New to water cooling advice

mintcake

mintcake

mintcake

Associate
Joined
23 Jun 2008
Posts
60
New to water cooling advice required.

Hi,
I am wanting to water cool my CPU and GPU but I am really not sure what kit I should be looking at, I have a q9550 cpu and a 5970 gpu in a HAF 922 case.
I have found the Koolance VID 597 full cover block which would probably be the better VGA cooler and I imagine cpu would be fairly generic but its the radiator and pump etc stuff I cant seem to get my head round on what to look for.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated , its possible I may inherit a zalman reserator V2 so would that be good enough to cool both and work with the koolance block...phew!

thanks
 
Last edited:
hmm i personally would avoid the zalman res - just dont see the point of a big external thing like that.

to cool cpu and gpu your be looking at a rad size of 120.2 or 120.3 (basically think of it as have many 120mm fans can go on it 2 or 3)

you have to pay attention to fittings basically barbed or compression - barbed are where you normally have the tube over the fitting and held with the equiv of a cable tie, and compression you have another piece that literally screws over the tube. i prefer compression.

tubing size is also important and natually needs to match your fittings.
the pump can be whatever you want - typically the more you spend the better pump your get, pumps can be seperate or combined with a res.

if its seperate i always advise on getting a res aswell.

as for where it all goes well some people put rads in case others on the outside, its all doable just depends on case...... if it goes on the outside its always good to get a shroud (basically a fan without the fan bit lol) for a proper fit.

sorry for dumbing it down a little, but i can explain in more detail if needed.
 
Last edited:
thanks for that, so im looking at a dual rad to cool both GPU and CPU well?
I want to be able to keep the GPU temps low for overclocking.
the HAF 922 has a large 200 odd mm fan in the top which can be swapped for a radiator with two fans, or would it be better with a push pull and have 4 fans drawing air out of the case over the radiator ?
 
mintcake said:
thanks for that, so im looking at a dual rad to cool both GPU and CPU well?
I want to be able to keep the GPU temps low for overclocking.
the HAF 922 has a large 200 odd mm fan in the top which can be swapped for a radiator with two fans, or would it be better with a push pull and have 4 fans drawing air out of the case over the radiator ?
Click to expand...

currently modding my HAF922 to take a 240mm rad - planning on having just 2 sucking air into the case and i think mounting 4 fans (2 x push, 2 x pull) you may have issues with your motherboard touching the fans/interfering with them dependant on your motherboard/cooling on the mofsets etc.
 
Thankyou...
right so would i be good to go with an XSPC RX240 120mm Radiator,XSPC DDC 10w Pro Pump/Reservoir, (also if I was to only cool the GPU )how much tubing and i know this is a stupid but what would the circuit setup be with the tubing IE pump to rad , rad to Gpu , gpu to pump (yes sorry for being a noob)
 
A dual rad will struggle with a 9550 and 5970. Triple would be a sensible minimum, but more wouldn't be a bad thing, as long as the pump can handle it; IIRC there is an 18W version of that pump, but I could be wrong. Order of components matters little if the flow rate is half-decent but some prefer the pump before the radiator.
 
I second the triple rad for both CPU and GPU.
My only issue doing the GPU is how offen are you going to change it? Only everytime its a new block adding £70+ per new card!
A double rad will handle that CPU alone no problem.

A DDC 10W or 18W would be great. Just marry it to an after market top as they really help with flow rates. I have a D5 vario and love it as can change the speed, but I dont think its great if you got a restrictive loop like a full cover GPU affair. Never tried it.

My only advice for loop circuit is make sure the res is before the pump, and the CPU before the GPU. Reason is you absolutely do not want the pump running dry, and you dont want the heat from from the GPU leaking the the CPU. Well, you want the colder water getting to the CPU first.
 
thanks for all the advice guys its very much appreciated.
one last thing though, would a 2 rad be good for just the GPU ?
im determined to get the 5970 running happily at higher clocks as it current cooler i dont think can cut once you up the voltage and clocks it starts to throttle when in metro 2033 and other high end games so i have to knock it down considerably to keep it cooler .

thanks again
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom