External water cooling box plan, will it work?

Harbz said:
Couldnt get hold of any DDC Ultra pumps, so I brought 2 (1 second hand) Ehiem 1048, these will run in parallel from the same res. I am using 1/2 tubing all round.

The car heater cores are slightly larger than a 120.2 rad, so all in I will 120.3 + 120.2 + 120.2 all running with 5V or 7V fans. Should work ok I think?
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It all sounds good. 5/7v fans should do nicely. Some Yate loons for the Thermochill rad. And some 38mm Papst or Panaflo fans for the car rad's.

IIRC running the pumps in series is better. No Y connection's and less restriction.
 
weescott said:
IIRC running the pumps in series is better. No Y connection's and less restriction.
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Yeah putting them is parallel makes next to no difference, putting them in series will help compensate for any high pressure drop blocks.

Jokester
 
Thanks guys. So in series :

res > pump1 > pump2 > rad....

Is this correct? Not sure how that will work because pump2 will be doing all the work? pump1 will be just supplying pump2 with water. Where as in parallel both pump1 and pump2 do the work?

Also, another question. I brought one of those OneClick power things so that when I switch on my PC, it will turn on the pumps, speakers, monitors etc.. This has about 3 - 5 seconds delay. So when I switch my pc on, the pumps will start 3 - 5 seconds later. Will the stationary water in the block be able to cool the cpu for 5 secs?
 
I wouldn't like the 3-5 second delay but I guess it would be ok as the cpu isn't under load. But it might limit your clock or even prevent the PC from getting into the OS. I would play it safe and get 2 PCI relay cards for the pumps.

Pumps in series? Yes. It creates extra head pressure - (as Jokester said about high pressure drop blocks, or in your case the restrictive car rads), where as in series there is less pressure to work from because of the Y piece, and extra restriction from the Y pieces.
 
Just leave the pumps on 24/7, they are designed for that in aquariums.

Series is the way to do it as this gives more pressure, which you need.

They will share the work load, as lph will be way less in a loop with rads and blocks than just open.

Think of it as 2 batteries in series in an electrical circuit.

/edit/ possibly leave 1 pump on 24/7 and 1 on your power-block-with-delay-thingy. No need to buy relay cards then.
 
I would like to have something in my pc to show that the water is moving around - no other reason other than it looking cool lol. What can I use for this? appart from a flow meter, will a t-line res in the pc do this? I will already have a res in the external box.

Don't think I can have a normal res in the external box aswell as a res in the pc can I?

Thanks again all.
 
3 weeks later and after far too many lost weekend hours I have finally finished (sort of).

Its currently doing a 24hour leak test in the living room (mrs and kids are at in-laws today hehe). I will take some pics later if anyone is interested.
 
Here are the pics (sorry for the delay):

Everything downstairs leak testing:

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Big box was because I originally planned on 3 rads but I thought let me try out 1 first and see how that goes.
 
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I used these double tap connectors to connect the pc and the external box.
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some other pics
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Res on pc has a UV led in it, makes a cool fountain effect with glowing green water when pc is on!

The mess of wires you see here is for the temp probe, which is held in place in a hole in a plastic connector with some bathroom silicon sealant.

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I used these block connector things for joining molex plugs onto some 5amp cable I had lying around. Looks a bit dodgy but I think its pretty safe.

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While transporting the pc upstairs, I accidently pulled the temp probe cable (doh) which caused a small amount of water to drip out of the silicon. Since then I have taken out the temp monitor and just connected the tubing straight to the res.

Only problem I have now is my motherboard temp is reading 50C, so I need to sort out some cooling for that. Overall its working great.

Please feel free to post comments/corrections as I am a bit of a noob in this and have bound to have made mistakes.

BTW, the long tubing is because the radbox is sitting under a bed 3 meters away from pc.
 
That's the problem with these new multi heatpipe motherboards and watercooling. They depend on air from the cpu heatsink to cool them. You are going to have to rig something up somehow. With all those hard drives do you have any intake fans at all? If not maybe get something like the Scythe Kama-Bay cooler to suck some air in. It would give your hdd's some cooling too. Maybe you could then get a couple of Zalman fan brackets and stick a 120mm fan on each and tactically position them so that they blow across the motherboard. You are going to need an exhaust fan as well to get rid of the heat or you may end up with psu problems as well.
 
The Case is a CM110 ive got a couple of 7v 80mm fans at the front before the HDs as intake. I might have to add a fan to the top also. I thought the psu fan and the 2 intakes would be enough.
 
If you think about it the stock Intel cooler pushes quite a bit of air out in all directions around it which would blow directly over the heatsinks around it. That's more than likely how the layout is as it is. They way things are going with board designe everyone who is on water is going to suffer from this problem before too long. The thing i would be worried about with the psu is that it is the only exhaust in your case. All that hot air is going through your psu which need's cooling itself. It could cause it to become unstable or even overheat. Best stick a fan in the top as well sucking air out if you can.
 
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