Finally ditching flexible tubing....

weird_dave

weird_dave

weird_dave

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I have an awkward pair of hose ports on my case:
https://www.silverstonetek.com/raven/products/index.php?model=RV02
They are at the rear bottom of the case. This eventually causes flexible tubing to collapse due to the bend radius being less than the tubing would like. So, I've gone for brass 1/4" to 15mm compression couplings and speedfit bends and tubing! I could have just replaced the tubing in the problem areas, but I'm fairly convinced replacing all of it will be much neater, the flexible hose just sags all over the place...
The parts should be turning up today/tomorrow, should be fun!

Anyone else done the same/similar?
Also, anyone using a central heating pump?
 
If you are going to be using something like a central heating pump then you need to be careful. I don't know what sort of pressure they are capable of but water blocks, radiators and fittings are only designed to take so much pressure. I would double check the limits of your components if you decide to go down that route.
 
weird_dave said:
Also, anyone using a central heating pump?
Click to expand...
It can be done, back in the early 00's when people were still experimenting a few did it but aquarium pumps (which we still use today) did the job better.

To put it in perspective, the Laing D5 (most popular pump for PC watercooling) has a maximum theoretical flow rate of 1500 liters per hour with a maximum head pressure of 3.9m and costs about £50.

The Grundfos UPS2 15-50/60 CENTRAL HEATING PUMP has a maximum theoretical flow rate of 3000 liters per hour with a maximum head pressure of 6m and costs about £100.

The thing is, if it's flow or pressure you're after, you could just buy two D5s and run them in parallel or series respectively and it would be much much easier than going 00's style.
 
I'm not planning to use a CHP just yet, if/when the pump I have fails then I will be considering it as they are just so good. I've used them in place of pond pumps (mavity fed filter, pump the clean water back to the pond) and they just keep going and going.
If a loop can handle the pressure of a Laing D5, I suspect it will be fine with a CHP at its lowest setting, the pump I have my eye on states 1300L/h and 3M head on the lowest setting.
Well, the fittings are apparently waiting for me to collect, this should be a fun weekend!
 
weird_dave said:
I'm not planning to use a CHP just yet, if/when the pump I have fails then I will be considering it as they are just so good. I've used them in place of pond pumps (mavity fed filter, pump the clean water back to the pond) and they just keep going and going.
If a loop can handle the pressure of a Laing D5, I suspect it will be fine with a CHP at its lowest setting, the pump I have my eye on states 1300L/h and 3M head on the lowest setting.
Well, the fittings are apparently waiting for me to collect, this should be a fun weekend!
Click to expand...

Pictures please!
 
Before:
42310956_10155560357621960_2982438510251737088_o.jpg

It'll be a while before I do the after, I'm copying everything from the stack of drives in the pic, there's little chance I'll get all the cables back in the right drives for raid to work again :D (6 in raid, +2 singles, I'm bound to get it wrong :) )

I'll be taking out the 290X on the left to give myself more room ;)

Now, you might be wondering why I've bothered to use the awkward hose ports on the case at all given half the guts are out of the side anyway, well, the HD stack was a more recent addition and it would have been a pain fitting those in at the time.... (mostly due to laziness and wanting instant gratification).

I'll take some after pics before I re-position it so you can see what a proper mess it still is/will be :D
 
weird_dave said:
Before:
42310956_10155560357621960_2982438510251737088_o.jpg

It'll be a while before I do the after, I'm copying everything from the stack of drives in the pic, there's little chance I'll get all the cables back in the right drives for raid to work again :D (6 in raid, +2 singles, I'm bound to get it wrong :) )

I'll be taking out the 290X on the left to give myself more room ;)

Now, you might be wondering why I've bothered to use the awkward hose ports on the case at all given half the guts are out of the side anyway, well, the HD stack was a more recent addition and it would have been a pain fitting those in at the time.... (mostly due to laziness and wanting instant gratification).

I'll take some after pics before I re-position it so you can see what a proper mess it still is/will be :D
Click to expand...

