... Yep, a couple of silver bullets to go in the soon to be water filled loop

Right, finally saved enough to put the order in so the beauty is about to turn into a beast! Reckon this should knock a couple of degrees off the water temp

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x XSPC RX360 Triple Fan Radiator V3= £79.99
• 1 x Coolgate XFlow Radiator G2 10 FPI - 240mm= £42.95
• 2 x Mayhems Ultra Pure H2O Watercooling Fluid 1L= £4.99
• 1 x Primochill Primoflex Advanced Tubing 16/10 - White= £5.99

Will be interested to know how that thick X-Flow performs. I'm waiting for my order of toys - to install for a friend - and we're going with the EK XE360 (it was that of the RX360) and an existing thin Black Ice GTS Stealth xflow. Had to resist the temptation to try shoehorning a thin 420 (3x140) rad in the top just to see if it could be made to fit!

In building this for a friend, I keep window shopping at OCUK and I'm tempted to change cases. I was looking at the Enthoo Evolve ATX that you've got but it would need modding. I'm thinking a Mo-Ra 420 on the outside of the case -overkill and forget about it - so no rads on the inside. My issue would be that I need a 51/4" bay to mount an Aquaero 6 in. I was thinking of trying to cut it in where you have your Hyper-X SSD mounted so that it's visible through the sied window. I don't have any 3½ disks to mount so no problems with the mount behind. Think this'll work?

I'm certainly hoping it's better than the thin 360mm X-Flow I'm currently using! Hoping with a 'proper' 360mm in the front I'll be able to clock the CPU up to about 4.6 whilst still keeping the temps around what they are currently, if it all goes according to plan...

I'd say go for it, would look proper trick with the Aquaero mounted there! As you don't need any 3½ drives or a front mounted rad it shouldn't cause you too much hassle. The lack of 5.25 drive bays did put me off originally, but am more than happy with the how it turned out with the Aquaero 5 and Colour Work hidden inside

Well Jeff from DPD has been, so there's no going back now! Was hoping to get some good quality pics of the PC in its current state with the gf's new DSLR camera, but she's just disappeared to Iceland for a week and for some reason decided it would be a good idea to take it with her... Very inconsiderate!

Will hopefully find time to flush the new rads out later, then start draining / cleaning the system out over the next few days (possibly the weekend)

Good to see you've got something to play with over the weekend! Thought you might be interested to see the results of the results of the M.2 SSD heatsink saga. Posted it here.

Arinargo said:

Looks excellent

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Cheers fella

First thing I've learned today: Once you clean out a Coolgate radiator you basically half the weight of it! Where do they build these things, the bottom of a mine shaft? The 3 XSPC rads I've cleaned out have had basically no crap at all in them (the odd flake but nothing to worry about), the Coolgate on the other hand...

This was the amount of junk that came out of the first wash


And the second...


...and third...


Yep, still going strong on the fourth


I'm now on the 7th wash and STILL getting more crap coming out than came out of the other 3 radiators combined. Are Coolgate always this bad? Making me wish I hadn't bought it now.

Right, enough talking, I've got a radiator to keep on cleaning

Damn, that looks pretty bad, glad I bought XSPC now as it looks like they take less time to clean. Next time it might be worth using your pump/res in a temporary setup with a filter

I'll definitely be using XSPC in any future builds, couple of quick flushes and they're spotless

Unfortunately that was a no go for these rads as it's still in the PC, still waiting for a couple of fittings so haven't drained it yet. Could definitely be a plan for next time though, got arms like Popeye thanks to Coolgate

How's the Coolgate going? Looking at the same rad for a friend's build now we've found out that 360 in top doesn't fit at the same time as 360 in the front *sigh* Is it ok after cleaning? Would you recommend one?

Cenedd said:

How's the Coolgate going? Looking at the same rad for a friend's build now we've found out that 360 in top doesn't fit at the same time as 360 in the front *sigh* Is it ok after cleaning? Would you recommend one?

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I couldn't honestly say how well it's performing atm as I switched the front radiator as well, but the change from 120mm & slim 360 X-flow to a proper 360mm & fat 240mm X-flow has knocked about 10°C off the water temperature when stressing both CPU & GPU, so definitely worth changing! When I get a few minutes I'll turn off the fans on the 360mm and see how well the Coolgate performs on its own

Thats a lot of crap..

Something I did, was connected 2 tubes to my rad. Placed the rad in the sink, with a bucket of water higher up on the side, and made a syphon. Rinsed it out with a few buckets of water, then the final rinse with distilled water again.

Bryan Kortez said:

Thats a lot of crap..

Something I did, was connected 2 tubes to my rad. Placed the rad in the sink, with a bucket of water higher up on the side, and made a syphon. Rinsed it out with a few buckets of water, then the final rinse with distilled water again.

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That's not a bad idea, wish I'd thought of that before wasting an hour of my life shaking the living hell out of the thing!

UPDATE TIME!

No going back now, its started.


Top radiator out...


...Quickly followed by the front one.


Reservoir and pump out.


Front of the case opening up ready to swallow the beast rad


Top radiator being mounted. Also had to grind a chunk out of the radiator bracket as it fouled the 90° fitting on the top of the front radiator. Luckily it's well hidden so measured 0 times and attacked it with violence once Oh yes, and don't ever say I'm not tidy when working...! On a completely different subject, have also changed the black umbilical cord to the TV and boxes to white, so it's no longer quite so hideous. Hardly shows now


Now we're getting somewhere


Thought about using a white 140mm fan as the exhaust...


