2 radiators better than one

caister

caister

caister

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Southampton UK
Have just aquired a thermochill 120.1 and want to know if adding it to my system would improve temps or not. I know that theroretically it should if only slightly and it might let me set my fan speeds a bit lower.

At the moment my setup is as follows.

thermochill 120.2, eheim 1250 pump, DD SKt478 TDX cpu block, and DD maze 4 gpu block.

So would it be overkill or would it allow me to lower my temps and fan speeds?
 
...well that's what I plan on doing.

I am getting a 120.2 radiator...and then i'm going to bolt a 120.1 radiator on my 120mm case exhaust port.

Not overkill I don't think....triple rad setups are pretty good :)
 
with a 120.2 i reckon the 120.1 would just add restriction, only time it would be worthwhile is if you're exceeding the .2 's capacity, which you wont do unless you have a monstrous (already restrictive) loop, or are Tecing :)
 
yeah i might just leave it out then unless anyone else has any input.

I was going to cool my northbridge but my motherboards got thoose stupid loops instead of holes so i dont want to put too much pressure on them.

I dont think im hardcore enough to tec would worry that somethings going to go horribly wrong!
 
The thermaltake bigwater 745 kit comes with 2 120.2 radiators and an additional 120.1 rad and it's one of the best performing kits for the money right now IMO
 
Yeah I think you may too......

Im still doing some for this extra rad some peolpe say its worth it somepeople say its not I suppose its down to personal preference. I might just put it in for the sake of it as long as im sure it wont have any adverse effects. thermochills arnt too restrictive anyway.
 
gurusan said:
Why do you say that? It's nothing like the other bigwater kits.
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its almost the same, with extra rads :rolleyes:

Poor block
Poor rads, relative to surface area
VERY poor pump
Poor choice of materials

The only consolation is its cheap and quiet, air cooling can achieve the same and is cheaper
 
well my friend has the kit and he has an opty 165 @ 3.1ghz and it loads around 37c.....also cooling his 7900GT...not sure what kind of temps his GPU is getting though.

Also he replaced the block for an apogee waterblock and is using a zalman gpu block

I wouldn't say you could do that on air
 
yup 24 hour prime stable.

he has one of those earlier steppings that made the 165 so famous.

I can do 3.0ghz on my 4400x2 but it's only stable around 1.6 vcore and that makes me really nervous on air. Kinda weird because my 2.86 clock only requires around 1.475vcore...and anything higher it just wants more and more power
 
yeah the duals suck power but seem to love it.



go WATER :D :)

and is his rig is dual prime stable or another fav 2x sp2004 cpu infinity set to per core

thats an excellent clock if it can do that,and not fall over wicked chip :eek:
 
gurusan said:
well my friend has the kit and he has an opty 165 @ 3.1ghz and it loads around 37c.....also cooling his 7900GT...not sure what kind of temps his GPU is getting though.

Also he replaced the block for an apogee waterblock and is using a zalman gpu block

I wouldn't say you could do that on air
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id be willing to bet good air cooling could match that , more to do with the chip than the cooling ;)
 
Another vote for one rad over two. you will not see any noticable drop in temp and will put more pressure on your Pump, due to restriction i have tried and tested with 120.2 + 120.1 on a few systems and found the 120.2 performed better, but if you think you need more rad surface area get a 120.3, as for the Bigwater i have the old kit and the new kit in two cheap pc's i built for family members they both perform on par with good air cooling. and the rads compared to a BIX or Thermochill there is no competition.
 
gurusan said:
well my friend has the kit and he has an opty 165 @ 3.1ghz and it loads around 37c.....also cooling his 7900GT...not sure what kind of temps his GPU is getting though.

Also he replaced the block for an apogee waterblock and is using a zalman gpu block

I wouldn't say you could do that on air
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So he's replaced both the blocks but you still think it's a good kit? He's not using a Bigwater. He's using bits of it with two much superior blocks.
 
This was a complete overkill rig that I just built but I had my reasons:

I had built more than enough pimped out phase rigs and ultra tidy high performance WC rigs.

I don't do lan parties anymore so I have no need to build show class machines.

