Help complete my first loop

You need to decouple the pump from the case. That means the pump doesn't touch the case, and neither do the screws used to mount the pump.

I have mine wrapped in foam I cut from a camping mat, and I use cable ties to keep the pump in place. The only thing the pump touches is foam.

Obviously that looks awful, but I really dont care, I dont even have a window on my case anyway. You might be able to think up a more elegant solution.

EDIT - Not sure about the low noise adapter. Its basicly a resistor, there is probably too much current to ask it to dissipate, I imagine it would melt.
 
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Yeh the melting is my concern as well. I guess it's only designed for 1w fans, not 18w water pumps.

Will try the foam thing later. I know a lot of is vibration though the case at the moment, but it still seemed pretty loud when I held it my hands not touching anything. We'll see.

Thankfully the pump is out of sight so don't need to faff making it pretty, just quiet!

Thanks for the response :)
 
When you drain it, you might want to take the lid off the pump and just check the impeller isn't either damaged or caked in rubbish - being as it's second hand.
It looks like Phyobia originally supplied it with some brackets and a rubber/foam pad to decouple it. I can't link to the images but google the pump and you'll find some.

OCUK do some pump decoupling kits that could be useful. specifically, the Shoggy Sandwich or the AquaComputer pump mounting kit.

Worst case, stick a new pump on your upgrade list. I personally like the DDCs (you're either a DDC man or a D5 man) and you can mount, cool and decouple them with EK's DDC Heatsink

Controlling pump speed is not that easy. The problem you have is that at 18W, most fan controllers (and also most motherboard headers) are beyond what they can cope with. The resistor is definitely likely to melt. There's a few things you can do:

1. Buy an Aquaero 6. They're expensive but you can do lots of monitoring and control of pumps, fans etc. They're autonomous so you program them and then they run independently of Windows. This is likely overkill or at least over budget....but it's good :D
2. A PowerAdjust3 will run an 18W pump with no problem. It's standalone from an Aquaero but would also team up with one if you have one. The difference between the standard and ultra version is that you can set a fan curve (or in this case pump curve) to speed up the pump as the temperature sensor reads higher. You'd want to stick an inline temp sensor somewhere in your loop to do that. Alternatively, the standard version will let you dial it up and down from the software.

3. The cheapest way but needs you to mod stuff. Take the two power wires out of the 3-pin plug and stick a molex on. Then you can plug the molex in to power and the 3-pin plug (with one wire in) to a fan header to monitor the speed. Then, if you want to, you can run a 7V mod by moving the molex pins around so it's 12V and 5V rather then 12V and Ground. If you're feeling particularly adventurous you can even make up a switch so you can toggle it from 12V to 7V and back.
 
That is awesaome info Cenedd, thank you.

Fortunately wrapping a load of foam under the pump has taken away most of the vibrations, and in fact a lot of the noise I immediately assumed was from the pump was actually the two fans on the rad running at full chat for some reason. Unplugged them and it's nice and quiet again.

Interestingly, with one rad doing nothing (fans not on) the temps are still awesome, so I'm clearly well over specced with the cooling. The silverstones I'm running now only spin down to 800rpm so I'm tempted to replace them with something even slower and hopefully get whisper quiet.

Still unsure what to do with the pump, I could live with it as it is and will definitely get one of those pump decoupling kits - thanks. But I am tempted to replace with a PMW unit for better control.

Can a motherboard header run a PMW pump ok? Or is that still too much for it?
 
If the pump is set up for PWM, it will usually come with a mole for power (or SATA power potentially) and a 4-pin fan header with only two pins connected (tacho and PWM). If it comes with all four pins into the fan header and no mole then it could well overload the fan header. Assuming it's split, there's no load on the fan header. The only thing to worry about is whether the fan header is actually PWM. Apparently the CPU header is guaranteed to be PWM but the chassis fan headers may be only voltage control despite having 4 pins. Some are configurable in the bios to switch between voltage control and PWM and others are just a lie.
There are two ways to go with silent fans:
1. You get slow running fans that are innately quiet. No control necessary but no headroom to increase cooling if necessary (except by removing a resistor pack on some).
2. You buy something like the Corsair SP120 (performance not the quiet version) and then use a controller to take it down to 800rpm or less. The ones I just installed seemed to go down as far as 4V without stopping and we're still pushing a noticeable breeze through a rad. These were 3-pin (non-PWM) versions so could be controlled off a motherboard header.
 
Again, great info thank you. Really helpful stuff especially on the pump. If I go that route I will make sure it's a molex plus 4 pin.

Fan wise I was thinking about these Noiseblockers - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/noiseblocker-nb-eloop-fan-b12-ps-120mm-pwm-1500rpm-fg-056-nb.html

They seem to have a range of 400rpm to 1500rpm which would give me enough room to run really slow and quiet, but ramp up if required?

They would be run from motherboard headers so maybe non pmw would be a good idea?
 
Noiseblockers are well regarded. If you ask 10 different people what the best fan is, you'll get at least 15 different answers. Noise level is one thing but the quoted value is at max speed. If you're going to run slower than that, they won't be as loud. Some reviews have graphs of noise over speed - or better yet noise over volume of air moved (cfm or m3/h).
If you have a fan stuck on a rad, one of the key things you want to look at is static pressure. This is a measure of how good it is at forcing the air through a restrictive rad rather than moving it around an open case.

PWM is supposed to offer a wider range of speeds. Some people have complained that it can tick though. I like voltage control myself (put off by the tick that may or may not happen) but is suspect it all comes down to what you're used to. More important is what you have to plug it into. If that's PWM buy PWM fans and so on. Check what your mobo headers are - if they're 3-pin you have your answer. If they're 4-pin it's. Worth checking the motherboard manual and the bios for what notions they give to make sure it really is PWM and not just voltage control with an extra pin.
 
Ahh that's interesting. Just checked mobo manual and it says this

46e13e6464ab293ce722052a5a6daef4.png

So only CPU fan header is PWM.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Agreed on fan opinions, so many different opinions and no way to quantify someone's experiences.

I'm thinking it may be best to use non pwm fans and save the CPU Fan header for if/when I get a PMW pump
 
Just realised I've been typing PMW instead of PWM throughout this thread, despite knowing what the abreviation stands for :rolleyes:
 
Meh, we know what you mean. Now if you'd said Mb instead of MB someone probably would have pulled you up on it ;)

Gotta love the logic of putting 4-pin headers on a board but wiring them up wrong. Genius! :rolleyes:
 
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