Water Cooling: Dual or Single Loop?

TooManyPCs

TooManyPCs

TooManyPCs

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I currently have 2 cooling loops.

Loop 1 = Pump 1 > Radiator 1 (240) > CPU > MOSFETs > Voltage Regulators > Reservoir > Pump 1

Loop 2 = Pump 2 > Radiator 2 (480) > GPU > NB/SB Full Block > Reservoir > Pump 2

The reservoir is common to both loops. The pumps are both D5 vario.

Would I benefit from a 'single' figure-of-eight style loop?

For instance,

Pump 1 > Radiator 1 (240) > CPU > MOSFETs > Voltage Regulators > Pump 2 > Radiator 2 (480) > GPU > NB/SB Full Block > Reservoir > Pump 1

Normally I would try it out, but I'm getting a bit tired of the two day experiments.
 
What's the specs of your system? i7 or core 2? Also, what's your gpu?


What are the temps like at the moment? Any component's temp in particular giving you cause for concern?


You could consider getting another res for 2 separate loops, possibly put the gpu on the loop with the 240 and change the cpu to the loop with the 480.
 
i went from two loops to one, as i felt my RADs were not working to there full potential for my set up, i saw an increase in idle temps and about 5C temp drops at load for my CPU..its a bugger if i want to change anything though :(
 
single loop is the way forward - but you need to know ecactly what you are doing [plan it out] in order for it to all work well
 
I dunno...I like my two loops...but then I am a novice so far...but I am sure I will be watercooling another of my machines in the near future and might try a single loop for both CPU and GPU...
 
I also think that single loop is the way forward, but planning it seems to be very difficult if you want multiple blocks. I'm starting to become paranoid about flow rate, and I'm not done adding blocks yet.

@the op, I'm considering pump -> gpu block -> pump -> cpu block -> everything else as the most likely option to work well, so figure of 8 is certainly worth a look. Going to have to try it and see I fear, now's a good time to put in a drain line if there isn't one at the moment :)
 
System

Mobo: Asus Rampage II Extreme
CPU: i7 965 Extreme
GPU: GTX295

Temps (right now)
Mobo: 32C
NB: 35C
SB: 35C
CPU: 26C
GPU: 37C and 35C
Ambient Room: 22C

The temps above are with no overclock. All fans are at minimum speed, silent running. Will post some OC specs and temps tomorrow, off to work. One more night and then two weeks off :)
 
We need load temps mate, idle is worthless to us. If you're not overclocking, then don't put any more effort into the watercooling since it's already overkill for stock
 
No stress mate, the problem is that idle temperatures are so closely dictated by ambients, and the definition of idle varies to much that there's just no way of telling what they mean.

I don't often run an overclock 24/7 either, makes too much noise for me

Hope work goes well :)
 
I run a single loop.

Pump - Rads - GPU1 - GPU2 - I7 920 - Res

2 rads, PA120.3 - PA120.2 sandwiched, 5 x 120x38mm Yate Loons

Load temps at 3.6ghz overclock 59 60 59 60

GPU's under Crysis 43 - 45
 
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I currently have one loop but 2 pumps as follows:-

Pump/res --> 2nd Pump --> Double Rad --> O/C Cpu i7 (4.0ghz) --> Triple Rad --> 1st HD4890 --> 2nd HD4890 --> Pump/res

My Radiators are Black Ice GT and my pumps are the Laing DDC 1+ Ultra 18W (one with a xspc top)

My temps for the cpu is 40c idle and about 55c load and my gfx cards are 37c idle and about 47c load
 
Franco mate, if you would be so kind, I would be very grateful if you turn the second pump off then load the system.

I would really, really like to know what difference it makes to the temperatures, that's the most restrictive single loop double pump I've seen so far

Whats the cpu block?

I remember your thread in July, since then I've done a lot more thinking and decided to add a lot more blocks to my loop, and think dual ddcs is the way forward for me too.
 
I'm certain two pumps is the way for me to go, the debate is whether to run them in series or one through the ek supreme and the other through everything else, using a shared radiator.

There's a list of pros and cons for each, thread here covers the discussion so far. The temperature increase when you turn one of them off would help work out which is optimal.

The results probably wont be transferrable to my loop though, yours is a lot lower restriction so taking the cpu block out is less likely to help. Which cpu block are you using?
 
Then I will be exceptionally interested in the temperature rise when the second pump is not running. At a guess it will be enough for ibt to fail a few calculations, but it won't bluescreen ya. Unless two pumps is really important, in which case you'll see temperatures spike and stop the test.

As motivation, I have an idea which is quite likely to improve your cpu temperatures a bit :)

Particularly good would be if the fans are at constant speed, if they're changing with processor load then it'll ruin the results
 
It looks like my question has been. Will soon be running with a single loop. If the single loop improves, or even degrades my cooling I will post some results. Hopefully do a rebuild some time in the next 2 weeks.


I was asked for load temps (may not be accurate - read on). Here's some max load temps anyway - at 4.2 using RealTemp 3.00:

Super Pi (32M)
Core 1 - 58
Core 2 - 55
Core 3 - 59
Core 4 - 56

Intel Burn Test
Core 1 - 69
Core 2 - 67
Core 3 - 66
Core 4 - 64

LinX 0.62
Core 1 - 60
Core 2 - 63
Core 3 - 59
Core 4 - 56

Not to sure what the score is with IBT and LinX. IBT claims I'm running at 3.3GHz? and LinX claims 3.5?, yet IBT causes higher temps? Never bothered much with anything other than Everest and Vantage benchmarks before, good enough for me.

Would post a Vantage score but the grapics tests are locking up. Made a few changes this morning, some new digital speakers and some associated driver probs. That ended up with a fresh windows install. Also upgraded the firmware on my SSDs (to a beta version - possible trim support in RAID, I hope) so that may causing a benching problems. Seemed to stutter with Linx for example. A few Windows tweaks and SSD testing to do.


GPU temps. I don't OC the GPU, at least not yet. I happy that I don't have to listen to the GPU cooling. Temps from Everst, RealTemp GPU temp matches GPU 1 on Everest.

Crysis Benchmark (Everest temps)
GPU 1 - 43
GPU 2 - 41


NB, SB and Mobo (Everest temps)
NB - 38
SB - 38
MB - 35

Room temp is 25C

Won't be doing anymore benching, of any kind, until I get the SSDs 100% reliable again. The SSDs are the best upgrade I've done in years, will never buy another HDD again (don't have to, 5TB+ of HDDs already!). SSD Trim support for RAID will be the final nail in the coffin for my HDDs, as the OS drive at least. Trim for my SSDs is top of my list, for now.
 
JonJ678 said:
Franco mate, if you would be so kind, I would be very grateful if you turn the second pump off then load the system.
Click to expand...

You've probably already thought of this but bare in mind that when he switches one of the pumps off that dead pump will be adding a significant pressure drop to the loop, so you would have to account for that in comparing a one pump system to a two pump systems, the true one pump system wouldn't have a dirty great restriction sat in it doing nothing. Just thought I'd mention it.
 
Cheers, but I had thought of this :)

If anything it helps my case since I'm trying to extrapolate to a much more restrictive system than Franco's. Sadly he seems to have gone away :(
 
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