New to Watercooling, few Q's

Ghosteh

Ghosteh

Ghosteh

Soldato
Joined
18 Mar 2006
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Location
Liverpool
Hey guys,

I've recently ended up building a new rig consisting of the following;
i7 920 D0 @ 4Ghz
Asus P6T SE
3x2GB Patriot DDR3 @800MHz
2x XFX 5870 Crossfire
Corsair H50-1
1kW Zalman PSU
Assortment of HDDs lol.
Plus just placed an order for an Obsidian 800D

Anyway, due to the motherboard layout, the 2 cards are right next to each other, causing the cards to get rather warm. I've setup a fan profile using MSI Afterburner to increase the fan speed and keep the temps down a bit more, but this has obviously increased noise some what.

Now I've got a bit more money in my back pocket(£4K/Year Pay rise as of last month :D), and due to the fact I share my room with 3 other guys, I'd really like to go the water-cooling route, and I'm looking at getting the following parts;

EK Supreme LT Acetal CPU Water Block
2x EK HD 5870 Acetal Full Cover Block
Swiftech Laing D5 Vario
XSPC RX360 120mm Radiator
EK Multioption Reservoir 250
1/2" Tubing, possibly thick walled
Assortment of G1/4 1/2" ID Fittings
Fluids etc



Now I'm a TOTAL n00b at watercooling, I've never seen a WC'ed rig in my life, so got a few questions.
Am I missing anything?? lol.
Would you guys who are experienced in this go for compression fittings or normal ones with hose ties?
Also how much tubing would I be looking at getting for the above loop?
And finally(for now) What sorta setup arrangment would I be looking at? Is it best to go for Pump>Res>CPU>GPU>Rad>Pump or Pump>Res>GPU>CPU>Rad>Pump or something completly different?

Cheers for any help fellas :D.
 
You might want to consider dual loop because of the heat of crossfired GFX. As for layout it doesnt matter at all, other than you need to go Res>Pump>etc as otherwise you get no flow and therefore a computer mostly on fire.

normal fittings are significantly easier to fit as well so if you are new to watercooling then that would be highly recommended.
 
Sorry yeah, I did mean to say Res>Pump as I don't expect the pump to push water directly up to the top of my case lol.

As for the fittings, why are compression fittings so much more difficult to fit? Trying to get a watertight seal on them or what?
 
The problem with compression fittings is that can undo themselfs.
It's very easy to twist the pipe when fitting the locking **** - this can then unscrew the whole fitting and the o ring seal fails - not good
It also usually shows up after leak testing - especially if you 'tweek' your hardware oftern.
You also need the exact tube type both ID (internal diameter) and OD (outside diameter) are critical.
Rotary compression solve this but at £10+ a pop are much more expensive that
a £2 quality barb
DD Bigboys or Dtek highflow or enzotech or Bitspower premium are the ones to get.
EK ones are cheap and great if you change your loop oftern but need tube clamps.

The other major advantage of barbs is using 7/16 ID tube with a 1/2 barb - make a really snug fit - highly recomended
 
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Cheers for the input guys. I'm probably going to look at getting 7/16 ID Tubing and heat them over 1/2 barbs, then put on some zipties for extra safety. Is it as bulky as 1/2 ID tubing? I quite like the chunky look. I know it's only 1/16th of an inch, just dunno how that ends up looking in person lol.
As for the barbs, I'll probably end up going for Bitspower Matt Black barbs rather than the compression fittings, think they'll look ok with the Acetal covers.

For the loop, would a single 480 Rad be OK to keep things cool? Or would it be better with a dual rad setup? I'm just wondering about space in the case(Which should be coming tomorrow so I'll measure up then)

Also, would you think the EK Supreme i7 will be better than the EK Supreme LT? Guessing it's a newer design.
 
Is it actually possible to fit a quad rad in a Corsair Obsidian without modding?

I thought they only had room for a triple in the roof?

As for blocks, I'd choose the Supreme over the LT, though, that's just because I prefer the looks of the Supreme, LT looks kinda cheap and tacky imo...
 
From what I've seen, you can't fit a quad without modding, seen people that have extended the grills at the top of the case from triple to quad and looks quite tidy, I just don't fancy cutting a new case I've just spent far too much money on lol. So What I'll probably end up doing is using a triple at the top of the case, and depending on space I'll probably add another in-line rad, either a 120 internal, or 240 external.
 
You've picked the same hardware I would have recommended. Makes a change to the normal "new to watercooling, haven't bothered to read anything about it yet" posts, thanks. So I've only got a few fairly subtle things to add.

