water cooling idea for max OC

Brokenparts

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What would be the best for water cooling CPU + VC + MEM? And possibly more.

My idea was small radiator to CPU to small radiator to VC to small radiator to MEM back to first small radiator. The reason for this is so the water is continually cooled, rather then being dumped on the MEM after the CPU and VC has heated it. I realize that this system would be insanely complex to rig up.

The other idea I had was to use a large radiator with a super fast 500-L/H pump. This way the water is flowing so fast that it should be still fairly cool by the time it reaches the MEM.

I also have a crazy idea for using flexible copper tubing with rigged heatseeks on it.

Opinions, ideas?
 

tool_462

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I have seen the heatsinks on the tubing idea before. The modders log showed that it didnt work as well as he had hoped. Even with the extra surface area, it still wasnt enough to help at all. Though I still think it is a legitimate idea that could be excellent if executed with some planning and creativity.

For the water loop I would personall go: Res, pump, CPU block, single 120mm rad, VGA block, mem (if you really want to liquid cool the memory), Dual 120mm rad, back to res.
 

bigsby

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First off, I must say that water cooling your ram is just overkill, ram doesn't give off much heat. Water cooling your northbridge can also be called overkill as well, depending on who you are. Some people say that cooling your nb is quite alright, and almost a neccesity, and some people say it's just stupid, I'm the second guy. If you just get a good nb cooler, then you're fine, especially if you've got an AMD, where the northbridge doesn't get smokey hot.

Now as for your small radiator thing, It could be a good idea if you could pull it off without it being a nightmare in a case. I have an antec P180B case, and I found that it is possible to put a radiator in the bottom of the case, where the bottom drive cage is, if you take it out. Right there, there is a large fan and that bottom part is almost completely blocked off from the rest of the case, there are holes for putting your cables through which you can close off almost completely so you get near perfect isolation. If you had the water going from the cpu, to a cooler down there, and then back up to the vga and then down to another cooler behind the cpu cooler, then that could work, although it would make your computer a lot heavier and all that jazz. I have no idea if it would actually cool your computer that much more than just having one large radiator, but it could work.

As for the super fast pump, don't quote me on this, but I remember something about if your pump has too high a flow rate, the water wont take as much heat from the cpu and vga, as well as it would be going through the radiator so quickly that it couldn't get the heat out fast enough. I may be wrong but I may be right as well.

As for the flexible copper tubing, that wouldn't work very well. Not just the fact that copper doesn't like to bend very well, so you'd have to pre bend everything and then it'd all be stiff, but it wouldn't do much in the way of getting heat out of the system, actually being worse, since it lets whatever bit of heat off right in your computer, instead of going through your rad which hopefully is not in your case or pointing out of your case.

Anyhoo, that's all I have to say right now. laters
 

1Tanker

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As for the super fast pump, don't quote me on this, but I remember something about if your pump has too high a flow rate, the water wont take as much heat from the cpu and vga, as well as it would be going through the radiator so quickly that it couldn't get the heat out fast enough. I may be wrong but I may be right as well.
Yes, this is true. If you use multiple rads, it'll add more resistance, and you're going to need a more powerful pump to circulate the water...and more powerful pumps can dissipate more heat into the coolant. :wink:
 

monkey_man

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He told you not to quote him, but there could be truth to that. My understanding is though it picks up less heat and dropes off less, just like scalling, resulting in the same preformance. Several radiators in paralell would counter that(I think).
 

raven_87

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One Rad (at least having dual 120mm fans). Split your line just after the pump, then connect them just before the rad. Its rather effective and worked very well with my setup.

Pump's dont put out enough to worry any sane person....

A little AS5 and the fan speed increased on the chipset is all that needs.
If you want to be picky about it...you can buy aftermarket. Or if your feeling adventorous you can mod a solution. I had a vantec iceberg on my Sapphire SB480....took a little doing though :wink:

Want to be a little more effective in your loop? Dont run a Res....its not hard, just requires a little more time to bleed air out of the lines.
 

Brokenparts

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"Via Aqua 2600 - 2520 litres/hour"

OMG... are you serious? I'd be worried about the tubing flying off with that much flow. I would love to see pics of it.
 

sirheck

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using multiple small radiators would restrict flow
thus need a more powerful pump not a fast one
the speed at which the water flows has no impact on cooling
 

raven_87

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Scottchen told me to do that as well, but then how am I suppose to put in a pack fo ice? :lol: Guess I'm still stuck with a resv.


I tried the ice thing; wasnt as effective as I liked, plus unless you've frozen distilled water, it would aid in corrosion.

Want a little longer lasting cooling result? Run a meaner coolant/water combination. I know the stuff I recieved from DD recommended a 90%water 10% solution mixture. I run around a 70/30 right now, and it drops my overall temps maybe 2-3C when opposed to running a leaner mixture and ice.

