watercooling radiator question

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kreater

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Hello,

I've decided to look into custom watercooling for my PC, I've seen multiple people use several radiators making use of their case.

So my question is, is this better to do? is there a reasoning for it? and as of course 1 radiator has 1 loop going round the components, would the other raditors be included in this loop as well, or be a seperate thing?

thanks in advance
 
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ksham
You can include as many radiators as you want in a single loop. At some point, there's no advantages to having so many. You still won't cool below ambient temperature between using 1 radiator and 100 radiators. The only thing you did was make your build many folds noisier.
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ksham

ksham

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You can include as many radiators as you want in a single loop. At some point, there's no advantages to having so many. You still won't cool below ambient temperature between using 1 radiator and 100 radiators. The only thing you did was make your build many folds noisier.
 
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kreater

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Thanks, I understand you wont be able to cool below the ambient temp, but your saying using more than 1 radiator would result in cooler temps?

I most likely wouldn't use more than 2, if i know its somewhat helping.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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More than one might result in lower temps.

Is it worth the added hassle, cost, noise? Only you can determine that.
 
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manofchalk

manofchalk

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In some situations one radiator might suffice, in others you would need several. It all depends on the heat load that's being put into the loop.

Calculate the TDP (TDP = power consumption = roughly the heat output) of the components in the loop, and get a radiator setup (whether that be one or multiple) that can handle it. If your radiator/s can cope with the heat output of the loop, adding in more wont get you any more performance. If they cant deal with the heat, your delta's (difference between water and ambient temp) will suffer as a result until you either back off the heat output or put in more radiators.

In my loop, I require multiple radiators. I started with one RS360 radiator, with $7 fans I like to keep at around 900RPM to keep them quiet. This worked fine for just the CPU, because the heat output was 100W at most (after overclocking + pump) and the rad with those fans could easily handle that. Then I include a 7970, that adds another ~220W of heat dump into the loop, meaning now there's about 320W to deal with.
My RS360 cant handle that with my fans running as slow as they are, and making them faster leads to more noise which defeats half the point of water-cooling, and just letting the loop run hot really defeats the other half.
So I got another radiator, which has allowed me to deal with that extra heat and keep my fans running slow.

It all depends on your loop. With just a CPU, then any 240mm rad will do fine in all likelihood. If your running water-cooled Quad Crossfire, good luck trying to cool it all with a single radiator and have decent temperatures.
 
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kreater

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Thanks for your input and you do bring up some good points, at the moment its more just experimenting than anything so i feel more confident about the whole thing.
I only have a 3770k and a single 580 which will most likely get upgraded to a 780 or 2 in the future, I can fit a 480 rad in my case which i think is enough alone (even possibly for the dual 780's) but definately enough for a single 1 when i choose to upgrade at least, but please tell me your thoughts :)

Oh and another thing, what is your opinion on push or push/pull ? is there much difference in temps? with the extra fans i suppose you could run them at a lower rpm to keep noise down abit? Let me know
 
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manofchalk

manofchalk

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A thick 480mm could handle a 3770k and a 580 I think, though thats not much more than a gut feeling so you will want to check.

The benefit of push/pull is that increases the static pressure of the air going through the radiator, static pressure in a nutshell is how hard the air is being pushed. This will increase cooling performance on any radiator, but only significantly on thicker and/or higher FPI (Fins Per Inch) radiators.
So if you have a thick radiator, its worth looking into. If you have slim radiators like I do, it wont lead to any real benefit.
 
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kreater

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As a noob that still cant quite fully understand how push pull works exactly, so let me say how i think it is, the inside fans push air into the radiator, and the outside fans pull air from the outside into the radiator? is this correct?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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The radiator, sandwiched directly between two (or more) fans. One side pushing into the fins, the other side pulling out of the fins.
 
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kreater

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Yea I can understand the positioning just can't grasp what its actually doing, lets say it was mounted on the roof of my case. the lower set of fans would push air into the rad, does that mean the other set would pull air from the rad and basically exhaust it outside?.
 
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