The multioption res has four holes (obviously). For a single loop I suggest the loop emptying into the top, drawing from one of the two lower holes. Then a line running down from the centre at the base with a valve on the end, long enough to hang outside the case for draining. Run a third tube from the remaining hole upwards, preferably drill a hole in the top for a fill port but otherwise put a fill port on it and just cable tie it somewhere. You can then easily fill and drain the loop without taking any of it apart.

Triple in top + internal 120 is what I'd do as I can't cope with the idea of externally mounted radiators. It doesn't really matter how many radiators there are, but the more surface area the better. E.g. a quad vs two 240's won't be very different. Aside from the obvious place, where can radiators be fitted in the corsair case? It's unconventional, but two radiators stacked with a fan inbetween performs significantly better than one radiator, runs very quietly (nothing quite like a kilo of mass either side for vibration dampening) and can fit in places where otherwise you couldn't have a radiator.

Expensive tubing is worth it. Cheap tubing kinks as soon as you look at it. Tygon is ludicrously overspecified for pc water cooling but I'm glad I use it.
 
The case has fitting for a 360 rad at the top, and also has a 120mm fan at the rear of the case, the usual extractor fan position near the CPU, so I'll probably end up using that to mount a 120 rad. I wasn't too sure about the performance of multi-rad set-ups so thanks for clearing that up for me, I'll more than likely go with the 360+120 option rather than modding anything.

I can't quite understand how you've described to set-up the dual rads though? Will probably make a bit more sense once I have parts in front of me and I'm coming up with the layout/tube lengths/leak testing etc. I'll still have a think about where I could place a fill port on the case with a slight mod, or if I can't decide I'll just zip tie one inside somewhere.

As for tubing, I'm still trying to decide on what to get. Whether or not I fancy clear tubing and coloured liquid, or coloured tubing and clear liquid, and if I should bother looking at Anti Kink coils for their benefit, or even aesthetics.
 
Shamelessly autoplagarising to show what I mean by stacked:
Two photos from this thread:
2q8zksj.jpg


2cyjevs.jpg


The performance is fairly similar to a 240 radiator, though probably a bit worse. Hard to judge in my case as the stacked one has shrouds either side and the 240 has no shrouds. I've got a 38mm fan waiting to be installed which I think will work very well with these two. However I'd be reluctant to try this with 30mm thick radiators as the high fin density would require very high pressure fans.

Stacking them lets you shroud it beautifully, every cfm of air that fan pushes goes through radiator fins. Normally a fan tends to blow some through the radiator, some backwards, and some out to the sides. A fan in the middle and one pulling would be better I think, but that doesn't fit in my case. This won't work over the cpu socket, does the corsair have conveniently placed 120mm intakes?

My fill port is tied in place as I foolishly covered the inside of my case with bitumen before drilling it, and don't really want to drill through the resulting composite.

Coloured tubing + water means no dye filtering out in cpu blocks, though clear tubing and coloured liquid is probably prettier. I have black tubing, which causes problems looking for air bubbles. Translucent is probably sensible way to go, but it's preference really :)
 
Ah I see what you mean about the stacked now, and how you talked about the tubes in from one etc.

How would this work as a set up? (excuse the crappy photoshopness :p)

BasicWC-2.jpg


Basically the one going from Pump to Rad at the top will most likely be routed though the cable management holes behind the motherboard.
From the PSU I've got it going into a 120 to reduce the temperature slightly before entering the XFired cooling blocks.. Is that worth it? Or would it be better to try and drop the temperature as much as possible by going from Rad to Rad then to the CPU and straight into the XFire?
 
In the case of computer water cooling, the flow rate is large enough and the temperature gradients small enough that loop order makes no measurable difference to temperatures. Every gram of water in the loop is within a degree or two of any other gram. At equilibrium anyway, this is confirmed by thermometers and in the case of the odd die hard with thermal photography. If there was no pump and the system was diffusion based instead, things would be different, but at a gallon per minute or so loop order just doesn't matter. One proviso is that it's much easier to fill the system if the reservoir is before the pump, and preferably above (pump shouldn't be run unless full of water).

Your sketch will work just fine, though it's not how I'd do it. I'll see if I can knock up an alternative. The photo makes it pretty clear that options for placing 120mm radiators are few, how many drive bays will you be using? If there's four free a 120 will fit, might do if there's only three available. Definitely looks like one would fit over where the pump currently is as well.
 
which rads are you talking about? If you're still thinking swiftechs you could probably get a bit of an upgrade from moving to thermochills.