The ice effect MIGHT last you half hour....great for finding the max possible OC and then benchmarking, but nothing to consider in a rig thats going to last.

Just make sure those hose clamps are tight around your tube connections, you can still draw air without leaking liquid. So dont think just because your not leaking doesnt mean your air tight.
 

SuperFly03

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I have plenty of screw-tight metal clamps at my disposal and Via Aqua 2600 is less powerful than Hydor L45 others are using.

It's a combination of max flow and head height that equates to overall flow in a loop not just rated max flow of the pump alone.

I was planning to use a Hydor L45 and split it coming off the pump into 2 seperate loops, including seperate radiators, and then recombining before it enters the back end of the pump. Might as well given the raw power of the pump.

Wusy, are you planning to use the Storem Extreme Rev 2 from switchtech, its one of the only resitence based blocks I know of? (not that I know all of them at all)
 

phreejak

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As far as a setup, having rads between the waterblocks is a very effective means of ensuring that cooler water reaches each hotspot. If you have a highflow pump it moves the heated liquid out faster. Waterblocks, generally, have some form of "fin" or "raised surface" which creates a larger surface area for the heat to get to so adequate pressure ensures adequate heat removal. I agre with bigsby that watercooling ram is not needed. Ramblocks use 1/4 ID tubing and that is highly restrictive. Plus, even overclocked, the heatspreaders on ramsticks is sufficient. I'nm a believer in 1/2 ID tubing because it is less restrictive and allows you to use high pressure pumps.

In your case, coling the northbridge is not as necessary as it would be if you had an intel chip. The northbridge controls memory functions (less with AMD systems as they have an ondie memory controller on their chip), coordinates with the PCIe and AGP lanes and bridges the gap between the CPU and system memory (ram). So, while it wouldn't hurt to cool it, that addition is really just a luxury. You could just set up your cooling loop with the CPU and GPU in mind - simple, effective and, of course, cheaper.

Flexible copper tubing? Your cooling loop would be one big giant rad. Also, if you don't use proper cooling liquid you'd experience all kinds of eventual degredation of your loop. Rads are made of aluminum and that doesn't react well with copper - it's like a big giant battery.

1/2 ID tygon tubing, waterblocks for the CPU and GPU, one (or two) rads depending on your cases ability to handle them and a good pump (MCP655 - quiet, strong, small footprintand uses a standard 4-pin molex connector) is more than enough to allow you to overclock.

Here's my cooling system:

1/2 ID inch tygon tubing (11/16 OD R3603)
Swiftech MCP655 Pump
Danger Den Koolsah GPU Waterblock
Voltage Regulator waterblock for 7900 GTX
Maze 4 Northbridge Waterblock
Custom Drivebay Reservoir
Swiftech Peltier 226watt waterblock
Bay drive voltage adjuster for CPU Peltier Waterblock
(2) dual 120mm rads (mounted externally) - each has 4 120mm fans in a "push-pull" configuration
Meanwell 600 SE12 Secondary PSU (for peltier)


Watercooling loop:

Reservoir - Pump - CPU waterblock (peltier) - 1st external dual 120mm rad - GPU waterblock - NB waterblock - 2nd external dual 120mm rad - back to reservoir
 

SuperFly03

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I've been wondering how the peltiers work, not the physics of it, but rather how do you power it and attach it to the card? I've wanted to do that for a long time as a step between Vapochill and water.
 

SuperFly03

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I assume you mean you can't find it in NZ. I'll pm you with an idea.

As for peltier:

Thats what I was thinking, extra PSU wise but I wasn't sure. It does sound like alot of extra effort and maybe I will one day when I have the time to set aside a full week to do it correctly, because I can't just imagine screwing a GPU or CPU up real fast if it wasn't done correctly. Thanks for the clarification.
 

phreejak

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A peltier waterblock is put on almost like a normal waterblock, there isn't much difference. The bare wire leads fromt he TEC are attached to a secondary PSU. I use an additional PSU, a Meanwell 600 SE12, that powers the TEC on my CPU. My CPU Tec is 226 watts but I bought a 600 SE12 because I have an additional GPU 226watt TEC that I can run. The TECs take a bit more effort to set up than a normal waterblock (and are a bit mor expensive) but the performance is excellent. At idle or under load my temp stays at 0 celsius. The warmest I've seen my CPU get when I overclocked it was 2 celsius. I think peltier cooling is much more practical than phase change - not as bulky and is noiseless. When I have my GPU TEC on my videocard I used to reach temps as far down as -19 celsius at idle and -17 load. However, adding the second TEC added alot of heat for my rads to remove and my computer was like an extra space heater so I took it out. It is a nice GPU tec and one of the most powerful I've seen around - a custom done Viper Venom III.

