do i need 600 l/h for just my cpu ?

Mr. May · 2 Sep 2009 at 20:04

hi there ive just bought a heat killer 3.0 and a thermochill pa 120.3 rad and was looking at the xspc pump and res jobs

1st of are these products any good ?

secondly there are two diffrent ones ... one with a single bay res which is ideal for me but only a 200 l/h pump and cheaper

.... and the second is dual bay which i dont really want but could put up with for the 600l/h pump (sounds powerful)

but is more exspensive

my qusetion to you is do i need all the power for 1 loop with just my cpu which is going to be a i7 d0 when it arrives thanks in advance

Arthalen · 2 Sep 2009 at 21:30

Its not the litres per hour you need to worry about on pump. this is just mis-information that the manufacturers use to pimp there products.

What you need is Static Head Pressure to push the liquid around you loop no matter if its going up, down, through thin tubes, through thick tubes ect.... the flow rate doesnt matter if the pump cant generate the force to move the water through the confines of a block or radiator. Get the idea?

As for the products you've mentioned, I can't really comment as neither have I owned or used them. I read on here though that people have used to them to simple effect on basic custom loops.

PS PA120.3 is a bit overkill for just a CPU isn't it?

PPS If you trying to build a loop up with quality parts one at a time, just save up and get a DDC+ (18v) with a custom top. Probably best on the market. You can even get reservoir tops.

Mr. May · 2 Sep 2009 at 22:20

yer i know pressure is a main part of it but i thought the more water it pumps the more pressure it will make the rating on the double res pump is 1.8 and on the single its 1.2 is that any good ? and i got the rad cheap and my case will only support a tripple rad so iam trying to keep costs down so 40 quid or under for pump and res would be cool

Arthalen · 3 Sep 2009 at 01:34

If I was choosing between just those two, I would go for the double bay version.

prt · 3 Sep 2009 at 05:52

go for the dual bay res, and the rad is fine for a oc do

WJA96 · 3 Sep 2009 at 08:18

A 10W DDC with the XSPC reservoir top would be a good option or the same pump with the XSPC Dual DDC Bay Reservoir or even better the Primochill Typhoon III reservoir with a Laing D5 is excellent and very quiet.

A PA120.3 is not overkill for a CPU, just don't expect miracles over a PA120.2 as the limiting factor will be heat transfer off the CPU by the block.

Whether flow rate is more important than static head pressure is an interesting one.

You certainly need head pressure, but flow rate determines how often the water passes through the loop in a given period and you can only cool anything by passing it repeatedly through the system. In this case, with such a short loop I would almost say that head pressure is less important than flow rate.

In either case, my recommendation to use a Laing DDC or D5 pump in place of the ones used by XSPC stands.

Mr. May · 3 Sep 2009 at 22:49

thank you everyone for there advice and iam going to go for the double jobby as i cant be arsed with lots of componants i want to make a build log of my RV01 build as i have got all the stuff now apart from the water cooling i just dont know how to post pictures

JonJ678 · 4 Sep 2009 at 01:02

I think you will regret this decision. The xspc reservoir/pumps are not very good.

A high static pressure pump will deliver close to its rated flow rate through anything. A low static pressure pump will deliver far less than its rated flow rate though slightly restrictive loops. Temperatures are a function of flow rate. For a cpu only loop the laing D5 is probably ideal, later combining it with the typhoon 3 for more components. However the (10W) DDC with reservoir top is a firm favorite for good reason, it performs far better than the bay res/pumps you're looking at and takes up much less space.

If you 'cant be arsed with lots of componants' water cooling is not for you.

setter · 4 Sep 2009 at 01:26

Water cooling seems extremely interesting, my i7 setup will soon be complete, ive heard they run pretty warm.

JonJ678 · 4 Sep 2009 at 02:05

Just a bit yeah. TDP of 130W increased from your chips 95W, and the q9550 is hardly cool. Motherboard and ram throw out less heat so I suppose that's something. I'm concerned my radiators wont be able to cope with the i7 even though they had no issues at all with my old q9550

setter · 4 Sep 2009 at 02:33

Tbh jon my q9550 runs extremely cool, idle temps of, 31-31-26-26, it loads at 56-54-46-46, (possible stuck sensors on 2 lowest cores) and the best thing is im using pretty puny sharkoon silent eagle 400-1200 rpm pwm fans, i have 2 of te 3 pin 2000 rpm models as case intakes, when i get my i7 rig going i might use them on my TRUE.

WJA96 · 4 Sep 2009 at 06:36

JonJ678 said:
If you 'cant be arsed with lots of componants' water cooling is not for you.

Agreed. Water cooling isn't easy. In IT terms it's very high maintenance and you'd probably be better off on high-end air cooling (Megahalems) or with something like a Corsair Hydro 50, but even those must require some maintenance at some point.

Arthalen · 4 Sep 2009 at 08:27

WJA96 said:
Agreed. Water cooling isn't easy. In IT terms it's very high maintenance and you'd probably be better off on high-end air cooling (Megahalems) or with something like a Corsair Hydro 50, but even those must require some maintenance at some point.

This.

Its the reason I haven't gone back to custom water-cooling; it was awesome having a custom loop that kept a E6400 at around 7c above ambient when overclocked to 3.4Ghz, but the cleaning/replacing tubes/emptying and refilling was annoying, as was component upgrades the PC itself.