Help understanding Aquacomputer NEXT products

teejay73

teejay73

teejay73

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I've just bought the NEXT flow sensor (currently waiting for it to be delivered), and I'm thinking about other NEXT products I want to buy, such as the leakshield and maybe the D5 NEXT pumps. My question though is what do I need so I can monitor & control them from aquasuite? I'm also thinking that
I'd like to control all of my fans from the Aquasuite too - I currently use fan control, but would rather have just one place to monitor and control it all. Am I right in thinking that I'd need the Octo or Quadro to do all this?

Currently, my watercooling/control set up:

Mo-ra 420 with 4 200mm noctua's
2 x D5 pumps (watercoll dual D5 housing)
Watercool resevoir
EK red devil 6950 block
Alphacool core 1 aurora block for 13700k
2 x splitty 9's for fan and pump connections

For monitoring flow I currently have the barrowwch flo and water temp sensor, but it's way off on the readings, hence the change to the NEXT flow.

My case is the fractal North standard size, so space is a bit at a premium.
 
teejay73 said:
I'd like to control all of my fans from the Aquasuite too - I currently use fan control, but would rather have just one place to monitor and control it all. Am I right in thinking that I'd need the Octo or Quadro to do all this?
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Yes. I have OCTO, 3 water temp sensors & High Flow Next in my system with monitoring and control by Aquasuite. Works well.
 
therealdippy said:
Yes. I have OCTO, 3 water temp sensors & High Flow Next in my system with monitoring and control by Aquasuite. Works well.
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Thanks so much. What about the NEXT flow, can I access the aquasuite to see things such as flow rate, etc without an Octo/Quadro?
 
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Yes, Aquasuite gives you full access (and I mean full). It is a highly configurable tool and I recommend it.

How had you planned to control your watercooling? It is not like a CPU fan or GPU fan where the rpm control curve uses the CPU or GPU core temp as the control variable. The water acts as a huge heatsink and the water temp is relatively slow to change. In the morning when I turn on my PC it will be in the low 20s depending on room temp. If I am only doing light work (web browsing etc) then my GPU won't be getting hot, but my CPU will dance around 40-50C. Over time this will heat the water to around 32C, which is controlled by what I decide my fan curve will be based on the water temp sensors. I can play with this to get a balance between temp and fan noise. In the evening when I play a game, the CPU and GPU temps will rise and the water temp will slowly increase. Again I decide what it might get to by balancing against fan noise. Currently I allow it to get to around 40C in the summer. Because my control loops are based on water temp the rpms change slowly. One of the things that annoyed me about my previous aircooled PC is that it got noisy during gaming and the noise level could change noticeably during different parts of the game.
 
Next HF and everything Next is created by Aquacomputer afterall.. it would be unusual if they released a products which is not supported by their software Aquasuite.

Pre dismantling my build i had the Next HF2, Octo, Splitty, Fabwerk and a bunch of AC sensors all controlled using Aquasuite. My LL Fans wer controlled using the Octo and Fabwerk eliminating the need for L-Connect
 
VersionMonkey said:
Yes, the Next flow should have an internal USB connector on it, which you can connect to a motherboard USB header. Aquasuite should then automatically see it once Windows recognises the new USB device.
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Ahh awesome stuff. Thought it might be the case, but best to ask to be sure.
therealdippy said:
Yes, Aquasuite gives you full access (and I mean full). It is a highly configurable tool and I recommend it.

How had you planned to control your watercooling? It is not like a CPU fan or GPU fan where the rpm control curve uses the CPU or GPU core temp as the control variable. The water acts as a huge heatsink and the water temp is relatively slow to change. In the morning when I turn on my PC it will be in the low 20s depending on room temp. If I am only doing light work (web browsing etc) then my GPU won't be getting hot, but my CPU will dance around 40-50C. Over time this will heat the water to around 32C, which is controlled by what I decide my fan curve will be based on the water temp sensors. I can play with this to get a balance between temp and fan noise. In the evening when I play a game, the CPU and GPU temps will rise and the water temp will slowly increase. Again I decide what it might get to by balancing against fan noise. Currently I allow it to get to around 40C in the summer. Because my control loops are based on water temp the rpms change slowly. One of the things that annoyed me about my previous aircooled PC is that it got noisy during gaming and the noise level could change noticeably during different parts of the game.
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Tbh I've held off far too long with Aquacomputer NEXT stuff - so going to start slowly implementing stuff in to my set up. The next one will be the leakshield for sure.

