Watercooling failure...

[Bluelion]

Hello lads,

Before Christmas I embarked on a consolodation of two old PCs into one 'dream build', albeit with the reuse of a 2600K + mobo from a previous build due to Asus' failure to get their ivy-e mobo out to Europe.

I'm not new to water cooling, having been using it since the late 90s, but I've tended to be fairly conserative with the builds, going for function rather than form, as can be seen here with a pair of MountainMods cases:

So this time I thought I'd pull out all the stops and go for a flashy looking rig with braided cables, hidden pumps, those flash connects and more radiator space.

The pump/reservoir combination which I chose was the Monsoon with the D5:

and a new EK 2x120mm thick radiator at the back of the case:

Anyway, to cut a long story short, bleeding the system in this configuration was an absolute swine, involving a lot of turning/twisting/tipping of a relatively heavy box.

To cap it off, the performance of the reservoir/pump seemed terrible - with only a trickle of flow. So I disassembled the reservoir, changed the supplied sealing ring for a thinner 'high performance' one, reassembled, bled the system again (this is a all night operation ), and still the flow is terrible.

As for cooling the components (a 2600K @ 3.4Ghz and a nVidia 780Ti @1200Mhz) the loop seemed to be functioning, keeping the reported GPU temp at around 50 degrees C in Metro Last Light (the most GPU heavy game I have on Linux).

However I also installed inline water temp gauges, which showed that the water was also getting up to 50 degrees C which is beyond my comfort zone for water, its quite hot to touch.

As the bottom thermochill 120.3 rad was only getting hot at the one end, I felt it might be blocked (explaining the poor flow), so rebuilt the system again, using the other 120.3 rad from the other box, and flipping the EK rad upside down and adding a bleed port out the top to try and assist with bleeding.


Anyway to cut a long story short, performance is still below my expectations, so I cut my loses and ordered up a EK 120x3 thick radiator to replace the thermochill. It arrived and I realised the folly of my credit card spending:

It isn't the right size for the case! The EK (bottom) has the fans positioned closer together, which means it won't fit in the holes on the MountainMods case (or any of my fan shrouds).

To cap it all off, the EK 120x2 rad then sprung a leak last night from the barbed connector, which dripped directly into the Corsair 850w PSU directly under it, which seems to have made it a paperweight. And then air has appeared in the loop once more (excuse the cabling - it is temporarily juryrigged up on an older 600w PSU after the leak)

As you can probably guess, I'm feeling pretty peeved off right now, a frankly daft amount of money (I'm too embarressed to admit how much) has been sunk into this 'dream build' which is turning into a nightmare.

I think I am going to cut my loses once more and revert back to a standard D5 pump and a cylindrical reservoir which 'just worked', and use just 1 3x120mm reservoir.


tldr; can anyone answer the following questions please?

(1) How can I tell before I buy if a radiator will fit my case? Does each radiator use a random spacing, or are there 'some' standards, eg. the two sizes above?

(2) How much cooling can I expect from a 120x3 rad with proper D5 pressure water flow? Is it reasonable to expect it to keep water temp below 50 degrees C with an overclocked Sandybridge CPU + nVidia 780ti @ 1200Mhz?

I'm currently running a trio of fairly powerful of Xigmatek XAF-F1253 pushing air, with another 3 weaker fans pulling on the 120x3 - so air flow is fairly strong.

 

[Avenged7Fold]

There is only two standards, or really one standard and one weird spacing adopted by thermochill (i think?) a while back.

Your temps are WAY too high and the cause of this is the same cause as your lack of flow. DONT switch it on until it is sorted.

Your pump is not circulating water quick enough to let it cool down. If you had a plexi block, likely the thread where the fitting was in would have cracked by now! It is obviously not your fault, and these pumps should boast among the highest flow rates available to us without paying upwards of £175.

I think your pump is either on the lowest variable speed setting, if the D5 sold by monsoon is a vario, OR flow is obstructed. Could be the inlet and outlet of a component or even a blocked rad.

My money is on the reservoir being blocked/faulty. As for rad spacing, most come with the standard spacing that EK uses. I looked at mountain mod cases a long time ago and found that you choose the fan spacing when you order. I think it might be worth DIYing a small bracket to mount the standard ones on. If you are handy with a drill, itl be a few quid and 20 min job. If you dont fancy that, there might be a few shrouds available if you search around.

