Mounting radiator upside-down.

13oots2 · 1 Nov 2022 at 20:25

Have been looking out how to plumb in my dual radiators and it seems the best route is to mount the front radiator with the ports at the bottom. Is there any disadvantage to doing this? If so, will have to rethink everything before I start transferring my parts to my new case.

13oots2 · 1 Nov 2022 at 21:12

I have a D5, so I don't think I will have any problems there, although I don't relish the idea of throwing round a Fractal Design 7XL with all the gubbins inside.

13oots2 · 2 Nov 2022 at 14:10

Bubo said:
Are you using soft tubing or hardline and what sort of res are you using? If you are using soft and have a tube res such that you can temporarily take the pump/res off its mount so you can hold it vertical, you can then lay the case flat on its side, i.e. with the mobo pointing to the sky, and if you plumb it so the inlet ports to the rads are bottom-most, and the outlet ports top-most in this orientation on the side, then the air in the rads will naturally rise towards the outlet and back into the res, which you are holding vertical, and thus bleed out easily. This is method is either borked and made harder if you are using hardline or have a bay res of some sort, as you can't easily make it so the air coming back to the res will find its way out. One of he reasons why I personally will never go hardline.

Am using soft tubing, never had the confidence or money to go hard.

13oots2 · 5 Nov 2022 at 08:52

13oots2 said:
Am using soft tubing, never had the confidence or money to go hard.

Finally had all my bits for the transplant, turns out I could mount the radiator right side up. Took me ages to get the water flowing, every time the reservoir got low the pump would get air in, eventually got there in the end.

13oots2 · 8 Nov 2022 at 00:26

red eye said:
Easy to drain, I have ports down and ports up. The ports up doesn’t drain so I have to remove and tip it upside down.
I also have a multi port rad that also doesn’t drain unless I crack a blanking plug and let air in.

I want to epoxy a g1/4 boss on the bottom to make it less of a headache

I didn't consider draining being a positive for mounting the radiator with the ports at the bottom. As it is my reservoir sits nicely between the rear of my 3070Ti and the side panel, it is also held in place with a zip tie, all I need to do is remove the top of the reservoir and tip it into a bowl to drain the loop. It looks pretty neat with no mounting hardware holding the reservoir.