Safe water temps?

altrewin

altrewin

altrewin

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Hi peeps!

So I've finally got my watercooling loop up and running, and I'm wondering what a safe temp for water is? Using speedfan I can just turn my fans off entirely at idle, and leave the pump at max speed because I can't hear it. CPU/GPU temps seem fine, but water temps were creeping up to around 42c before I chickened out and turned the fans on again.

Watercooling parts
EK Supremacy EVO - Full Nickel
EK Titan X Block - Nickel/Acetal
EK X-RES 140/D5 Vario
Radiators - HWLabs Nemesis GTS 420 & GTS 280
Tubing/Fittings - Mayhems 16/10 & EK ACF 16/10 (+ Bitspower Rotary T)
Coolant - Mayhems Pastel White (will be adding purple dye soon)
Fans - Noctua NF-F12 IPPC (2000RPM)

Haven't yet tried benching or overclocking, not immensely fussed about having the absolute lowest temps at idle, just looking for quiet. Currently the loudest thing seems to be my PSU of all things.:rolleyes:
 
Any temp that doesn't cause your hardware to overheat, or perhaps more importantly doesn't cause your tubing to slip off the barbs. I've also heard people say that 35+°c causes flexible tubing to mist / fog up eventually. I've got PrimoChill PrimoFlex Advanced LRT myself and I'm sorry to report that it is nowhere near as crystal clear as it was before I filled my loop and I've reached water temps of 44°c in hot weather, so maybe there is something to it. Mayhems claim that their flexible tubing is superior. Whether that is the case when it comes to fogging, I have no idea, but I've got some sitting here at home ready to try out when I next redo my loop. With glass tubing, I doubt you'd ever have the worry of temps causing it to fall off. Perhaps the only failure point there could be the O-rings / fittings. Glass wouldn't fog up as much (at all?) over time either.
 
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I think 60C is the big bad number for the Laiing D5 pump.

I have got the same experience as "Undesirable" when it comes to Advanced LRT clouding however I am not sure if it's the heat or just the mayhems pastel dying the tubes slightly. TBH the pastel is so vibrant that it doesn't bother me and I only noticed when the loop had been drained.
 
Yeah I have heard 60C mentioned before for the D5 plus also in relation to tubing as well.

I had a disaster on my old waterloop build and had two things fail at the same time.

1. The power conenctor to the fans on the big rad was a dodgy connection and cut out and switched off the fans - no alarm as when browsing used to run with zero fans anyway.

2 My d5 pump seized up almost totally so I had basically zero flow rate.

The first i knew about it when gaming with headphones on was when the alarm went off for the cpu temp.

Result was that the temp probe display for the water in my loop was showing 86C :eek:

Steam actually came out of my reservoir. :(

But to answer the OP, prior to that I was quite happy running my loop passively at 50C water temps no issue.
 
As said, 60C for D5 and DDC pumps if i remember correctly. Much hotter and you will start to see acrylic soften (i think it was 70C) and this definitely affected a friend of mines EK Supremacy as the finer edges inside that hold the o ring had deformed.

At 60 the potential problem you might have is expansion. Because you have a closed system, as the coolant heats up from around 20C to 60C, it expands and increases the pressure. When I ran a totally passive system this resulted in two or three cracked flow indicators - weakest part apparently. You should be able to get round this by leaving an expansion gap at the top of the rad or better still, a pressure relief membrane from Aqua Computer - lets the pressure equalise but doesn't let the coolant out.
My current system levels out at 39.9C under gaming and the fans ramp up at 40C from 800rpm (silent) to full speed (PANIC! mode). This doesnt happen often and its the hottest I'd be happy with...but that's me.
 
altrewin said:
Using speedfan I can just turn my fans off entirely at idle, and leave the pump at max speed because I can't hear it.
Click to expand...
But why would you...?
The water is only ever going to heat up. It needs the airflow through the fans to shift away more heat than it generates.
That's just stressing components unnecessarily, IMO. Not desperately bad if temps are within tolerance, but still kinda pointless if you have no reason to... just how I see it, really.

altrewin said:
Haven't yet tried benching or overclocking, not immensely fussed about having the absolute lowest temps at idle, just looking for quiet. Currently the loudest thing seems to be my PSU of all things.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
You have Noctua fans - They should be almost silent below 1000rpm.

In fact, you have the same pump/res combo as me too. That is by far the loudest thing in my case!!
 
ttaskmaster said:
But why would you...?
The water is only ever going to heat up. It needs the airflow through the fans to shift away more heat than it generates.
That's just stressing components unnecessarily, IMO. Not desperately bad if temps are within tolerance, but still kinda pointless if you have no reason to... just how I see it, really.


You have Noctua fans - They should be almost silent below 1000rpm.

In fact, you have the same pump/res combo as me too. That is by far the loudest thing in my case!!
Click to expand...

The heat radiates from the radiators and the water temp reaches a maximum equilibrium.

If you have enough radiators then why not?

AFter all a 1080 can be cooled passively with just a waterblock if you are just browsing. Neither the gpu or cpu generates that much heat when browsing.
 
Glad to know the tubes/pump is good for higher temps than I thought, managed to get the fans down to about 600RPM at which point they're inaudible (can still hear that darned PSU though!), with the exception of a slight clicking noise at times, assuming they aren't getting enough power to run fully, as the clicking goes away above 1000RPM or so (15% in speedfan is ~600, 30% is ~1K). Also should be recieving a slim fan soon to put in the back of the case as I'm currently finding the heat is getting trapped, meaning motherboard VRMs & HDDs get a bit toasty under load (45c is ok on a 6TB WD Black right?).

Thank you for your input everyone! :)
 
I'm not an expert on PWM but I believe the complaint some people had was that it can tick. I'm not sure if it's to do with the controller or the fan but it might be worth checking if switching to something like an Aquaero or an NZXT (I think those do PWM but check) would quiet it down for you.
 
My cheap own brand ocuk fans are almost silent at there lowest rpm.

If you allow water temperature to increase then your load temps will also increase.
At 50 degrees my system would struggle for stability.

No airflow is a bad idea.
Just one low rpm fan will make a big difference.
 
Holst1981 said:
My cheap own brand ocuk fans are almost silent at there lowest rpm.

If you allow water temperature to increase then your load temps will also increase.
At 50 degrees my system would struggle for stability.

No airflow is a bad idea.
Just one low rpm fan will make a big difference.
Click to expand...

Wow you must be pushing right to the edge then. 50C is nothing really. Im quite happy surfing at 50C.
 
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