120.3 premium rad with any pump which can keep temps uniform, you shouldn't see temps on your cores above 65 imo. Water temp shouldn't even hit 40 and i would feel uncomfortable if it got that far.

 

[pgi947]

You need a radiator with 25mm spacing, which is the old standard most common on the old pa120.3's I believe, all newer radiators have 15mm fan spacing.

As for temps sounds like a flow issue, using the correct in and out ports on the res?

 

[Bluelion]

Thanks for the replies gents. The pump is most definitely on max, at 4 (or below) I can't see the water move at all!

Its like the pump is just thrashing the water in the reservoir, rather than pushing it round. The pump's speed cable is linked up to a fan controller to monitor, and its running at 4800rpm on speed 5, which I guess is fairly normal. Before the current black water, I initially used yellow where you could see it spinning through the reservoir window.

There could be a fault with the reservoir I guess, that is something I hadn't considered. I'm fairly confident that I've got the output connected to the right hole (as confirmed when mounting the pump).

I can't easily drill the case, as it will look daft on the front with a 120mm hole overlaid a bit to one side of an existing hole - and there isn't enough meat on the EK radiator fan mounting surface to fit fans at 25mm spacing.

I suppose there is a possibilty of mounting the fans to the case, and only aligning a couple of holes on the rad to mount it, I'll give that some thought thanks.

 

[Avenged7Fold]

Mmmmm, blocked reservoir probably. There have been blocked pump tops, CPU blocks and reservoirs come up in a few threads in the last couple of months. It is rare but i cant imagine the problem would be elsewhere if the reservoir coolant is moving about but the coolant in the hosing is struggling to move.

 

[ubersonic]

If you have a D5 and res spare can you not test the PA120.3 outside the system to confirm it's blocked? sadly all radiators today use the new 15mm fan spacing standard, and even worse you have to pay big bucks to get a modern one as good as a Thermochill PA, they were the market leaders right up until they went out of business (family run business and owner had health problems IIRC). Mayhems did create a new generation of rads based on TC designs however thye never mad eit to market as they didn't think people would pay for the performance given the abundance of cheepo rads now on the market like the EK's/XSPC's.

Silly question but you did bleed the PA (the screw on the end) to make sure the was no trapped air right?

EDIT: Was the 50c before or after the PA120.3? If the flow issue was present with both the TC and the EK it could be possible that the radiator was only getting hot at one end because with the terrible flow the heat was being removed before it could actually cross the rad (the lower the flow the better for rads but the worse for components) I have seen this happen before with flow issues.

 

[Silent_Scone]

I read barbed connector and instantly new what was coming next

Sods law . All I can suggest is check, check and check again. But even then anyone can come unstuck.

As far as temps go, there are so many factors to consider when there are GPUs in the loop. The run length, rad depth, ambients, pump speed etc

Just as a reference

2x 480MM 2x 240MM on three 780Tis @ 1255Mhz / 3900Mhz 1.150 - 1.200v and a 4960X@ 4.7Ghz 1.4V will get the water temperature to 30-35C(40C worst case after a long stint in a warm room) and GPU temps are around 40C - 50C underload

Hope you get it sorted

 

[ubersonic]

As another reference, my cooling loop consists of a PA120.3 with three Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1150RPM and a PA160.1 with another Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1150RPM. They are cooling a 4930K @ 4.5GHz 1.34v, an EVGA GTX780 Hydrocopper running Classified clock speeds plus the VRMs and the PCH on an ASUS Rampage IV Gene. The fans are controlled by the motherboard and usually run at ~800RPM unless gaming.

My GPU temperature has never exceeded 41c, my CPU temperature has never exceeded 60c (except during OC stress testing), and the VRM/PCH temps are great. I don't measure the water temp but the bay reservoir never gets that hot, I would say from touch the water is ~30-35 degrees max load.

(2) How much cooling can I expect from a 120x3 rad with proper D5 pressure water flow? Is it reasonable to expect it to keep water temp below 50 degrees C with an overclocked Sandybridge CPU + nVidia 780ti @ 1200Mhz?

I'm currently running a trio of fairly powerful of Xigmatek XAF-F1253 pushing air, with another 3 weaker fans pulling on the 120x3 - so air flow is fairly strong.

With those fans any rad comparable to a PA120.3 would cool your components, if you have access to the members market have you considered putting a thread up in the wanted section for a good condition PA120.3? that way it would fix right in where your old one was no messing around, I have seen them trade hands for £30-40 which is an absolute steal considering an equivalent new rad is twice that and won't bolt up to old style cases/shrouds.

