Finally gonna liquid cool my TJ07-advice needed

Cleeecooo · 27 Mar 2011 at 12:57

So how much did you guys pay for your loops?

OLDPHART · 27 Mar 2011 at 15:15

l had a buget of £300 for my loop, it came to about £285 -

Black Ice GTS 360 rad.
HK Rv3 Copper CPU block > 1366.
EK Black full cover Actel:Nickel + Black Back plate > GTX 470.
x1 Viper[had x2 from my H50].
Masterkleer tubing Blue > x2m.
Compression fittings > x8.
XSPC D750 Res

ump combo
Tube cutters.
Thermochill EC6 clear pre-mix fluid x2Ltrs - was on a very good offer or l would have used distilled water + silver coil.

If you are going to use a pre-mix use a clear one, and use colour tubing instead, in the past folk have had a nasty experience with pre-mix with dye mixed in with it.

Sayso · 27 Mar 2011 at 16:51

i think mine come to over £550 but i did have dual 18w DDC pumps, 9 fans etc it wasn't cheap.

Cleeecooo · 27 Mar 2011 at 21:00

So would doing what i want for under £400 be realistic all bit included?
Im also thinking of painting the inside of the chassis black or uv blue or something. Whats the best way to do that?

Sayso · 27 Mar 2011 at 21:23

yeh no problem, if i was you i would get the EK blocks cpu/gpu a decent pump/top and fit a 480 in the bottom, keeping the top free for some slow quiet fans to cool your chipset and RAM.
If you go for barbs rather than compression fittings you can knock £30-100 off the bill.
Get some distilled water and a silver coil (no dyes or costly coolant) and save yourself another £20.
The thing i wouldn't scrimp on is the pump as it will last you through a few different builds get one you can change the top on this is beneficial if you ever want a pump res top, just means you can change it if you want.
Have fun with your T07 its a great case defiantly the best off the shelf case for it.

Cleeecooo · 27 Mar 2011 at 21:42

Great. What about the fan controller? Anyone else think the sentries are rubbish?

Sayso · 27 Mar 2011 at 22:17

Have never used one. But if i was in the market for one now i would get a lamptron as they power much higher wattage per channel, which means you can power pumps from them and higher power fans.

Cleeecooo · 28 Mar 2011 at 19:42

Is this a good one?
http://www.lamptron.com/products/view/Fan_Controller_Touch

I kinda have the feeling that the Sentry LX is better. Presumably i'll have to splice some of the fans together to get this thing working properly?

Sayso · 28 Mar 2011 at 22:20

I suppose im more old school i like knobs (on my fan controllers) that way i get instant changes without the messing about.
The good thing about a high wattage controller is that you can splice all your Fans per RAD together and they will all run at the same speed with the turn of a dial, this is very useful if going push/pull.
If i had the money to spend i would probably invest in something like this

http://www.t-balancer.com/english/Modelle.htm

but if it was a fan controller for the front panel this

http://www.lamptron.com/products/view/Fan_Controller_FC2

Squakingcow · 28 Mar 2011 at 22:39

cammy5477 said:
i find slim rads are a waste of time.......

The thickness of a rad is virtually irrelevant, the only advantage a thicker rad has over a slimmer rad is a reduced pressure drop. Theoretically there is no reason why a thin rad cannot transfer heat at the same rate as a thicker radiator, and there are a couple of thin radiators that prove this rather nicely.

Cleeecooo · 28 Mar 2011 at 22:45

Squakingcow said:
The thickness of a rad is virtually irrelevant, the only advantage a thicker rad has over a slimmer rad is a reduced pressure drop. Theoretically there is no reason why a thin rad cannot transfer heat at the same rate as a thicker radiator, and there are a couple of thin radiators that prove this rather nicely.

Such as?

Squakingcow · 28 Mar 2011 at 23:45

Cleeecooo said:
Such as?

Unfortunately the selection of thin radiators is somewhat limited (possibly due to the demand from consumers for big expensive radiators in place of thinner ones). With only the EK/MCR rads as viable alternatives to thick radiators IMO (I omit things like the BI stealth rads as they are so thin that the increased pressure drop does affect performance).