Basically, you end up cooling the TEC like you did the CPU and the CPU is cooled by the TEC to a degree much greater than any watercooling could.
 

SuperFly03

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Since you've got a FSP Group Epsilon 600W and have sold your 2nd 7900GTX I would imaging you've got an unused 12V rail right?
Assuming it's 18A, 12x18=216W, that the maximum wattage of the peltier(TEC) you can use on that spare rail alone.

Each of the 4 12v Rails is 15a which puts it at 180watts, which I assume is insufficient to power a 200w ish peltier?

I may have 2 unsued rails, I will have to look once I get everything set back up.
 

phreejak

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It's never a good idea to use your computers PSU to power a TEC. Besides the wattage energy requirements they draw on more amps than most videocards (for the higher wattage peltiers 180 watts and above in most cases). That's why an independent secondary PSU like a Meanwell 300 SE12 is recommended (hooked up to a power relay which is connected to the computers PSU)
 

SuperFly03

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Yeah that is the main draw back for me, the need to house an extra PSU somewhere in the case because everything has to be in one case to be portable. I am in college so I have to move back home once or twice more before I get out of grad school, so a "portable" PC is necessary because I am damn sure not going to use a 600 Mhz p3 (my moms) to game lol.

I am shooting for a big ass lian li case (24x24x8 or so) and hoping that will house everything I need. Everyone says look at the P180 and I did instore the other day, its freakishly small, like mini me on austin powers. I need a case more like fat bastard that isn't the giant cube one lol.

Oh well, thanks for the help.
 

SuperFly03

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Thats a decent size case, of course much bigger than my piss poor left over koolance case that I use now. I don't acctually have to order it till around christmas time so that gives me a good 3-4 months to find the right case ... hopefully one cheaper then the Lian Li I have picked out now. Then again its 24.3"x24.6"x8.4" (not sure on width, but its standard), now thats freaking huge :)

I'll keep looking, thanks for the input.
 

phreejak

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the problem with using something like that is that TECs usually use bare wire leads and you've have to mod the TEC or the Booster somehow. You can get the recommended Meanwell PSU for around the same price now if you do some research.
 

phreejak

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Just make sure that your TEC is 12v and not of the 24v varity if you want to take a chance and power it that way. The FSP Booster is a 12v PSU.

Another thing - There is always some headroom in TECs and Meanwell PSUs. That is, A 12v TEC can actually go up to around 15.4 or so. The same for the Meanwell. That means, if you have a good cooling loop you can increase the cooling capacity for the TEC on your CPU, which is something you can't do with that FSP Booster since it come preset at 12 volts. Meanwell PSUs allow you to increase the voltage.
 

SuperFly03

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the problem with using something like that is that TECs usually use bare wire leads and you've have to mod the TEC or the Booster somehow.
It's bare wire shoving into the 6pin PCIe power plug. :roll:

Just have to make sure your plugging it into the right part of the 6 pin, we don't want to reverse the polarity and blow my rig up .... although that may be cool.
 

clue69less

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Just make sure that your TEC is 12v and not of the 24v varity if you want to take a chance and power it that way. The FSP Booster is a 12v PSU.

Another thing - There is always some headroom in TECs and Meanwell PSUs. That is, A 12v TEC can actually go up to around 15.4 or so. The same for the Meanwell. That means, if you have a good cooling loop you can increase the cooling capacity for the TEC on your CPU, which is something you can't do with that FSP Booster since it come preset at 12 volts. Meanwell PSUs allow you to increase the voltage.

I do applaud your diligence... It sounds to me like you have more than enough TEC + water cooling experience to keep your rig alive long term. Many people are unwilling to do the maintenance required to keep a rig like yours alive. My intro to water cooling and TECs involved developing a temperature-controlled reaction chamber. It was kind of like a snowball on a hillside and over the course of about 15 years, it grew to be a massive, maintenance-intensive beast. I was very happy the day I got to give it away to an unsuspecting tech... Regarding operating TECs at beyond 12V, some units put out some serious heat at increased operating voltage. You might try to get an efficiency vs. op voltage plot because all are not equal. TECs are pretty neat devices but I dispise their inefficiency.
 

SuperFly03

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My problem will be mounting the TEC. I want to slap a 226w Peltier on a core 2 duo and cool it with a Swiftech Extreme REv 2. block and a MCP655 pump and have all that pass through a 120mm rad with a 65CFM fan on it. But I have no idea how to mount a TEC. wusy mentioned some foam insulation, which i understand, but the mechanics of it are something I have yet to figure out.

Got a link to a site abotu setting up Peltiers? I'll be doing my own search but help is appreciated.