Thanks! :)
 
OK, this one came out a bit blurry, I was tired when I took it.... (might be for the best tbh :D )
But you get the idea.
One of the issues was that the hose ports still wouldn't work for me as the speedfit bends require too much space under the case, I'd need taller feet, so I compromised.
The fans aren't fitted yet, they are on the front pulling air.
The pipe arrangement on the left look weird as I ended up putting extra bends in to allow me to move my bay-res forward to allow filling.
The pipes aren't quite straight as it came in a coil - I bought it in bulk ages ago which is partly why I thought it would be good to use.
The odd pipe arrangement also allow me to move the rad, this came in rather useful when the PC wouldn't post! Turns out I may have managed to get a drop of the old fluid on the stick, I can only see a small wet mark on the ram heatsink and not on the PCB, but it seems to be booting without it now :(
42403738_10155561010201960_113755412880162816_o.jpg
 
Well, temps do seem lower, It's not easy to put figures on it as I don't know if I have exactly the same overclock, but prime95 is hitting temps I had while just doing normal gaming which was using maybe 75% CPU. What will have contributed significantly to the temp drop is the washing out of all the dust on the rad.
All the memory is working now too :)
Overall I'm pleased with the result, the kinking/collapsing of flexible tubing would sometime cause excessive heat to the point where I would have to 'encourage' the pipe to allow better flow to stop the CPU throttling.
I didn't remove the block from the CPU, so the paste remains unchanged and is therefore not a contributing factor.
Solid pipe is definitely better, the speedfit fittings allow me to move things about without draining down, for example, the rad will come forward out of the case and bend to the left, allowing me to access the ram behind, I can run it like that without problems too, then just slot it back into position. Flexible hose would also allow it, but then you risk flow restrictions when the bend radius is too small.

If I'd drilled some pipe holes in the rear of the case I could have mounted the rad off the back, this would have been much better but I can't remember where I put either of my drills!
The second thing that would have made this better/easier would be a different res, one where I didn't have to be able to move it to top it up.
Buying straight pipe instead of using the coiled stuff I had:
Layflat-Pipe.jpg

would have made life a lot easier too, trying to straighten it is a pain.
I did nip out and buy some speedfit flexible pipes as I thought these would make it easier to be able to move the res, but they weren't that flexible so I ended up with an array of bends which thankfully are hidden inside the bay area
 
Not sure yet. I've never done a WC build before but i'm now thinking clear hardline.

My case is a lian li pc-o7sx so whatever i do I'm going to be seeing it everytime i use the PC.

I was actually considering chromed copper or something like that, but I dont know. I cant really do anything until i replace my mobo. By the time i do that i hope i'll have settled on a look.
 
weird_dave said:
If I'd drilled some pipe holes in the rear of the case I could have mounted the rad off the back, this would have been much better but I can't remember where I put either of my drills!
The second thing that would have made this better/easier would be a different res, one where I didn't have to be able to move it to top it up.
Click to expand...

I hung a 360 off the back of my case for years when i ran out of space inside, it works really well, just make sure ya mount it on solid. It actually used to come in quite handy has a handle to lift the case by as tall cases can be awkward to shift around. Since you loop is pretty small you could consider just running without a Res if you having trouble with yours, i didnt have a res in my last case and it had 3 rads and 3 blocks in there, i just used to connect one up temporarily while filling the loop and bleeding the air, then once the air was out i would replace the res with fitting to connect the pipes. It might be a tad annoying with you white pipes though cause ya wont be able to see the air bubbles to get them out :)
 
Clear tubing does have another drawback, time and light will have an affect on the fluid. The stuff that came out of mine when I drained it was terrible, it certainly wasn't nice to look at. Given your case, I suspect the rad and res will have to be mounted externally (assuming I'm looking at the right case). If you have solid pipes, having the rad and res outside the case should make maintenance easier as you won't be able to move anything unless you drain it down. I would advise spending some time designing the pipe layout, try to ensure you can easily add/remove ram/gfx/drives without draining down. I've already had to test I could do this when I had problems POSTing, the gfx was the first to be swapped out and it was pretty easy.

My current solution still looks a bit ghetto, but the cooling improvement is definitely there and it's now easier to move the PC. Fortunately for me, I can hide the PC behind the monitor so I don't get distracted by its ugliness :)
 
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