W/C - How much is enough?

scotty365

scotty365

scotty365

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Rotherham Need: GHz
I'm in the process of researching for a custom cooling rig.
I want to use GTX 460/470 and will probably go SLi.(These will be O/C too)
CPU will be i5 with the highest O/C I can safely get.

All will be water cooled (Ram and Mobo too eventually) but how much rad space will I need?
I was thinking 2x120.2 (Res>pump>120.2>CPU>120.2>GPU) but there is so much conflicting evidence.:(
So, I'd like to throw a few questions out so I can get some idea of how much radiator area I will need to make a good job of the overclock.
Noise isn't a high priority, performance is! I'm looking for a good solid o/c, I don't expect chilled cooling performance obviously but I'm sure you understand what I'm looking towards.

1. How much rad area do I need to get them to a good O/C? (will 2x120.2 do? or should I look for more?)
2. Will push pull have a significant effect on cooling if installed on the rads? (vs just a single push or pull config) or is more rad area more effective?
3. What is the most efficient radiator combination? Should I use two loops rather than one?


Thanks

Scotty
 
GPU's respond better to water cooling that i7's in my experience. You will see a migh higher drop in temps on the gpu's than the cpu.

But it really depends what you are going to do with it. Gaming? Video encoding? 24/7 number crunching, benching hound? :D

That will help us decide what advice to give.

e.g. 2 x 120.2 will keep that lot cool, if idling. It would also keep it cool under 100% load but you would need earplugs and high speed fans.

For a good balance between performance and noise, I'd say at least a 120.3 and 120.2 for that loop.

I run a Swiftech MCR320QP and MCR220QP on an [email protected] and GTX460 and under heavy, heavy load 100% see 76°C CPU and 40°C GPU. Single loop.

Single loop for up to dual SLI cards, once you past that you start to get a benefit from dual loops, but until then single is more efficient.

Agree watercooling ram is silly, even watercooling the motherboard is silly if you don't need to, motherboard chips are designed to run hot and most will be fine with a reasonable airflow across the heatsinks. For most people all full cover mb blocks give you is unnecessary heat dump into your loop and bling looks.

Push/pull adds 25-30% extra cooling but at the expense of extra noise. You may want to look at either buying shrouds or ripping the guts out of some old fans and making your own, shrouds can give between 15-20% extra cooling but also drop noise significantly.

But the problem with both push/pull and shrouds is space.

Of course if you are running a SR-2 or one of the dual NF200 motherboards and don't have great airflow in your case then you may need mb blocks :)
 
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Biffa said:
GPU's respond better to water cooling that i7's in my experience. You will see a migh higher drop in temps on the gpu's than the cpu.

But it really depends what you are going to do with it. Gaming? Video encoding? 24/7 number crunching, benching hound? :D

That will help us decide what advice to give.

e.g. 2 x 120.2 will keep that lot cool, if idling. It would also keep it cool under 100% load but you would need earplugs and high speed fans.

For a good balance between performance and noise, I'd say at least a 120.3 and 120.2 for that loop.

I run a Swiftech MCR320QP and MCR220QP on an [email protected] and GTX460 and under heavy, heavy load 100% see 76°C CPU and 40°C GPU. Single loop.

Single loop for up to dual SLI cards, once you past that you start to get a benefit from dual loops, but until then single is more efficient.

Agree watercooling ram is silly, even watercooling the motherboard is silly if you don't need to, motherboard chips are designed to run hot and most will be fine with a reasonable airflow across the heatsinks. For most people all full cover mb blocks give you is unnecessary heat dump into your loop and bling looks.

Of course if you are running a SR-2 or one of the dual NF200 motherboards and don't have great airflow in your case then you may need mb blocks :)
Click to expand...

Thats the kind of feedback I like to hear.

The Ram and mobo cooling is more to do with me not excluding any possiblities at this point. I could machine a block for the NB myself just for the heck of it! I know it has limited value though.:)

It's unlikely at this point that I would go tri-SLi so you think a single loop is all I need then, however you are suggesting a 120.3 and 120.2 in the loop. This does have an impact on the case I can do this with unless I mod it, I was thinking CM 690 II Advanced.

What sequence would you arrange the rads and components in?
 
I use a 120.3 and a 120.1 in my loop.
470 SLI and an i7 @ 4Ghz.

