big external watercooler.

robinlawrie

robinlawrie

robinlawrie

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few years have passed since my last post, but im once again planning a project.

edit: just realised i posted this in the wrong forum.. doh.

anyway...

ive got a fairly interesting custom machine.. its a standard lian li alu case, but with 2 microatx machines crammed inside. they are both overclocked 3930k's with 32gb of ram, connected with 10gb infiniband, and powered by a shared 1500w psu.

one board is used as the main machine (and has a gtx670 gpu) the other is a rendering slave with no gpu.

i use it for my work doing 3d animation.

i always intended to document the build here, but as always, real life got in the way.

anyway im very happy with the result apart from one thing. the noise.

each cpu is cooled with a corsair h80 with push/pull fans ( yes they are in the same case too)

however, with a 4.4ghz overclock, both need to be running on high. and the combined noise of the two coolers (plus gpu when im working) is starting to drive me a bit bonkers (not to mention i have tinnitus to remind me of all my youthful partying, but thats another story)


so, i was thinking about building an external cooler that could handle both 3930k's, and ideally a couple of titan-x'es (my prospective next purchase for gpu rendering)

it would also be nice if the cooler had spare capacity to cool another machine should i choose to add one.

it also has to be as near to silent as possible.

tall order eh?

so my current thinking is a pair of mora 3's with a set of 4 180mm fans sandwiched between them (with a space to remove dead spots) with a nice wooden or metal frame wrapping the sides and top.

also included in the cooler would be reservoir and pumps (2 for redundancy / extra pressure)

i figure that even with say, 3x 6 core oc'ed processors and a couple of titan x'es, 2 mora 3s should be more than sufficient, and definitely the most cost effective compared to other options.

thoughts?

next up, the issues of tube length, loop layout, restriction ,and pump selection.

id like the option to situate the cooler in the room during winter, but during summer ( south of italy) it hits 45 degrees C here, so id like to move the cooler into the nice cool outhouse that backs onto my office space.

this will require a distance of at least 3-4 metres from the workstations to the cooler. all on the same level though.

would a pair of ddc 18w pumps in series be enough in this case? if one dropped out would one limp along till a replacement?

id imagine also, doing the entire loop in series, to avoid issues.. i dont know if this is practical with 2-3 cpu blocks and 2-3 gpu blocks.

i do have the option to run the mora 3-s in parallel. i heard they can be restrictive (although this is debated) so maybe having them in parallel would be good.

phew ok. thats got the general idea out. any thoughts?
 
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thanks for the reply. itll have to be external, as mentioned, there is quite a lot crammed into my case already.

i dont mind a big job, i like projects.

i did consider car radiators etc. but once you get into having them modified and cleaned, you may as well get a pair of mora3's plus, i dont want my office to look like part of a garage. (any more than it does already)

i also considered ground loops, and even running a loop down to the 25,000 litre rainwater tank under my house.. however a) it would have to run across the living room floor b) we are probably moving soon, so it has to be portable and c) i dont want to cause anything to grow in our water tank by running warm tubing through it.

the idea of a large, but portable cooler is great cos i can use to to warm the house in winter, but move it to the outbuilding in summer so the machines (and me) dont cook.

thanks for the advice about the pumps.. do you think a pair of D5's is a less noisy option? any other practical alternatives? id imagine the pumps will be housed in a compartment under the cooler, ideally thin mdf, which should quieten them a bit.


any thoughts on the mora3's? very hard to get any opinions from people who have actually used them, or decent benchmarks apart from that one german one.

i did read somewhere they can dissipate about 2kw each, but god knows at what noise level.
 
thanks for those links, the second one i hadnt seen.

to be honest im a little disappointed by the reported temps in those articles.

i get about 65-70 degrees c on a 3930k at 4.0-4.4 (depending on season!) using a single corsair H80, admittedly with the fans on high.

