Watercooling Reservoir help

[Adam Riley]

Can anyone give me a little advice on this issue im thinking that might crop up when I'm building this loop.
I'm wanting to build a water loop into my case and I was wondering about reservoirs and their heights. purely for aesthetic looks I was going to put an EK-Quantum Volume FLT 360 (no pump attached just the reservoir) on the back of my case and the power would be supplied by a Corsair Hydro X Series XD5 res/pump combo. The corsair res was going to be mounted onto the front fans and the EK Res just mounted to the back of the case next to the motherboard. What I was worried about though is if the EK res is higher than the top of the corsair res will the airgap that is in the corsair, once filled, be forced out and in to the EK res and the fluid that is in that EK res fill the corsair until there is zero air in that reservoir? Or will it just fill up and the air gap remain in the corsair as that’s the filling part, but it will be lower than the EK res. I have corsair 900d case and I have removed all the drive bays at the front of the case normally and that extra space created was why the EK res is going in to fill that space? Would the height difference in the two reservoirs make any problems once filled ?

Any help would he much appreciated.

Thanks

Adam

 

[LuckyBenski]

You will probably find it very hard to fill and bleed your loop with two reservoirs. Moving the case around to clear air pockets runs a high risk of introducing air from one reservoir into the loop, where it will move towards the other reservoir, etc etc. If you get them pretty full it may not be too bad though.

Height difference shouldn't have an effect though. The air gets trapped in the top of reservoirs by virtue of having nowhere further up it can go. i.e. it would have to go down, to travel into the tubing and find a higher cavity elsewhere. Air just wants to go up relative to itself, rather than to find a higher space elsewhere.

For the same reason, you can get air pockets trapped in radiators at any height. Because there is a cavity at the top of radiators, above the ports.

Just make sure that the return path for water into both reservoirs is below the surface of the water. In other words have the return path on the bottom of the res, or have a return tube in the top if using a port in the res cap.

Edit: and welcome to the forums!

 

[Adam Riley]

Thanks for the reply LuckyBenski,

I have a radiator along the top of my case, I was going to run a pipe from that to the top connection on the EK res and then the exit would be at the bottom of that, I would bend the pipe back upwards and make the flow enter the top of the Corsair res which has a pipe built in to it that goes about 3 quarters down the res I'm assuming to stop the any air escaping out the top like you've said.

As for filling/emptying I was going to put a drain that he bottom of my case which is the lowest part which will get most of it out, it's probably just going to be awkward and a lot of moving of the case but I think it may just have to be the price that I pay for this loop setup. With both the reservoirs being set to the side away from the components in the pc I may get away with disconnecting the top connection to the res and then blowing in it to force any fluid trapped in the bottom of it and the exit pipe out and into the corsair res where it can just fall down and mavity will take it to the drain just i will also have to have plenty of paper towels on standby as a precaution.

Really appreciate the help so thanks very much onwards with the build