It's Me Again! With Watercooling Questions..

[Son of Odin]

Alright, so I've always wanted to water cool my PC. The money never came around til now. Basically, I am giving my ex girlfriend my old PC and in exchange she'll spend some money on helping me watercool my PC.

 

I was wondering if doing this would work:

 

Here's my case if you want to get a better feel of the layout:

 

I don't want to make the water cooling stick out too much, so I was thinking mount the radiator to the outside of my case, and put the fans inside the case on the top. I would have to carve another fan slot in the top of my case but that's no big deal. Now here's where my lack of knowledge comes in. Will that make the heat from my PC cut back on the cooling of my components or won't it be too noticable? Will my Acrylic case melt with a radiator right against it? If so what do I put in between it or is it not doable? I know chipset cooling isn't really worth it without extreme overclocking so I'm skipping that and sticking to just the CPU for now, and later on I'll buy a GPU waterblock and add that into the mix. I read the guide on here hence the pump location in the diagram. Here's the parts I've been looking at.

 

pump- Swiftech MCP655-B

cpublock- Danger Den MC-TDX for Intel 775

Radiator- Danger Den Black Ice GT Stealth 240 X-Flow Radiator

Reservoir- XSPC 5.25" Bay Liquid Cooling Reservoir (cuz I want a clear bay res to match my case!)

tubing and water- Feser

 

My system specs are:

Q6600

DFI LP LT X38-T2R

EVGA 8800TS (512)

Crucial Balistix tracer ram

Ultra 550w PSU

4 HDs totaling 1,145GB

Edited May 24, 2008 by Son of Odin

[3stars]

Alright, so I've always wanted to water cool my PC. The money never came around til now. Basically, I am giving my ex girlfriend my old PC and in exchange she'll spend some money on helping me watercool my PC.

 

I was wondering if doing this would work:

 

Here's my case if you want to get a better feel of the layout:

 

I don't want to make the water cooling stick out too much, so I was thinking mount the radiator to the outside of my case, and put the fans inside the case on the top. I would have to carve another fan slot in the top of my case but that's no big deal. Now here's where my lack of knowledge comes in. Will that make the heat from my PC cut back on the cooling of my components or won't it be too noticable? Will my Acrylic case melt with a radiator right against it? If so what do I put in between it or is it not doable? I know chipset cooling isn't really worth it without extreme overclocking so I'm skipping that and sticking to just the CPU for now, and later on I'll buy a GPU waterblock and add that into the mix. I read the guide on here hence the pump location in the diagram. Here's the parts I've been looking at.

 

pump- Swiftech MCP655-B

cpublock- Danger Den MC-TDX for Intel 775

Radiator- Danger Den Black Ice GT Stealth 240 X-Flow Radiator

Reservoir- XSPC 5.25" Bay Liquid Cooling Reservoir (cuz I want a clear bay res to match my case!)

tubing and water- Feser

 

My system specs are:

Q6600

DFI LP LT X38-T2R

EVGA 8800TS (512)

Crucial Balistix tracer ram

Ultra 550w PSU

4 HDs totaling 1,145GB

You'll be fine with the rad on the to just have the fans sucking in the cool air. The air temp doesn't really get that warm to make to much difference just make sure youe exaust fan is up to the job, but you might want to consider some filtering for the intake with an acylic case dust seems to love it(acrylic), stockings are perfect get the black ones and it don't look to bad.

[radodrill]

There are no issues with mounting the radiator against the acrylic (it will not melt as the water/radiator temp isn't much over ambient).

 

if you're considering to potentially H2O cool the GPU in the future, then you might as well invest in a 360mm radiator as the Q6600 puts out a lot of heat and the 240mm would probably not handle both a GPU and the Q6600.

[cirro]

i have the same loop setup (radiator on back though) and a q6600 and my 88 gts cooled, and like radodrill said, get a 360mm one, over time with heavy usage your going to want to keep your peak temps down, our cards are hot hot hot

[Shadowfactor]

get a 3:120mm fan Rad for cooling a GPU plus Q6600 also I would run it something like Res -> Pump -> Rad -> CPU -> GPU. That way your cooling off the water before it goes through your loop otherwise it just sits in the Reservoir and collects heat.

[radodrill]

That way your cooling off the water before it goes through your loop otherwise it just sits in the Reservoir and collects heat.

 

Not the case. This practice/notion is a result of the early DIY H2O days when submersible garden pumps were used and placed in a small container of water acting as a reservoir, in such a situation the pump was in the res emitting heat to the surrounding water and so it was preferable to have the rad right before the block(s).

 

Using current equipment this isn't anything to really be concerned about. Most newer pumps (i.e. D5 or DDC) have a very minimal heat transfer to the water. Further, a standalone reservoir has no heat sources in it and as such would not add heat to the water; especially since the temp of the water exiting the radiator cannot be lower than the ambient air temp and the water in a reservoir will tend to reach the ambient temp as well.

[Son of Odin]

Well I don't plan to do much over clocking. My case is 18" long and a 2x120mm radiator would fit well with minor alterations, but if I get the three up, I'd have to move the location of one of the fans holes and probably just drill it all out to fit the 3x120mm radiator.. it's a 11.5" to 16.25" difference. I suppose I could always under cut everything and make changes on the fly, it is only a $10 difference for what would be a lot better cooling. Thank you all for your input. Any recommendation on fans to use? I'd like to be able to control the speed, nothing too loud as my computer sits at a low dba already. I've always been interested in how well the Thermaltake Silent Wheel 130mm fan performs. Right now I have three 120mm thermaltake smartfan II. There's also a cooler master 4 pack that looks like a good deal, I'll most likely be making all my purchases through frozencpu btw.

Edited May 30, 2008 by Son of Odin

[Son of Odin]

After a bit of layout revisions due to not realizing exactly how small my case is, I have it set up a bit different, but here's the pictures of my freshly water cooled system! Temps are down roughly 10 degrees aside from my chipset.