- id have expected lower temps with a rad more than 9x bigger, even with very slow fans.

having said that the replys in those threads seem to suggest the temps are good, so..

and also, maybe the temps would stay similar even if you added another machine..
 
well ive just approximately priced up my setup, using the following major components

dual mora 3 black radiators

dual d5 vario pumps

4x silverstone air penetrator 180mm fans

2x alphacool nexxos xp3 light gpu blocks

koolance quick release connectors

various other fittings

for now ive left off the gpu blocks, as i wont be buying the titan x'es for a while.

holy crap it does add up doesnt it.

total price so far is £597 quid.

im not sure i can justify that even for saving my hearing. i could almost buy another renderbox for that. cripes.
 
anyone care to comment on the necessity (or not) of providing ventilation to dual D5 pumps?

id imagine they would be, erm.. watercooled? my current design calls for them to be relatively sealed in an mdf box below the radiator housing.

also, my loop design now contains 2x mora 3s, 2x cpu blocks, approx 10 metres loop length, and 12 or so right angle barbs. will later add 2x gpu blocks and possibly another cpu block. all in series. did i also mention its 3/8 tubing?

im steering clear of the larger tubing as i dont want the umbilical connection to be too massive, and if my research is correct it doesnt make much difference anyway.

ive also read that right angle barbs make a very minor difference to restriction in the end.


am i heading for flowrate hell or will those d5s keep things moving ok.
 
quick update to say after a bit more research ive decided to put the mora3's in parallel.
this should reduce the restrictiveness of the loop a bit, increase the overall flowrate a bit (of course the rest of the loop will still be restrictive, and the flowrate through each rad will be a bit lower)

but more importantly, both radiators will be getting hot water. in series the second rad will be getting precooled water, so will be less efficient.

its no problem for me to have y splitters with equal tube length to both rads, symmetrically arranged, so there shouldnt be any flow imbalances.
 
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if my research has been at all successful, right angle barbs have a fairly minimal effect on flow rate in the end. i saw a discussion where somebody who had some impressive maths skills, calculated that a single flow meter has the same restrictiveness as 6 right angle barbs, and a cpu block was equivalent to 50 right angles.

to be honest im more worried about the length of my tubing. 10 metres of tube is quite a lot.
 
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hm. ive been playing round with martins spreadsheet. its not ideal because very few of my actual components are listed (only the pumps) . also, i see no way to compare series/parallel arrangements.. its surprisingly hard in any case to get an "excellent" flowrate. a rough approximation i did using a thermochill 120.3 (no idea how it compares to 2 mora3 in parallel for flowrate) and 2 apogee gt cpu blocks netted a flowrate of 1.15 gpm with both pumps set on 4. removing all the right angles changed that to 1.35 gpm


if i change the blocks to ek supremes, the flowrate drops to 0.85 gpm

surprisingly poor flowrate considering 2 d5s on setting 4, and no gpu blocks.
 
so i pulled the trigger. in a week or two i should recieve:

2x mora3
4x 180mm silverstone ap181's
2x ek supremacy blocks
2x d5 vario pumps
tube res (phobya iirc)
koolance qdc's
all the fittings.

total bill is eye watering, but id imagine this will be the last cooling system i ever need, even if i get my 2x titan x'es and another workstation on the loop (although a possible pump upgrade might be needed at some point.)

the case is being fabricated from 10mm mdf. it will be 60 cm tall, 45 cm wide and have a mora sticking out of each side with the fans sandwiched in between ( with 30mm of space between fans and each rad to reduce dead spots) all fittings/rads/res are black, the case i think will be white, as will the umbilical (3.5 metres, 2x 3/8 tube and a power cable with a pair of quick disconnects on the end) im looking for a nice way to braid the umbilical together whilst maintaining flexibility. im thinking a fabric sleeve or braided string.

total weight will be somewhere around 25 kg i estimate.
 
hmm. i wish id seen that stacked radiator thread before. anyway, the design isnt fixed (although a setup with 2 mora 3's non-stacked is gonna be pretty non-portable, and require another 4 fans)

i will do some testing when the bits arrive.. bear in mind that a) from an airflow point of view the mora 3s are much lower restriction than the ones in that test, and b) the fans more powerful, also c) ill be running my rads in parallel. so maybe the result will be a little different. we will see.


also it will likely be quite difficult to even notice a difference in my initial setup, since the rads are so oversized for the job. once i get a couple of titan-x'es and another entire workstation on the loop, we might see some issues more clearly. in the end though, it would be a shame to be wasting a mora3.
 