I've typically just used fan control to control fan speed, dependent on the temp curves I've set up. I've not done anything with the water temp in terms of using that to decide fan curves, etc, as all I have is an oled one from barrowwch, which is unreliable at best, and even flow rates are far too high for my two D5 pumps at 75% (it says it's something like 11 ltrs/min, which makes it approx 660 ltrs/ph, which is far too much from everything I've read. Hence why a move over to aquacomputer stuff has been on the agenda lately, as I need something that I can trust, and then start to configure fan curves based off my water temps. Currently my barrow meter says the water temps are 28c, which is probaly fairly close to true. The whole idea to move to a MO-RA was for silent running and at 800rpm, the noctua's do that for the most part, whilst keeping temps low. My 6950xt runs at a cool 39c to 44c whilst gaming, and the hotspot has a delta of +12-15c. The cpu runs a bit hotter, but that's to be expected, given it's a raptor lake cpu.
 
im4gine3 said:
Next HF and everything Next is created by Aquacomputer afterall.. it would be unusual if they released a products which is not supported by their software Aquasuite.

Pre dismantling my build i had the Next HF2, Octo, Splitty, Fabwerk and a bunch of AC sensors all controlled using Aquasuite. My LL Fans wer controlled using the Octo and Fabwerk eliminating the need for L-Connect
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I wasn't sure if I'd need an octo or quadro for it, so just wanted to make sure it was a bit more plug and play so to speak. Eventually I want to move it all over to aquacomputer stuff, so I'm going to pick up a quadro or octo for fan control, and a leakshield as well, though I'm not yet sure how my rig is going to
look going forward from a wc perspective, as I want to wall mount my MO-RA, and then move everything into a new case, but I'm going to have work out how to keep two D5's (I have to have two, as I prefer to have some sort of redundancy), along with either a single res & dual D5 mount, or use two EK-FLT 120's and have each pump mounted
that way. It's over kill for sure, but I want to keep it all looking clean, and not cluttered.

​

 
if you already have both D5's, Alphacool do a dual D5 mount

But as long as your D5 are legitimate - the ones which uses a steel ring, and you don't run them dry, i've never had one fail on me.. and have had one going 5 years strong

1014107_2muqv7r6fnF8Q3..png
 
im4gine3 said:
if you already have both D5's, Alphacool do a dual D5 mount

But as long as your D5 are legitimate - the ones which uses a steel ring, and you don't run them dry, i've never had one fail on me.. and have had one going 5 years strong

1014107_2muqv7r6fnF8Q3..png
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I had looked at this before I bought the watercool dual mount for the MO-RA, but I'd still need to factor in a res I guess? I'm some way off making that choice, and I don't know for sure if I'm going to keep the MO-RA long term, because as nice as it is - it's probably more time maintaining that than it was when I had everything in my O11 XL.
My reasoning behind the FLT 120's was that if I wanted to in the future, I could go back to a case with rads, and then have a separate loop each for the card and cpu if I wanted that, or if the MO-RA is wall mounted, then I'd only be running two 16/10 tubes, and the single cable for the 200mm fans, as they're on a 4 way splitter. Right now I have daisy chained my pump cables on top of all the other tubes and cable, so it's a bit of a mess, and harder to cable manage. Right now though I just need to make sure that I have relaible readings from my system.

Edit - My pumps are both EK, but one is SATA and the other Molex, which is a bit of a pain.
 
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teejay73 said:
Thanks so much. What about the NEXT flow, can I access the aquasuite to see things such as flow rate, etc without an Octo/Quadro?
Click to expand...