CPU dropped from 70s @ load to 48c
470s dropped from near 98c to 60c max after 2 hours of kombuster.

Check the link in my sig for more details :)
 
no_1_dave said:
CPU dropped from 70s @ load to 48c
470s dropped from near 98c to 60c max after 2 hours of kombuster.
Click to expand...

Thats an amazing temp, I've never seen anyone getting sub 60 under load on an i7 at 4Ghz on stock water cooled by our balmy weather at the moment.

What did you use to stress it?
 
Biffa said:
Thats an amazing temp, I've never seen anyone getting sub 60 under load on an i7 at 4Ghz on stock water cooled by our balmy weather at the moment.

What did you use to stress it?
Click to expand...

TBH I was mainly stressing the graphics.
I only quickly checked the CPU for 10 mins under prime, it wasnt my focus. I'll do a proper CPU test at some point :)

Edit, my bad. I did do a full 12 hour test.
It was 65c at the end.
Forgot about that, have been concentrating keeping my card @ 850 & slowly decreasing the voltage.
 
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Biffa, I also read that article when it was first posted @ XS.
From my personal experience I found better results with two loops.
I also found that I had a neater loop set up running with the two loops.
 
It all depends how much heat you are happy with and how much noise you are willing to live with.

It would be quite possible for you ti run all that on a decent 120.2 but you would have a high delta and would defo need the fans on full bore when gaming or encoding. Add another rad on and you would lower your delta and could run your fans slower and slower and so on and so forth.

I have run my 480 and i7 on one 120.3 quite happily. My fans at full speed could cope with the heat being dumped by the chips. However I watch tv from my pc and like it to be silent. This caused issues with the water temp getting up to about 45 degrees with my fans on silent.

I added a 120.2 and 140.1 and now I can run the fans on silent. In fact I can run 2 fans (out of the 7) on silent and the others off when I watch tv and my water temp stops at about 37 or 38 degrees.

I can also game and encode with all the fans virtually silent with little or no impact on water temp.

Note adding more rad is not necessarily gonna bring down your core temps on load. Mine still heat up just as quick but the heat is lost a lot quicker.

Have a look at skinee labs they have some good stuff on there so you can guestimate how much rad and airflow you will need to reach a specific delta on a set heatload.
 
If this helps...

I have just finished over the weekend watercooling my i7 @ 4ghz and 2 x gtx480's.

Loop looks like this - Res/pump > 480 > 480 >ThermoChill Rad> i7 > MagiCool Rad > Res/pump. Connected with 7/16" I.D tubing.

Using 1 x ThermoChill PA120.3 Radiator and 1 x MagiCool SLIM TRIPLE 360 Elegant and 6 x Scythe Kaze Jyuni 1900RPM Slip Stream turned down to low on fan controller (6v I think, Fantastic fans)

I have used an Swiftech Apogee XT on the i7 and getting 34-37c on idle never above 60c on load. (Real Temp)

And have used EK-FC480 GTX waterblocks on the 480's and getting 34-37c on idle and I havent seen them go above 44c when playing Mafia 2 (30 Minutes worth) or Heaven benchmark.(GPU-Z)

Ambient temp 22c.

Very pleased with temps and near silent as I could have wanted.

I proberly could have gotten away with a smaller 2nd rad but wanted to leave room for a third 480 in the future (or possibly 2 ;-))
 
Biffa said:
Thats an amazing temp, I've never seen anyone getting sub 60 under load on an i7 at 4Ghz on stock water cooled by our balmy weather at the moment.
Click to expand...

Here's mine, temps peaked at 59 on core 1, normal range was 56-58 degrees :D
temps4.jpg


To the OP if your looking for a quiet loop deffinately go with the 120.3+120.2 as it will allow you to run the fans at a lower speed to get the same cooling as 2x120.2. If you have the space 140mm form rads may also be an option, greater cooling potential and could be a better use of the space. A 140.3 is equal to a 120.4 but you can run the fans slower to shift the same amount of air. 2x140.2 could be an option.

I wouldn't bother cooling the mobo or ram unless you want it for aesthetics, it's just more heat dumped inot the loop for no real gain.

What case is this going into?
 
Heh if we could all run at those volts we could all have those temps. You need to be careful to add the caveat that you have a VERY good chip that will run at those volts when you are advising others :)

Whats it set at in the bios out of interest?
 
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