Help planning CPU+GPU water cooler

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1234Shawn

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I am planning my first water cooler system and need a bit of help determining a few things. If someone would be kind enough to share their experience, I would appreciate it.

I want to cool my 3570k and 7970 saphire vaper x oc 3gb. I am hoping to stay around $400 for everything, although I have some wiggle room if I need it. Following this Guide I calculated my TDP as 368 and plan on OCing the GCU and CPU in the future, which I understand will increase this number. My ambient air is around 26-27'C

I was looking at this for my GPU
And this for my CPU

It seems my next step should be to determine if I do a single or dual loop and pick a pump, radiator, and fans? This is where I get lost on the guide I linked above. I filled out the excel sheet but the numbers do not mean much to me. For the sake of space I would like to have a single radiator mounted on the top of my case, assuming I have the option.
 
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rubix_1011
For a lower delta, you'd go with 3x120 vs higher delta with 2x120 radiator space.

1.5 gpm is a very good flow rate, but you'll need to account for the component restriction and the pump(s) chosen so that you actually have a working loop flow rate; not just an unrestricted pump flow rate. 1.0gpm is kind of the de-facto standard and takes into account most scenarios without sacrificing cost and without sacrificing performance.

The spreadsheet already accounts for about 16 different radiators that I took testing results from around the web and averaged them into a single, master set of data (you can see some of it in the sticky in the radiator section as a table of result data). So, there are several 40-60mm thick rads averaged in with...
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rubix_1011

rubix_1011

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The numbers in the sheet should tell you how large of a radiator you will need, either in 120mm or 140mm size.

You'll want to round up or down accordingly, if the value is a decimal. I guess I can make the chart auto-round the results.
 
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1234Shawn

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Rubrix_1011,

Thank you for your reply. I think I better understand the information on the sheet.Could you please let me know if my statemeny below is correct. If I can explain new information, I know I understand it.

With my TDP of 368, if I want to keep the temperature of my water within 10'c of the ambient air, then I would need to use a total of 2.21, 120mm radiators with a pump that pushes 1.5gpm. Since, 2.2 is not a whole number, I would need to choose either 2 or 3 120mm radatiors. 2 radatiors would have a lower delta t and 3 would have a lower delta t.

If I understand that part correctly, my next question would be how do I take into account thickness of radatiors/fpi. Also, how do I take into account the volume of air fans push (I forget the technicle term for that).
 
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rubix_1011

rubix_1011

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For a lower delta, you'd go with 3x120 vs higher delta with 2x120 radiator space.

1.5 gpm is a very good flow rate, but you'll need to account for the component restriction and the pump(s) chosen so that you actually have a working loop flow rate; not just an unrestricted pump flow rate. 1.0gpm is kind of the de-facto standard and takes into account most scenarios without sacrificing cost and without sacrificing performance.

The spreadsheet already accounts for about 16 different radiators that I took testing results from around the web and averaged them into a single, master set of data (you can see some of it in the sticky in the radiator section as a table of result data). So, there are several 40-60mm thick rads averaged in with 30-35mm thick rads for an overall size and performance ratio. This is to give anyone and everyone the ability to use the same calculation spreadsheet to estimate for just about any radiator size in 120mm or 140mm format.
 
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1234Shawn

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Rubix_1011,

Thanks for your help and making the template. Is there alot of variance between 30-60mm radiator thickness? Ive read it depends alot on the fans and how much noise is acceptable for the user. Personally I would like to go as quiet as I can, which I understand will require more radiator space. My case can accomodate 2x140mm and 1x280 radiators without any modding. I plan to research OCing after I get the watercooler going. Would adding 20% to my stock TDP be good ballpark estimate to account for the extra heat generated when OCing a gpu and cpu? Or should I estimate higher?
 
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rubix_1011

rubix_1011

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If you know what your stock and overclocked vcore and speeds might be (or estimates based from Googling what others have done) you can simply drop those into the spreadsheet and it will churn out the result and autosum it for you with everything accounted for. Quiet usually would be more achievable with 140mm fans due to lower RPM, but it also depends on FPI of the radiators. Fins/folds per inch determines how 'dense' the radiator fin spacing is. Likewise, some radiators have more or fewer channels that run the length of the rad...this theoretically determines the volume of flow through the radiator, but not all channels are the same size, so this is where charts and cooling curves (or this spreadsheet) does a lot of that work for you. It takes the data represented by testing and uses the cooling potential under specific scenarios to give you the net cooling result, rather than trying to figure out FPI or how many channels a rad is built with.

When it comes to radiators, more volume is typically going to net you a better delta than smaller volume. Now, that still is based on what fans will be used and at what speeds. Example - in theory, you can achieve the same delta by varying any of the following items in different configurations - radiator total volume/size, flow rates and airflow volume due to fan differences. Higher airflow volume or flow rate can make up for lesser radiator volume, if done correctly, and vice-versa. Just think of watercooling delta as a math equation; if you make a change of a variable on one side of the equation, you have to adjust the other variables accordingly.

There are a couple of ways to compare watercooling to cars and engine power:

Displacement - a large displacement engine develops more power at lower RPM due to the ability to process the flow of air and combustion in large volumes. This would be the equivalent of having a slower pump, possibly slower fans and a lot of radiator space to achieve cooling performance.

Forced induction - the 'turbo 4-cylinder' engine is small and compact and relies on high RPM and flow to achieve power. Equivalent of having high RPM and powerful fans on smaller radiators and having a higher flow pump (or dual pumps) to increase flow rate.
 
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1234Shawn

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Rubix_1011,

I googled what a few other people have done with the 3570k for OCing, and imputed 4500MHz and vCORE 1.3 as an estimate. It did not change my TPD as much as I expected. Granted I know nothing about OCing...yet (I plan to learn after setting up the watercooler). I also have a 7970 GPU which is accounted for as 300 TDP, on the template (non-OCed). Is there a way to estimate how much TDP it will have when OCed? I think I may have found an error with the template, or maybe I downloaded a bad copy? The total radiator area for Delta T 5 and 10 under the 140mm format have the same numbers. Below is a link

https://www.dropbox.com/s/33awqsqyaql20sd/radiators.xlsx?dl=0

 
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