The MCRs are the rads shown to perform equally to the thick radiators optimised for low fan speeds (here) .

The EK rads were also supposedly revised at some point after they were initially tested (here) to give better performance, however the effectiveness of the changes remains untested.

It's a pity there aren't more decent thin radiators, but at least there are a couple that perform well in the low noise category.

OLDPHART · 29 Mar 2011 at 20:27

Squakingcow said:
I omit things like the BI stealth rads as they are so thin that the increased pressure drop does affect performance

^^^^^^ How did you come to that conclusion? The design of the GTS is with low pressure loss in mind.

Using a BI GT Stealth 360[30mm thick] + x3 Vipers with shrouds performs just fine cooling my CPU i7 4.2GHz + GPU GTX 470 850:1700:2000, at this moment PC idle temps are 32:33:32:36'c. So I,v ran Prime95 for a 20 minute's CPU Core Temps reached 67:67:70:71'c and don't forget l'm cooling a GPU while it idle's at the same time while running P95. l'v just checked ambient room temperature its at 22'c due to central heating being on then ran P95 for an hour CPU 4.2GHz Core Temps reached 67:68:70:72'c, so under normal conditions just gaming ,etc, PC temps will be cooler. These are the results l'v kept after running Prime95 using an H50 + Vipers, CPU 4.2GHz after 20min's Core Temps are 70:73:73:75'c, ambient room temperature was 21'c then ran P95 again for an hour Core Temps reached 72:74:74:76'c just to give you something to compare with.

Squakingcow · 29 Mar 2011 at 20:40

OLDPHART said:
^^^^^^ How did you come to that conclusion? The design of the GTS is with low pressure loss in mind.

I stand corrected. I could have sworn I saw a radiator round up with the stealth, but on searching I cannot find one, so it's performance remains unquantified. Chances are even in the worst case scenario it wouldn't perform more than ~10% worse than the 'best' radiators.

Cleeecooo · 29 Mar 2011 at 21:47

Squakingcow said:
I stand corrected. I could have sworn I saw a radiator round up with the stealth, but on searching I cannot find one, so it's performance remains unquantified. Chances are even in the worst case scenario it wouldn't perform more than ~10% worse than the 'best' radiators.

So the slim rads are just as good?
I'm tempted by the Black ice GT stealth and getting a 480 and a 240 for that so i have a bit more room for my cable mess!

How should i go about spraypainting my case? Or shoukd i ask this in the general HW?

Squakingcow · 29 Mar 2011 at 22:05

Cleeecooo said:
So the slim rads are just as good?
I'm tempted by the Black ice GT stealth and getting a 480 and a 240 for that so i have a bit more room for my cable mess!

How should i go about spraypainting my case? Or shoukd i ask this in the general HW?

Well slim rads certainly can be, and even with the models that aren't quite up there the final performance difference will be negligible (a couple of degrees C on your components).

Also most people tend to get their case powder coated, although I'm sure spray-painting could work.

Cleeecooo · 29 Mar 2011 at 22:34

Whats the difference between powder coating and spray painting?

Squakingcow · 29 Mar 2011 at 22:51

Cleeecooo said:
Whats the difference between powder coating and spray painting?

Well to get your case powder coated you will have to dismantle it and send it off to a powder coating company as the process can't really be replicated at home.

With spray painting it could potentially be quite difficult to get a good finish if you do it yourself.

Cleeecooo · 29 Mar 2011 at 22:58

Squakingcow said:
Well to get your case powder coated you will have to dismantle it and send it off to a powder coating company as the process can't really be replicated at home.

With spray painting it could potentially be quite difficult to get a good finish if you do it yourself.

Theres me thinkin i just go to b and q and do everything at home

Mire research is needed

Squakingcow · 29 Mar 2011 at 23:07

Cleeecooo said:
Theres me thinkin i just go to b and q and do everything at home
Mire research is needed

Well there is no reason you can't spray it (that I can see anyway), it will just require some practice so that you don't end up with paint dribbles etc.