Help with Liquid Cooling Brands

Needed some advice on Liquid cooling...
1. 1/2 tubing, 3/8 tubing or 1/4* tubing (which one would you recomend and why?) Also what brand of tubing would you recomend
2.Good brand of non conductive Coolant
3. how many L/G per hour on the pump

Thanks!

EDIT: sry ment to put 1/4 tubing

What do you plan to cool and do you plan to OC?

1. I personally prefer 7/16" ID MasterKleer. MasterKleer is not quite as flexible as Tygon, but is half the cost. About the same flow as 1/2" ID but givesa tighter fit over barbs. Takes up visibly less room than 1/2". I would avoid anything from local home supply stores. It'susually very stiff and hard to work with. I'm assuming the barbs are 1/2 "

2. Non-conductive fluid is a waste of money,IMO. It may be non-conductive out of the bottle, but will pick up particulates and ions while in the loop and thus become conductive. It's better to just plan for no leaks.

I personally like either Swiftech Hydrx, Pentosin plus PT Nuke, or Primochill Liquid Utopia - each mixed with DISTILLED water.


3. L/G per hour can be a misleading number (can be manipulated). Better to go by Head measured in feet or meters (the higher the better). That said, unless you have a lot of money, the real choice is between the MCP355 (DDC 3.2 with a Petra's or XSPC top) or the MCP655 (Laing D5). No need to look at any of the others. If you've got money, then the Iwaki RD-30 is probably the top pump.

2. I agree with Tony on this one. It is a waste of $. Just use 50% ethelyne glycol and water(NOT regular tap water!).

3. Agree with Tony on this again.

True. But the additives I listed are very cheap insurance- provide anti-corrosive, pump lube, and boicide. Besides - the UV glow is cool

Look, you can cheap it out and get as inexpensive materials as you can or you can spend what amounts to just a few dollars more for some piece of mind.

1) IF you want ideal tubing for a 1/2 ID cooling loop than do a little shopping for some 1/2 ID 11/16 OD Tygon tubing. I feel that the best place for it is here:

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/tubing.html

2) Since you asked about non-conductive coolants - take a look at PC-ICE. It is a little pricey (around $19 for 32oz) but I have been using it exclusively for over 6 years in my various cooling loops (both straight liquid cooling AND peltier cooling) and it functions as advertised. I have had a leak or two and spilled it on active parts and nothing happened. Another benefit of PC-ICE is that it acts as a lubricant for your pump and has anti-biological properties to retard algae buildup. I wouldn't touch Fluid-XP as it has been known to create buildup.

Here's a review by Gruntville: http://gruntville.com/reviews/wc/vm_pcice/index.php

3) You are going to hear about GPH or LPH and you will also hear about head pressure but the fact of it is that if you aren't going to be a hard core water cooler (I mean watercooling, say, more than 3 components - HDDs, NB, Crossfire video, CPU, mosfets) and just want to cool, perhaps a CPU and a single GPU than I wouldn't concern myself with head pressure too much because the size of your cooling loop will never be in a situation where head pressure will matter. Rubix does make a point of mentioning the Hydor and Eheim pumps AND they are some powerful ones but they are AC. The Swiftech pumps are 12v and will use a plug off of your PSU. Creating a 1/2 ID cooling loop will give you more forgiveness with the additional bends and turn as you add to the loop in the future.

Prepping yourself for expansion would be wise and alot of what you will end up doing is going to be predicated on your O'clocking philosphy (as it develops).

For a 3/8 loop the ideal pump is going to be the MCP355 (if you go Swiftech) as it is a native 3/8 pump (although you can get a 1/2 fixture to change it). Be aware, though, if silence is also important - the MCP 355 is audible.

for a 1/2 ID loop the MCP655/D5 Laing (not the "B" version) is the most popular for s number of reason - good GPH, good head pressure and it is dead silent.

Just all food for thought.....