Water cooling loop order?

[humanage]

I just ordered a new pump, and I'm going to drain my system. I need to figure out a loop order. I have a radiator that will be mounted at the top of my NZXT Phantom case, with the ports facing the rear of the case. Would it be okay to put my pump on top of my DVD drive in my higher drive bays? I have a res/pump combo that is currently there. My order now is pump/res-radiator-CPU-pump/res. It was my first time setting up water cooling, and I didn't know that the warm water would be sitting in the reservoir. I'm going to put in a t-line. This is the picture of my current setup: http://img220.imageshack.us/f/pumpres.png/
And another: http://img215.imageshack.us/i/02212011128.jpg/
I'm thinking of putting the MCP655 pump where my pump/res is now, and cutting a place in the cpu to res tube for the t-line.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Fast answer cause I work nights and should be asleep,

yes pump fine on top of drive (as long as no leaks ofc)
Recommended order>
Pump-cpu block-rad-res,
the reason you have warm water in your loop/res is because your orders the wrong way round, you want the pump straight to the cpu block for two reasons, one, the waters coolest at that point in the loop and two,
more pressure is achieved the closer the block is in the loop to the pump, this helps carry the heat away from the chip faster.
try switching the loop round to the correct way and re-evaluate your temps, if you feel the need for more cooling, you could maybe mount another two fans on the rad for a push/pull configuration, not sure on your ram clearances though.
Moto

 

[rubix_1011]

Loop order does not impact temps at all.

Loop order only matters for a few things:

- amount of tubing used; directly impacts pump head pressure
- loop order doesn't cause your pump to draw air; hence why most suggest reservoir -> pump order
- aesthetics, ease of routing, avoiding kinks

Your water temp will only vary between 5-8C at any single point in your loop at any time. The laws of thermodynamics only allow the water to cool to a specific degree based on total volume of water, rate of water flow, surface area of radiator and surface areas to dissipate heat, air flow to remove dissipated heat and actual coolant make-up. There have been MANY scientific breakdowns on loop order and temps, primarily done by Martin and Skinnee; both Gods in the watercooling test/review world.

Add: To reference my arguments above -->

Loop Order Myth
Spoiler:

Conclusion
There's no change in flowrate and basically no change in CPU temps. The rad-before-block config performs slightly better, but the difference is insignificant (even with a lot of heatdump from the pumps). I think this myth is busted. Thanks for reading

Tubing Size/Performance Comparison

Coolant Performance roundup test

For fun:
Single loop vs. Dual loop comparison

Reader's Digest for Dual/Single:

What we see above is that even under extreme use, the dual loop has all but lost its performance advantage against the single loop. Incidentally, the same type of trend could have also been obtained by adding a second CPU in the loop instead of removing a GPU.

Conclusions:

Under extreme performance scenarios, and from a pure performance standpoint, dual loops versus single loop are neither better nor worse, under the strict condition that the load ratios are evenly balanced.
Under the most commonly encountered loads though, single loops do win.

 

[humanage]

Thanks guys!

 

[humanage]

Best answer selected by humanage.