A silent water cooling system utilizing PWM control - need advice

TurboJ · Sep 8, 2013

I have already ordered a new case to allow me to go big on water cooling (Fractal Define XL R2) and I want to build the rig to be as silent as possible.

I'm looking at cooling the CPU and eventually two GPUs on water.
I will be overclocking too - not to the max but my goal is to get the most performance that is possibl while still running silently. Main goal is for a gaming build, but you never know what else you might end up doing.

I also ordered a Swiftech 8-way PWM splitter, a device that runs up to 8 PWM fans using just one MoBo PWM feed and using SATA power to feed them the needed extra power.

Now, I haven't done water cooling before, but I have worked on automotive cooling solutions quite a bit.

My first idea was to run the W/C pump from the CPU fan PWM feed and then running all the case/rad fans from the one aux PWM feed that I have on my MoBo. Some questions here:

1.Is there any problem in using PWM feed to run radiator fans? My logic is the system will be very silent when temps are low, and PWM control would also automatically control the fan speeds so that only the required rpm would be run at any given moment.

2.Pumps can be noisy too, right? Would it be a good idea to fight the noise by running the pump on a PWM feed as well? Are there many options for a PWM-operated w/c pump?

3.My case has mostly 140mm fan mounts. I don't see many 140mm PWM fansout there, and have no idea if some are more silent than others. Also I want to keep the look clean, so either black or black/white are my colour options for the fans. Can you recommend me ones that won't break the bank?

4.Does a PC water cooling system benefit from a large reservoir like an automotive liquid charge cooler does? On those, the average temperature of the cooling system can be lovered by increasing the total volume of the system so that more heat energy can be absorbed by the liquid. Does a gaming PC have a lot of heat variation during gaming use? If it does, then that extra coolant capacity would work as a 'buffer' in the system so that the total heat would not go up as quickly?

5.Using a PWMcontrol as described, how far would a slim 280 rad with a thick 240 rad (the 240 running push/pull) go in controlling the heat of an overcloked i5 and two 770s?

Any other suggestions as to making the system as silent as ever possible?

inzone · Sep 8, 2013

Pumps are not that noisy and most of the time I don't hear them and I have three. The fans you may want to use through a fan controller where you can have control over individual or groups of fans. A reservoir wants to be small as the cooling is done by the radiators and not the sheer volume of liquid.
The decibel level of the fans wants to be under 30 dBA and if you can get fans that are near to 20dBA then those are very quiet and can be run at full speed without hearing them. You also want to get high static air pressure fans as those are made with radiators in mind.
The Corsair SP series are great for radiators.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181025

You may want to see if a 360mm radiator will fit in that case someplace, I had a 360 cooling two 680's and the temps were never above 45c, I also had a 240 cooling the CPU and motherboard chipset block but was not happy with the temps of the CPU and I am currently switching to a 360mm to see if it makes a difference or if it's just the CPU and the overclock that are making the temps higher then I want them to be.

When you start to have multiple blocks in your water cooling set up then you can either keep it as one loop or make two loops. One for the video cards and one for the CPU, naturally that means two pumps and two reservoirs so it's a choice that you can make and while the two video cards and CPU can be handled with one loop if you do start adding more blocks then you may want to consider it.

manofchalk · Sep 9, 2013

1. No, though if your fans only respond to voltage (non-PWM) then the splitter would be wasted.

2. There are plenty of PWM pumps out there, though I question the usefulness of such a feature. I would be inclined to get something like a D5 Vario, use the built in speed knob to set it so it runs quiet and then just leave it rather than having the pump change speed depending on temps.

3. Most 140mm mounts can hold 120mm fans. I use XSPC Xinrullian 1650RPM fans, their great forn radiator usage given their price.

4. Unless your talking literal buckets, the amount of of water in a loop has no impact on performance. The heat being generated is comparatively small compared to say a car and if you do it right your in a situation where your rads can easily deal with all that heat which I dont think can be said of a car radiator.

5. Look up reviews on the rads, see how much heat they dissipate compared to the components being cooled sum TDP. You want more rad TDP (at a reasonable fan RPM, say 1200) than you want component TDP, then you know the rads can handle the heat output. For that loop, I would say your pushing it.

Tips for a silent as possible loop.
- Overrad like crazy, even low quality fans will be very quiet if their only spinning at 800RPM.
- Decouple the pump as best you can. No 5.25" bay mounted pumps.
- Wear headphones and listen to music a lot

TurboJ · Sep 9, 2013

Thank you for your input, guys! It is much appreciated!

So you are saying that even a thick-core 240 rad would still be too little if run together with a slim 280, 1 CPU and 2 GPUs?

Also, thank you for the fan suggestions, but I don't see those ones being PWM controlled. Any hints which PWM fans would work well with radiators and
that would also come in 140 mm size?

I could of course just go with 120mm rad sizes too, but that would mean less radiator area which would be a bad beat for me.

About pumps, which PWM and which non-PWM pumps would you guys suggest for me as silence AND efficiency are important to me?
I would still prefer PWM for the pump, because then I could always set the basic pump speed from BIOS, and also have an automatic
function there too, that would speed it up if needs be. That is to say I'd prefer the BIOS control over a knob inside the case, although I
know that would also work no problem.

Also, about the noise levels, I currently run an Arctic Cooler Freezer 13 Pro on my 2500k. Running at only 1185 rpm it is still much too loud for me.
Of course my new case is going to be more quiet than the one I've got now, but can you tell me how hard it would be to significantly lower the noise level by going to this full water cooling thing?

My main reason for going water is noise levels, and also I really want to do it as a project of sorts, but it really needs to work well, and most importantly, be silent when working efficiently. So if there's anything more I should know to reach that goal, please feel free to tell me

manofchalk · Sep 10, 2013

Depends on the rads, look up their TDP capability and compare it to what the components pump out. Though I think you will definitely need more rad space, especially if you intend to get lower end fans.

IMO, PWM control for rad fans isnt important. Having accurate fan control doesn't matter when your running eight fans, and near all fan controllers don't support it anyway.
Some D5 pumps have PWM functionality, they should all roughly be the same in terms of noise and performance.

Though that Arctic Freezer is a cheap heatsink (I think), so the fan is more than likely even cheaper. A decent fan would be fine spinning at that kind of speed.

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A silent water cooling system utilizing PWM control - need advice

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