I had a bucketload of bits lying around going to waste.

Took an old big Inwin Q500 tower chassis, hacked it to bits, painted it up. merged 2 dual heatercores together 100% airtight with perfectly matched channels for great airflow through both cores and sealed up all other areas so all the air being pulled has to pass through both cores. Short shrouds are sealed on airtight along with 2 Sharkoon Silent Eagle 2000 fans on fanmates. This then goes to an Apogee, a EK Northbridge cooler and then to an Alphacool Mosfet cooler. This then goes up to the roof into an external Thermochill PA 120.3 rad. From there into a Mcres micro near the top of the case, then to a bay res as I needed to split the flow into 2 barbs and also have the benefit of seeing the coolant. This then goes into a Hardwareluxx dual DDC pump mount with 2 DDC Ultras taking car of the pumping duties in series.

No VGA cooling yeat as I saw no point in shelling out for a block when I will be changing card in a few months. This rig isn't completely finished yet as I am still doing the wiring but so far all the kit is in and working, the PA 120.3 is running passive atm until I fit the fans. Now, with only 2 fans running, the 2 in the 'ubercore' at 1000RPM I have a BIOS core temp report of 20-21C! Coretemp via XP shows both cores on 35-36c

This is a Lapped Core 2 Duo E6700 on a P5WDH and the Apogee is lapped too. When cranked up to a basic 3.3Ghz the BIOS is reporting 23.5-24.5. I haven't run coretemp on this config as it was just a test fireup. I have already had this chip briefly at 3.75Ghz on air and the temps sure weren't as low as what I am getting now ;).

Basically I have written all that guff to say that I didn't follow people's unwanted opinions over this setup telling me on other forums I would kill flowrate etc and make it perform worse, built what I wanted for the hell of it, I have a huge cooling capacity now to add in god know's what in the future and have a damn cool running CPU/chipset/mosfets :D. Also visually the flowrate is phenomenal and this is using a mix of 1/2" masterkleer and 3/8" tygon tubing.

In my opinion and experience 2 radiators are better than one when the right setup is specced and implemented properly ;).
 
ive got 2 pumps ehiem 1250s and 2 rads.but only one lot as a working kit.1/2 inch tygons

Comprised of a vespa rad (last thing left, on a stripped wreck) and one of the ehiems currently doing the spec in sig.As sig stated,the gpu is maze 4

the cpu block ...



maze 3 laughably :o

but i also have 2 120 ml rads,sitting around and the need to go faster,
im thinking of getting the other lot setup. due to my current upgrade, from a single, to dual core setup.

I suppose this is what 2 loop setup is?

do you think it will let the cpu stretch a bit further if i get my 1900xt to its own rad & pump?As ive felt with degrees lower, it probably would.
I need to use 1.55volt temperature stable for more speed above 2.8

of course i understand if i throw money at it it will improve.but i want to use what i got and need to know if its worth the bother.


what do others think?
hope it makes sence

BTW mr footlong,very cool sounding setup there :)
 
jellybeard999 said:
id be willing to bet good air cooling could match that , more to do with the chip than the cooling ;)
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Are you serious? 37c on an opty at 3.1ghz? That's probably consuming around 200 watts at least. Never seen an air cooler that can displace that kind of heat.

MikeTimbers said:
So he's replaced both the blocks but you still think it's a good kit? He's not using a Bigwater. He's using bits of it with two much superior blocks.
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Yes well in the end he still paid under 100 usd for everything.
 
gurusan said:
Yes well in the end he still paid under 100 usd for everything.
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Doesn't matter: he's still using two better blocks which are one of the more important components within a systme.

Would two radiators help? Sure, they'd help dissipate more heat, but at the same time less heat would be removed from the CPU/GPU due to the reduced flow round the loop.

If you are using an Iwaki pump or have a couple of pumps in the loop, then it would probably help on average. But considering a Thermochill 120.2 can handle a completely watercooled system without too much difficulty, I think it would be overkill for little gain.

However, if you're up to it, using a small TEC on the graphics card in a separate loop would be of good use. However, you'd probably have to swap out the 120.2 and stick the 120.1 on the CPU for best results.
 
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