Alphacool DC-LT Ceramic pump - opinions and experience?

LePhuronn

LePhuronn

LePhuronn

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Yo yo, you lovely people.

It's just typical that I've almost come to the end of my planning stages and somewhere along the line I've misread a measurement for a DDC pump and now I don't have the space to actually fit it anywhere that's tidy. So I've been looking around for something else.

Does anybody have any experience with the Alphacool DC-LT Ceramic pump? There are very few reviews I can find and the occasional build log and nobody's really said anything bad about it, but I thought I'd put the question out there.

My loop will consist of an EK Supremacy EVO, Watercool Heatkiller Titan block, Alphacool UT60 360 and ST30 120 radiators with a few 90 degree adapters where I can't bend acrylic tube tight enough.

So, I don't think it's a particularly restrictive loop, but the pump is tiny (2.5m head pressure at 12V and 350l/h flow rate) so not sure if it'll have enough grunt to do the job.

Opinions, advice, comments, experience all gratefully received.

Cheers.
 
I have one of those I was planning to use for a semi/custom build in a evga hadron hydro.

It is EXTREMELY loud if you compare it to a D5 or even a DDC, like i could hear it clearly from a room away.
Granted, I might have gotten a bad one, but I will still not go near one of those again, especially since it is really weak.
 
Can I have yours then ErikN to test it :D

The noise issue seems to be a weird one. A lot of people have been complaining about noise when used with the godawful dual pump bay res Alphacool did - that thing was apparently utter trash - but used solo with the plexi top, and not run at the full 12V, it quiet downs a lot.

Frustrating to say the least since I cocked up on my DDC measurements and just can't fit it anywhere now. Fortunately I didn't buy it, but I do have enough other components to not just sack the project off.


Any other experience out there?
 
It's all very well running at a lower voltage to make it quieter but you have even less flow/head height then and it doesn't have much to start with. Can't you squeeze in a res/pump combo such as the EK X-Res or D5/Photon combos? What case are you using?
 
Well this is what's confusing me a little. The spec sheet says it's pretty weak, but there's a thread on OCN about this pump, and there's some pretty beefy loops that apparently running fine, and not all of them are using the dual pump bay res.

As far as my system goes, no I can't really fit much in without it looking seriously untidy. Pretty much the entire loop and the resulting planned case mods revolve around a DDC with a specific XSPC top. But jebend here got his wires crossed about something and didn't factor in the pump top dimensions.

I do have some back-up plans, namely the Magicool DCP450 pump/res combo, as that's not overbearing and pretty much the same dimensions as the tube res I already have (and probably can't use now). Worst case scenario I go for the new EK D5 combo that will just about fit, but my the stubby res drives me nuts and the mounting system is crazy bulky and may interfere with the motherboard.

But then again I am rebuilding two-thirds of my In Win 901's internals so I could just make a new mount for the D5 combo :p
 
As an addition, it may be worth pointing out that my planned loop is practically horizontal; the highest point will be the top of the vertical 120mm rad, so with the pump more or less aligned with the bottom of that rad, there's only a height of 12cm to cover. The top of the res is about the same as that rad too.

So do I need a particularly high head pressure?
 
LePhuronn said:
Can I have yours then ErikN to test it :D

The noise issue seems to be a weird one. A lot of people have been complaining about noise when used with the godawful dual pump bay res Alphacool did - that thing was apparently utter trash - but used solo with the plexi top, and not run at the full 12V, it quiet downs a lot.

Frustrating to say the least since I cocked up on my DDC measurements and just can't fit it anywhere now. Fortunately I didn't buy it, but I do have enough other components to not just sack the project off.


Any other experience out there?
Click to expand...

I had some plexi top+res with a big black fill port/cap at the top, only a single one though.
 
Head pressure is not just about how high it can pump water as the higher the pressure the better it is able to cope with restriction. The Evo by itself is fairly restrictive.
 
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