...But soon went back to red. And the flushing begins! Very cloudy to start with


Getting there slowly


About 10 litres of distilled water later and it's clear!


Mmmmmmm, water that looks like water Also removed the spacer below the GPU and added in a filter instead. Wanted to place it on top of the reservoir but space was extremely lacking...


Not as nice as it was, but could have been worse.


Yeah, tidy enough I reckon


Glad I remembered to make this part of the loop before putting the top radiator in!


This was beyond a pain to get right. There was much swearing before I was finally happy with it


Wish the filter was black, but not too bad I don't think


BEFORE


AFTER


All in all happy with how it turned out, and doesn't look as bad as I originally feared. As for temperature, with the old setup if I played Project Cars on Ultra and did a race with the weather set to thunderstorm the loop would hit 45°C+ in about 10 laps, then I'd have to leave it a couple of minutes to cool down. Just tested it now and after 15 laps in a thunderstorm the water temperature hit a max of 37°C, so a massive improvement! CPU topped out at 57°C and the GPU at 39°C, so think it's time to stop fiddling about and enjoy some gaming hours!

One quick question though: I'm using Mayhems pure H2O and have added a silver bullet to the loop, but should I add biocide as well?

Actually make that two quick questions: I also have some red dye here, sooooo... Leave the water clear or dye it red?

If you add red dye you'll likely end up with pink hoses. Possibly permanently as I believe it stains....especially on good quality carpet when you next come to drain. It may be just me...but I find coolant has a way of getting places it shouldn't. At least if it's colourless it isn't cause for divorce!

I believe you need biocide to stop algal growth but I'm not up on it...I always use a premix (XSPC EC6) because it has the biocide, anti-corrosive agents etc and is just open, pour, game.

The Coolgate definitely doesn't look as good as the XSPC rad but presumably most of that is hidden with the side panel on?

Did you still get that much cloudiness even after flushing both rads?!

Like the filter. Should stop the fluff (random flakes and stuff) building up in the fins of your blocks. Downside of delrin tops being that you can't see the state of the block without opening it.

Temps are about the same as mine at stock with my 980 Ti and 6700K. Temps on CPU spike higher (about 75C) with turbo set to 4.4GHz on 4 cores but average lower.

Glad to see the update worked a treat, certainly great news on the temps as 57c during stress testing is a worthy cause even if nothing else changed regarding temperatures. I also prefer the look of the resovoir with the H2O coolant. As for the biocide you will definitely need something like PTNuke or any decent biocide just to prevent growth. Also the system looks much "beefier" now that the new rads is installed (I like the new look)

Great work and enjoy gaming on your improved PC

Cenedd said:

If you add red dye you'll likely end up with pink hoses. Possibly permanently as I believe it stains....especially on good quality carpet when you next come to drain. It may be just me...but I find coolant has a way of getting places it shouldn't. At least if it's colourless it isn't cause for divorce!

I believe you need biocide to stop algal growth but I'm not up on it...I always use a premix (XSPC EC6) because it has the biocide, anti-corrosive agents etc and is just open, pour, game.

The Coolgate definitely doesn't look as good as the XSPC rad but presumably most of that is hidden with the side panel on?

Did you still get that much cloudiness even after flushing both rads?!

Like the filter. Should stop the fluff (random flakes and stuff) building up in the fins of your blocks. Downside of delrin tops being that you can't see the state of the block without opening it.

Temps are about the same as mine at stock with my 980 Ti and 6700K. Temps on CPU spike higher (about 75C) with turbo set to 4.4GHz on 4 cores but average lower.

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TechMinerUK said:

Glad to see the update worked a treat, certainly great news on the temps as 57c during stress testing is a worthy cause even if nothing else changed regarding temperatures. I also prefer the look of the resovoir with the H2O coolant. As for the biocide you will definitely need something like PTNuke or any decent biocide just to prevent growth. Also the system looks much "beefier" now that the new rads is installed (I like the new look)

Great work and enjoy gaming on your improved PC

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Cheers guys

Was hoping as the tubing is fairly thick that it wouldn't show through, but the more I look at it the more I'm actually liking the clear water. There's no cloudiness at all now, but it did take a hell of a lot of flushing to get the last remnants of the pastel fluid out of the blocks.

Will definitely be adding some biocide into the loop then, don't fancy having to drain it all again when the fluid starts growing green lumps in it lol


Didn't really like it at first but think you might be right TechMiner, it might not look quite so sleek but the new beefier look is definitely growing on me

Now to start clocking it and get those temperatures rising again...

Oh yes, and it definitely looks better with the side panel on

Ah, changing from pastel to clear...that makes more sense!
Clocking it's all well and good...but I think you'll find its time to start enjoying it. Kick back with a beer and just game for a bit...you've earned it! The upgrade itch will be back all too soon.

Thanks for the kind words Cenedd, much appreciated

This has certainly been the longest build I've done. Apart from the Xbox 360PC which took a couple of days it never normally takes me more than an afternoon to have everything built and the OS installed, so watercooling was definitely a step up for me! Pretty sure the upgrade itch is going to start as soon as the next generation GPU's are released, but guessing they're going to be far too expensive for the first few months... Will order more beers and wait for em to drop

oliviarosetp said:

hope it goes well, looking good so far!

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Cheers mate, all finished for now until the upgrade itch starts again! Tempted to clock the CPU, but as it's already smashing every game on Ultra I might just wait until I find something it struggles with & enjoy the cooler temperatures for a while instead