Diagnosing an inadequate pump?

JonJ678

JonJ678

JonJ678

Soldato
Joined
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Location
England
I think mine is ok, but it's going to be pushed hard in the future. How do I tell when the limiting factor in a loop is the pump?

Reason for concern is that by the end of the summer it'll probably be running an ek supreme, four other blocks, and either three or four radiators. 18W ddc, I knew the loop was going to be restrictive so went for head pressure when choosing it. I'm wondering about having to add a second in series.

Cheers
 
That's crying out for multiple loops to be honest. If you really want to do it 1 pump, then get a Primochill Typhoon III with a Laing D4 or D5 in it and split the loops in half between the two outputs.

It's working very well for me at the moment.
 
The best thing to do would be to compare flowrates before and after you add the extra blocks. This is all in theory but you could do this without getting a fancy flow meter. What I am thinking is you take all your water cooling bits out of your pc and rig up a loop with your system as is, except you don't include the rez. Instead of the res have the pump feed from a 3 gallon bucket, then have the return line to dump the water into another empty bucket. The idea being you start the system and time how long it takes to fill the other bucket, thus giving you the flow rate. You then add all your extra blocks, rads etc and repeat the excercise. You'll then be able to see how much the flowrate is affected and if it looks like an extra pump is needed. I would still dual loop if it was me though.
 
I like the filling a bucket idea quite a lot, that's an excellent idea. Sounds like a laugh too. The only idea I've come up with is inadequate flow will lead to uneven temperatures in the loop, so if the graphics card and processor are a fair distance apart, say with all the other blocks inbetween, and I note their temperatures before and after I add in more blocks I may be able to work something out.


Multiple loops would give me worse temperatures than two pumps in series I think, possibly worse than one pump alone. I have, roughly speaking, two 120.2 radiators. I could dedicate one to the i7 processor and run everything else off the second, but I don't believe a 120.2 is enough for an i7, and the second loop would barely even warm up. The hottest thing in it is an 8800gt, which has a 3 degrees difference between load and idle when running off a single 120mm radiator. The rest will be chipset blocks, used mainly to deal with the rather bad airflow in my case that results from entirely filling it with radiators.

Multiple loops is the answer if I set up an external radiator, but at present (no more fit inside the case) it would give me one hot loop and one cold, with the processor in the wrong one. If temperature prove unmanageable even without the chipset blocks, which I don't have yet, I may need to start photographing the case and asking for help
 
Pictures - everyone wants pictures!

Installed in the front of a MM UFO2 (4Tb Samsung RAID array above)

typhoon1.jpg


And the back

typhoon2.jpg


I've installed two Zalman quick release connectors and I'm using 8mm ID tubing throughout. The water fairly whizzes around both loops even though they are quite restrictive;

Loop 1: EK ASUS P6T NB/SB/2xVRM and Thermochill PA160.1 (1 x 140mm fan)
Loop 2: EK Supreme and Thermochill PA120.2 (4 x 120mm fans in push/pull)

Quiet, it's not:D
 
Well that was a depressing spreadsheet. Cheers shadow. The conclusion I've drawn from it is pretty much that the ek supreme does indeed have a very large pressure drop associated with it, which doesn't really surprise me. I think I'm going to end up with another DDC, it certainly looks likely anyway. Damn. Fair enough really, the loop I'm considering is about as restrictive as they can get.

Series pumps, next to each other or can one be partway along the loop? I'm thinking ddc + reservoir -> ek supreme -> second ddc -> reservoir, with other things thrown in wherever is convenient. Looking at my board and wondering if I can suspend a ddc between the cpu block and the graphics card, and I think it'll fit, held up by the tubing (compression fittings).


Not sure I have space for that D5 system, I'm currently trying to squeeze in another few hard drives after I callously replaced their hard drive rack with radiators, and blocked the optical bays with, um, radiators. Still all internal at present, debating whether radiators directly fixed to the back of the case count as external, as I could get another 120 and another 80mm there if they don't. How on earth is my akasa too small.
 
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Out of interest what did the flow estimator give as the flow rate?

I was under the impression that you'd get better flow by splitting into two loops rather than 2 pumps in series, and it would be better to put all the components that can run hotter into one loop, and the CPU or whatever in the other. Also, the 80mm radiator is only going to have under half the cooling power of a 120mm radiator - might not be worth it given the loss in flow rate from adding it.
 
With one DDC it was well into the poor area of the graph, with two about a third of the way up 'good'. Didn't note down the numbers as it was only an approximation anyway. The ek supreme is the biggest problem, with the number of radiators coming second.

Two loops would probably be better than one loop for flow rate. Issue is that I have one very hot component (i7) and currently one cool one, but due to be five cool ones in the future. I want all the radiators available for the i7 more than I want to split up the loops. Two pumps in series gives redundancy as well, which can't be bad.

I'm pretty certain that adding an 80mm over the psu fan will make full load temperatures worse when overclocked, the idea is to be able to run the i7 as a 1.5ghz dual core on as little voltage as I can feed it using just the 80mm radiator. The chipset blocks being under water helps here as there will be no airflow whatsoever over the board.

Different musings really, I think a second pump is going to be needed whether or not I put the 80mm over the psu.
 
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