Anyway, your flow diagram looks ok.. couple of comments from my experience...

A thermochill PA120.3 is enough to hold a moderately clocked CPU and xfire/sli gfx under control but a multi rad will always look cooler :)

You could look at multi loop if you're worried and isolate the xfire cards onto the 120.1?

GFX cards react very well to watercooling, bear in mind they're normally specced to run at something like 100c when being pushed and even rubbish watercooling can half that so I wouldn't worry too much about how you include them into the loop, the CPU will be more sensitive to temps.

You don't need a D5, an 18w DDC with a replacement top would do the job just fine and probably be easier to locate and a lot smaller.

Other than that, looking good!

Oh and don't stress about your idle temps, that seems to be the thing people swing their epeen about and its got more to do with the heat of the room the pc is in that the quality of the install.. if your idle is 45 and your load is 55 then all is good. If your idle is 30 and your load is 55 then you may have done something wrong :)
 
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of options to place an additional 120, but I can't confirm it until I see the case in person.

I'm not totally sure how many 5 1/4" bays I'll be using, but I'll more than likely end up getting a fan controller installed in one of them, as well as my DVD drive.

I've seen a mod to remove the internal 3.5" Bays, the ones at the base of the case, as I'll probably only use the 4 hot swappable bays which are behind that 120mm fan, and get either a 120 or possibly even a 240 rad installed there. But the less modding the better personally, not that I'm not capable, I just don't fancy cutting up the case if there's other solutions out there lol.
 
When it was first mentioned on another forum, I didn't realise the difference between the multi loop system and multi rad, but now I do realise lol. I'm not overly concerned about having a separate loop at the moment for the XFire GPUs if I can get away with good temps on the 360+120 rads. Maybe I'll end up looking at a multi loop system in the future, but for now, the single loop should be fine.

Regarding the pumps, what are the pros of the DDC's? I can see they're cheaper, and also smaller, but how is their performance? I know you said I don't NEED a D5, but money isn't a mahoosive deal at the moment, now that Christmas is out the way at least, the girlfriend got everything she wanted so should be off my back at least for a while lol.
 
Yeah, true dual loop is two pumps, two reservoirs, two radiators, blocks in each. Benefit is thermal isolation of the loops, so 90 degrees graphics cards don't mess up the cpu. Alternatives are two loops, two pumps, one reservoir, benefit is higher pressure applied to cpu block if it's by itself with a pump in one arm of the system. Or one loop, two pumps, which gives redundancy and higher flow rate. There are others of course, as soon as you stop putting everything in series it gets much more fun.

Here's a far less skilled paint knockup. Red lines are fill line/drain line, thin white lines are tubes running behind the mb tray. If I can find a cad model of one of these I can do rather better. Oddities are placing the graphics blocks in parallel, flow rate will go up as a result, graphics cards will be marginally less well cooled. As said above, this doesn't matter. I've also sketched a 120 over the pump as I'm certain one will fit above this partition, it might just about fit below it.

29wuzok.jpg


DDC vs D5 is a really difficult question. Neither is "better" as such. The ddc runs a higher head pressure so should cope better with restrictive (many blocks) loops. It's also considerably smaller. The D5 achieves a higher flow rate on loops that aren't too restrictive for it, and is larger. It also has a dial from 1 to 5 which lets you slow it down, when on 2 it's quieter than a ddc, when on 5 it's much louder. The ddc cannot be tuned in this fashion, though it can probably be run from a good fan controller. However the ddc has some reservoir tops, e.g. the xspc one. This gets much better performance from the pump, makes filling it ludicrously easy (it has two holes in the top, loop goes to one, fill line to the other) and means one less component to find room for. D5 is good until lower temperatures if significantly sub zero.

I chose the ddc w/ xspc top. If choosing again now, I'd do the same. However at various times I've regretted not getting the D5 with seperate reservoir. If you do get the ddc and use it with a built in rather than the multi-option don't worry about the missing drain line, you can use a T or the spare port on the graphics block for this.
 
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Cheers for knocking that up. Hmm yeah, hadn't thought about a 3rd 120, which could make sense seen as the case has a 120mm fan hole built into the bottom.

What is the advantage of the flow rates going up in the graphics cards as a result of the parallel connectors?

Also, with the drain pipe/fill pipe, would you connect them to the same point on the res using a Y or T connector? Or place them on two separate points? Just looking at the EK Res and it has 4 holes?
 
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