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hmph ive just read another thread that says the worst thing you can do with stacked radiators, is run them in parallel. just a single guys opinion/experience, but since for flowrate reasons, i really wanna run these in parallel, the stacked design is looking less and less appealing, even if it is the only practical way to fit the damn things in a box.
 
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ok so pending the possibility of changing my order, its possible i could buy 2 or 3 560mm rads for the same price as 2x mora 3's but they would be at the cheaper end of the spectrum, and ideally available from aquatuning, since i have a big order coming from them.

probably wouldnt have as much cooling potential as 2x mora 3's but they would be easier to case up without sandwiching (case would be taller and thinner)

with the mora3's if i want them non-sandwiched, they have to be side-by-side (one above the other is no good for parallel connection) and side by side is one ugly shaped box.

the alphacool nexxos st30 560mm is only 88 euros. but i cant find any reviews anywhere.

seems to be a slim one
 
am i right in assuming that if i have the rads one above the other, iwill have issues balancing the flow in parallel? any way i can mitigate this easily? id definitely prefer a taller box than a wider one.

i could have the inlets at the top of the bottom one, and the bottom of the top one, so the inlets and outlets would be at approximately teh same height, but in the end the water in the top radiator ends up having to go higher than the water in the bottom one. gravity says the water will favour the bottom radiator.
 
ok so in that case id say i want more than 2x 560 rads. those temps are higher than id expect. considering i want to have the ability to cool 3x 6 core oc'ed cpus and 2 oc'ed titan x'es quietly. looks like the dual mora3's will win on cost if nothing else.

is your setup almost silent? 1000 rpm is also a bit higher than id wanted.
 
thanks for the link, i saw it before (i think ive read every word ever written online about the mora3)..

anyway, ive come up with a new design. its not a sandwich setup this time. takes up a bit more space but its not too bad.. basically if i put the mora3's side by side, then rotate one 90 degrees, they form 2 sides of a triangle. the third side of the triangle just happens to be exactly the right size for 6x 180mm fans.

so i build a triangular box, stick the radiators on 2 sides and 6 fans on the third side.

it should fit reasoinably well in the corner of the room, and is more compact than just side by side. plus i automatically deal with fan dead spots, and only need to buy 6 fans instead of 8.


to be honest im thinking to have the 2 central fans on low continually, and the other 4 fans come on if the temp gets too high. i think with so much rad, 2 slow fans will keep my temps rock bottom until i do some hardcore rendering.

a happy side effect of the larger internal space is ive removed the need for all the right angle barbs and i dont have any more really tight radiuses to deal with either.
 
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Thanks for the suggestion. Yes I considered spacing the sandwiched rads apart with a surround of fans pushing air into the gap between, but I didn't feel the idea of making the air turn thru 90 degrees to exit the rads was optimal. I guess having fans on the outside of the rads sucking air from the space in between could help, but I'm trying to avoid exposed fans and the likely increased noise. My current design isn't the most compact or pretty, but it should be a good compromise between effectiveness, size, cost and noise level..
 
May as well not bother with the radiator in this case. Just replace it with a big (massive) reservoir..


i have a 25,000 litre water tank under the house that probably counts as "massive" a few loops of copper tube dropped in there would be a great silent solution. but we will likely move soon.. i want something portable.


plus id imagine a warm tube in the water would make things grow in the tank.
 
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