Water cooling Help

Smirnoff

Smirnoff

Smirnoff

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18 Oct 2002
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I’ve decided to move from air to water cooling I will just be just cooling my CPU for the moment, but I would like to future proof it for the coming years.

At the moment I’m planning on having two Thermochill PA120.3 rads in one loop, CPU block, pump and res, then adding GPU blocks at a later stage. Or having two loops inside the system I'm unsure of whats best really.

Now I’ve had a look around at cases and I really want a Zalman GT1000 but there’s no way that kind of setup is going to fit inside and I don’t want to be cutting up such an expensive case, The two options I have so far are as follows

1) House the water cooling kit in some kind of rad box, Was thinking of buying a smaller case to house it all in but I’m having a hard time finding a small good looking case that can fit it all inside

2) Buy a huge case i.e. a Lian Li PC-343B and fit it all inside, But I really like the idea of having the water cooling kit contained in a different box and not having to chop holes in a £200 plus case

The budget is around £500 for the cases and water cooling kit.

Any help or advice would be great :)
 
marginal and doubtful whether the few degrees removed from the water by the first rad will help the overclock much on the gpu so why bother.
 
Was thinking about having Xfired 3870x2 with a CPU and two of them in a loop thats a lot of heat for one rad to remove. I'd rather build a bit of an over kill system than have to rip it all apart in a year and re do it :) Or could a single rad cope with such temps ?
 
What did you do? Win the lottery?

Your problem is that you want to cool some serious heatloads but you don't want to do any case hacking. If you go external with two rads how are you going to route the tubing? cpu - case2 - rad1 - case 1 - gpus - case 2 - rad 2? Not really on, is it?

I think you'd be surprised how little the water temp difference is between the outlet of the rad and the outlet of the cpu block.
 
Hacking up a really expence case isnt my idea of fun, I'm just looking into other possible options there no need to be such a jerk about it.
 
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wow, that will be some set up. 2 x 3870x2's watercooled? A PA120.2 should cope, or as you suggest: a PA120.3.

A rad box sounds like a good idea. A PA120.2 dual loop would work, but you might as well go for 2 x PA120.3 for that lot for the small difference in price.

3/8" Tygon will fit through the PCI slots. No modding of case needed.
 
Hi Smirnoff,

If you've got £500 to spend on a case and water cooling then get the Silverstone TJ07 case. It's perfect for water cooling and its 99% mod free. I bought the case a few weeks back and I'm waiting for some parts to come out and I'll build it all.

My budget is the same as yours so it will leave you with a nice £300 for the WC, which will be superb for that amount of money. You can house a Thermochill PA120.3 in the bottom compartment, plus the pump too and it'll then be hidden and have its own space. Check the case out, it's awesome.


RoEy
 
RoEy said:
Hi Smirnoff,

If you've got £500 to spend on a case and water cooling then get the Silverstone TJ07 case. It's perfect for water cooling and its 99% mod free. I bought the case a few weeks back and I'm waiting for some parts to come out and I'll build it all.

My budget is the same as yours so it will leave you with a nice £300 for the WC, which will be superb for that amount of money. You can house a Thermochill PA120.3 in the bottom compartment, plus the pump too and it'll then be hidden and have its own space. Check the case out, it's awesome.


RoEy
Click to expand...

I've had a good look at the case and its been added to my idea list, thanks :)
 
MikeTimbers said:
little do you know... MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Click to expand...

hah! I'm just wondering if I ever sneak onto the list of other people worth listening to.. anyway..

to the OP..

2 120.3s for 1 component is madness, I ran a Q6600 on 1 120.1 perfectly happily, now running mine on 1 120.3 and the temps are silly low and they don't budge much under full load either.

In my second loop I have an 8800gtx, my ram, my nb and sb and mosfets and again my temps are very low. My GTX idles at about 35.

So, assuming 3870X2s don't run with the heat of the sun which I've no reason to assume they would, plus taking into account gfx cards are normally much less heat reactive for clocks/stability etc (eg x1900xtxs can often idle in the high 80s, they're designed to take it) I'd suggest if you have the space then 2 120.3s spli over a similar split to mine would be a good shout.

For something like that you would need a case like a mountain mods UFO or maybe a CM stacker or similar. Or a heavily modded normal case like mine but I don't think you're keen.

Alternatively you could look at a TJ07 which to my mind is about as lush as a case gets, I've worked with one in the past and it was a dream to watercool.

You can put a thin 120.2 up top and a 120.4 (yes, FOUR they exist) or a PA120.3 (the PA120.3 probably outperforms a HW labs 120.4 but anyway) in the bottom compartment with NO modding.

To be honest you could run a Q6600 and crossfired 3870X2s on a 120.3 and unless you were madly overvolting I bet you could get away with decent temps/clocks.

People get hung up on maximum rad space nowadays, the mad thing is that we're all increasing the number/size of our rads as the heat output of components goes down, a Q6600 isn't a patch on my old P4 570J, similarly I doubt a 3870X2 could keep up with a 6800ultra or 7950GX2 for heat output so I wouldn't sweat it.

For the record I think you got a short reply because we see a lot of "dreamer" threads saying "OMG I want 6 3870s and a QX9950 and watercooling!" and it never seems real. Especially when people dream up crazy water systems with several 120.3s in series, its seconds away from the pc in a fridge or connected up the the house radiator idea that just proves people haven't taken the time to read up on the forums.

Anyway, lecture over.. 2 x 120.3 is cool, you need a lot of case and you have to watercool EVERYTHING to make it worthwhile :)
 
I have the TJ07 is very easy to install wc kit, does anyone else have problems with the side panels, mine were impossible to get off and I actually used a mallot to put them back on! Also some reson my temps arent super low! I have a 120.3 mounted at the bottom with 2x 120mm fans suck air in. Cooling a E6400 @ 3.5ghz @ 1.45vcore, my temps are around 38 idle and 48 load, not high enough to be an issue but a little lower would be nicer, considering how much airflow I have in the case! Maybe its the apogee water block :S
 
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