The HF next gets its own overview and settings pages in aquasuite. I have my rad fans, case fans and pump connected to a quadro.
I use the temps on the HF next to control the fan and pump speeds via a temp target on the quadro. I've also got a vision on the desk as a display and for monitoring ambient temp.
Everything is in the PC so I just have one heatkiller 90cm pwm extension and one heatkiller 90cm male to male pwm extension daisy chained going to the splitter on the mo-ra.
 
newuser said:
The HF next gets its own overview and settings pages in aquasuite. I have my rad fans, case fans and pump connected to a quadro.
I use the temps on the HF next to control the fan and pump speeds via a temp target on the quadro. I've also got a vision on the desk as a display and for monitoring ambient temp.
Everything is in the PC so I just have one heatkiller 90cm pwm extension and one heatkiller 90cm male to male pwm extension daisy chained going to the splitter on the mo-ra.
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This sounds similar to what I want to do eventually, however I need to figure out if I can mount two pumps in my fractal north, without it looking a total mess, hence why I'm looking at two individual flat bay 120 res's that I can mount on the inside front of the case. My immediate plan is to grab an Octo (just bought), and connect my 4 x 200mm noctua fans, my 6 120mm phanteks case fans, and my two D5 pumps to it. I'll power the D5 pumps via the psu and just use the pwm on the D5's to control them. I only have two USB headers on my motherboard, which for now works out ok for the HF next and Octo, but I may pick up the hubby in the future if I need extra USB headers.
 
teejay73 said:
This sounds similar to what I want to do eventually, however I need to figure out if I can mount two pumps in my fractal north, without it looking a total mess, hence why I'm looking at two individual flat bay 120 res's that I can mount on the inside front of the case. My immediate plan is to grab an Octo (just bought), and connect my 4 x 200mm noctua fans, my 6 120mm phanteks case fans, and my two D5 pumps to it. I'll power the D5 pumps via the psu and just use the pwm on the D5's to control them. I only have two USB headers on my motherboard, which for now works out ok for the HF next and Octo, but I may pick up the hubby in the future if I need extra USB headers.
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The octo and HF next can both share a MB header. Just check the ground is on the correct side. I'm using my other header for a chromax argb controller.
I'm only using the single pump/res that I already had. If I ever decide that I want more flow I'll probably stick another D5 in there with an alphacool top.

I've got about 3.5m of tubing in total including the internal loop, alphacool cpu and gpu blocks, one 90 fitting, two 45s and a pair of CPC NS6 QDCs. About 2.25l of coolant.
I get 120lph at 85% pump speed and 150lph at 100%. Temps would be better with another D5 but they're good enough for my uses.
I can hit 62c on the 4090 in furmark and 82c on the 13700k at stock speeds and 225w in cinebench. Gaming temps are fine. Water temp can eventually hit 9c over ambient at 500w cpu/gpu load.

I've got the rad fans at 500 (min speed) and pump at 85% with a temp target of 8c over ambient, they rarely spin up.
I've got the case fans at 430 (also min speed) with a target temp of ambient plus one c using the temp probe that comes with the quadro in the case. They hit 500 on occasion.
 
newuser said:
The octo and HF next can both share a MB header. Just check the ground is on the correct side. I'm using my other header for a chromax argb controller.
I'm only using the single pump/res that I already had. If I ever decide that I want more flow I'll probably stick another D5 in there with an alphacool top.
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That's good to know - thanks. Can't wait to have a play and I'll probably strip the pc back down and have a tidy up whilst I'm at it too :D
 
Sin_Chase said:
I have a D5 Next, LeakShield, Octo and Splitty. You will run out of USB headers fast which is why I got the splitty recently.

All runs from Aquasuite.
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I already have a small army of splitty 9's :cry: . 2 non powered and one powered - not sure how I ended up with so many either. Good to know though, thanks :)
 
I would also highly recommend using virtualsensors to make a Water/Air DeltaT temperature sensor to control fans. Makes life much nicer and dont need to mess around between summer and winter.

I have all 8 of my rad fans on a DeltaT sensor and curve controller and never hear them most of the time.
 
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Aquasuite gives a lot of options. I just have a bunch of gauges on a overview page in the rough positions that they are in the case. I imagine some people have been more creative with theirs.
However I did decide to use the virtual sensors to create a "differential airflow" gauge by doing some maths on the rpms of the inlet and outlet fans.
 
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