Water Cooling HELP

[prophetd7]

Hi guys,

 

I would like to try water cooling, I'm not familiar with this, so I would like to try wc with my current spec. my sig rig, for beginning, simple loop that will include CPU, NB, GPU cooling ... I'm planing upgrade in recent feature, so it would be good that I buy decent parts for wc that I would be able to use, after my upgrade...

 

for upgrade I was thinking i5 2500K,z68 chipset, 8GB RAM @1600MHz ...

 

Suggest me some ideas, solutions and parts for that loop, so I can have something to start with.

 

Thanks in advance ...

[cirro]

simple loop doesn't involve much more than a CPU.

 

when you want a single loop for that many things, alot more consideration like "waterflow" needs to be considered.

 

IMO if you want chipsets to also be done, add them onto a seperate 120x1 radiator so the ambiet heat doesnt interfere

 

NB & GPU's produce ALOT of heat.

 

remember nomatter where the water goes, if you have a single loop, you have "notsocool water" going to be primarly cooling the next block

[Boinker]

If this is your first go around in wc then I would keep it as simple as possible. Do a CPU first and see if you like it and go from there. But if you really want to throw down and commit to watercooling then seek out ek for the full cover block for the CPU gpu and motherboard. If they do not make a full cover waterblock for your board then I would either search for another board or deal with its air cooling.

 

My thoughts. I would build you a loop but I'm on a mobile phone so I can't see your signature. Sorry.

[prophetd7]

I think its simple loop because I will need to do some work to put it together, if I only wanted to water cool my CPU it wouldn't be simple loop it would be too easy to do, and it wouldn't be justifiable expense, because CPU is cooled enough at the moment, but NB and GPU are not .. so not interesting at all and not necessary at all work ...

I'm thinking of WC because my GPU and NB,SB are not cooled enough, but if I WC GPU and NB,SB I could squeeze a bit more OC from my PC, they have stock cooling and they hit high temps on load, and when I'm water cooling the system it would be unusual to not include CPU in the loop ....

 

If I have loop like this: Pump >> Radiator 1 >> CPU Block >> GPU Block >> Radiator 2 >> NB block >> SB block >> Reservoir >> Pump

 

1 pump,

1 cpu block,

1 gpu block,

1 sb block,

1 nb block,

 

a)

Radiator 1 : 240 rad , bigger one that covers cpu & gpu

Radiator 2 : 120 rad, for NB & SB

b)

OR INSTEAD OF Radiator 1 & Radiator 2 only one 360 rad ?

what is better a) or b) ?

would only one pump be able to manage that loop ? how strong pump ?

 

Is the difference between gpu block that is only for chip and gpu block with full cover big ?

[Waco]

Cooling the northbridge is pretty useless...they don't use enough power or produce enough heat to make it worth the money.

 

Also - the loop order matters little to none. The water temps through the loop will be essentially equal assuming you have a decent pump.

[Coors]

Also - the loop order matters little to none. The water temps through the loop will be essentially equal assuming you have a decent pump.

 

This. Gotta be the most misunderstood thing about water cooling lol

[Hyper]

As Waco said WC cooling the chipset is not worth the time and money. just putting a fan blowing on the chipset is generally good enough (that and changing the TIM). The thing to remember is when you watercool the CPU you will have less air movement around the chipset depending on the case so it's generally advisable to add a small fan.

 

As Boinker suggests just start with the CPU and see how it goes. You can add a 2nd loop or expand the loop to the GPU's later if you like how it went. Chances are you will want a different case or will have to mod the one you have plus hang a rad off the back if you need more then one rad.

[medbor]

He has a point, but it is not completely true.

 

Switching the rads positions should help average temps though. The water is hottest after the gpus, and thus needs most cooling then. I also would never run water from cpu to gpu directly, better with:

Cpu->NB->120->gpu->240->SB->pump->res->cpu...

[prophetd7]

He has a point, but it is not completely true.

 

Switching the rads positions should help average temps though. The water is hottest after the gpus, and thus needs most cooling then. I also would never run water from cpu to gpu directly, better with:

Cpu->NB->120->gpu->240->SB->pump->res->cpu...

 

i like that idea ...

[Waco]

Switching the rads positions should help average temps though. The water is hottest after the gpus, and thus needs most cooling then. I also would never run water from cpu to gpu directly, better with:

Cpu->NB->120->gpu->240->SB->pump->res->cpu...

Again - the order doesn't matter. With any reasonable amount of flow you're looking at something like a couple tenths of a degree between the hottest and coolest water in the loop.

[Stonerboy779]

Again - the order doesn't matter. With any reasonable amount of flow you're looking at something like a couple tenths of a degree between the hottest and coolest water in the loop.

So maybe you should suggest a pump and res

 

I think it is about time the op was given some suggestions of actual specific parts.

 

 

 

Pretty sure someone mentioned that if you were wanting to watercool the mobo instead of leaving it on air that you should look at which ones actually have full cover waterblocks made for them.

 

Not sure were you can buy things from in serbia op but with the mobo there are really only two options (that I know of) from ek which are the Gigabyte ud7 (p67 and z68) and the Asus Maximus 4 Extreme.

Either board is great for a sandy bridge build. You can buy the watercooling parts from frozencpu unless you know of somewhere you can get them from in your own country.

 

It is also good to try and keep all the same metal in your loop/s ie copper blocks copper rad and same for aluminium.

[sticknstone]

Let us look at this watercooling example loop; water temp 75c, cooling loop config cpu block with 10c gain = 85c water temp, to 120 rad with a 10c drop = 75c water temp, to 2 gpus with 20c gain = 95c water temp, to 240 rad with 20c drop = 75c water temp. Loop temp gain = 30c with temp loss = 30c.

Next loop will still contain the same heat load only with one 360 rad provided the temp loss. The water temp 75c to cpu and 2 gpus will yield 30c gain for 105c water temp and BOILING coolant with poor cooling.

Heat flows from high temp to low temp. When the coolant temp is lower than the component being cooled then the heat of the component will flow to the coolant.

What system would load a pc wc loop as in this example? Would four gpus in the loop? Bulldozer's tdp is still only 125w.

Cooling the nb load is similar to cooling the ram load. AMD nb and mem controller are in the cpu anyway, so the nb on the mobo controls the pc component input/output usb, sata etc...

With the choice of coolant which has additives to prevent corrosion the metal used in the cooling loop is no longer a concern. Copper will cool better than aluminum.