-----

Just as a last thing, you didn't do anything silly like connect the res up using two "in" ports or two "out" ports did you? IIRC as you look at that res from behind the inputs are on the left and the outputs on the right.

 

[Bubo]

I suppose there is a possibilty of mounting the fans to the case, and only aligning a couple of holes on the rad to mount it, I'll give that some thought thanks.

I would mount the rad to the case using the central 120mm fan only, with the other two fans screwed just to the case. There will be some fan overhang but at least the rad will be secure. You could also back the rad off from the case a bit using a fan spacer between the central fan and the case, then duct in the lost air flow form the overhung fans if you want to get all the airflow from all three fans going through the rad.

A rad grill of the appropriate size would have been an option if it was the other way round, i.e. a 25mm spacing rad in a 15mm case, but probably not with a 25mm case to start with.

Personally I doubt there was anything wrong with the original rad and it is probably down to the pump/res since this is all that has really changed.

P.S. Those new fan grills on the new setup look like they are blocking half the flow, I would definitely lose them if it was me.

P.P.S. Regards bleeding this if you have it setup like the 4th picture. What I would do is route the loop to have the outlet from the res/pump go to the cpu, gpu etc, then into the bottom rad, then into the top of the smaller rad, then from there to the res. BUT whilst initially filling take the tube end off the outlet from the smaller rad and put a temp length of tube on the rad outlet, such that you fill it gradually whilst sucking air the end of the temp tube with your mouth, rather than blipping the pump. This way you will be absolutely sure the pump is properly primed, which having no experience of this kind of res/pump combo I am unsure how these respond when filling and case rocking. Obviously, you'll have to judge much water you to suck through before you reconnect the tube to the res. Ideally you want to go just until the point any water starts to come out of the smaller rad. Anyway, once enough water has come through connect the tube back to the res, and pump blip normally from then onwards.

 

[Bluelion]

Thank you all so much for all the helpful responses.

I'm fairly sure the PA120.3 aren't blocked as they were working fine in the previous two setups, and I've swapped the one in use over here - plus I could 'blow' into them and the pressure resistence seemed about the same across them - so I'm now thinking that as ubersonic suggested, the problem is just lack of water flow which meant that the water was cooling down in the end of the rad (the 50 degree temp was before the rad after the components - which explains why the GPU/CPU weren't overheating too).

I've got two temp gauges now, one before and after the pair of rads to see the difference, which is about 20 degrees in the current configuration.

I think I'll ditch the Monsoon reservoir and go back to the simple cylindrical reservoir with the separate D5 pump in its standard case - and mount it out of side behind the single front 120mm fan as seen on the 'blue' case in the top pic.

Then I just need to decide if I should stick with the pa120.3 which fits the case and I have the shrouds for, or 'middle mount only' the new EK 120x3 XL rad, and I'll ditch the EK 120x2 rad to keep things simple and reduce the possibility of destroying another PSU.

 

[tipes]

Thank you all so much for all the helpful responses.

I'm fairly sure the PA120.3 aren't blocked as they were working fine in the previous two setups, and I've swapped the one in use over here - plus I could 'blow' into them and the pressure resistence seemed about the same across them - so I'm now thinking that as ubersonic suggested, the problem is just lack of water flow which meant that the water was cooling down in the end of the rad (the 50 degree temp was before the rad after the components - which explains why the GPU/CPU weren't overheating too).

I've got two temp gauges now, one before and after the pair of rads to see the difference, which is about 20 degrees in the current configuration.

I think I'll ditch the Monsoon reservoir and go back to the simple cylindrical reservoir with the separate D5 pump in its standard case - and mount it out of side behind the single front 120mm fan as seen on the 'blue' case in the top pic.

Then I just need to decide if I should stick with the pa120.3 which fits the case and I have the shrouds for, or 'middle mount only' the new EK 120x3 XL rad, and I'll ditch the EK 120x2 rad to keep things simple and reduce the possibility of destroying another PSU.

Think you would be better with a tube res/D5/D5 top - I seem to recall I had similar problems when using a Monsoon res - they look very nice but sometimes they just don't perform as far as flow is concerned. The D5 pump should be perfectly capable of a good flow for your setup - so barring the monsoon res being a problem, is there perhaps a huge airlock somewhere? slowing the flow to a crawl(or is this even possible) Just throwing ideas out there really.

Hope you get it all sorted though.

Mark