5.25 Drive bay Cooler FX-8350

[mustangkr500]

Alright, since my Zalman Z11+ case is kinda small, I think putting a 240 or a 280 waterblock would hit my exhaust fan, and putting a 120 or 140 on the exhaust would hit my top exhaust fan, so I decided I need a 5.25 bay cooler. Problem is finding one, my case is all red LED's, I can get a blue watercooler if I can change the fans out. Also I have 4 5.25 bays available so a duel 5.25 would be great. But I would like to watercool my AMD FX-8350, I can get 4.6GHz on the stock cooler with great temps (I keep it at 4.3GHz though), and if the cooler is good enough, why not buy a block for my 7950? Can you guys help me find a 5.25 Water cooling setup? I am on a pretty tight budget, but I guess I can wait if I have too. But it might be a while. Thanks for your help guys!

 

[manofchalk]

A 5.25" bay cooler?
I'm guessing from your comments just before, it has something to do with the radiator?
Far as I know, you cant get radiators that go in the 5.25" bays unless you were to mod them.

 

[mustangkr500]

A 5.25" bay cooler?
I'm guessing from your comments just before, it has something to do with the radiator?
Far as I know, you cant get radiators that go in the 5.25" bays unless you were to mod them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106183
But it has been discontinued. And well, I could probably do some cutting and welding, maybe I don't have to. I am an engineer after all xD

 

[manofchalk]

Ahh, that Thermaltake would be the exception. Otherwise you cant get radiators that will natively mount in the 5.25" bays.
And for what your after, you will need more than that (Likely a 120mm or less) in terms of radiator. For an FX-8350 and 7950, would roughly guess a 360+240mm of radiator to deal with that amount of heat.

I suggest you read through this sticky, it will explain a lot of the concepts behind water-cooling.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277130-29-read-first-watercooling-sticky

 

[mustangkr500]

How about two separate drive bay radiators?

 

[manofchalk]

Then you have about 240mm of radiator space, with one blowing hot air directly at the other, which means you wont be much better off than where you started. And even if the hot air wasn't an issue, 240mm of rad will only cover you just for the CPU. Try to add a GPU to that loop and you will find yourself with very high temperatures.

Just get a slim 240mm rad at the top of the case, and externally mount another 240/360 off the back. Something like an XSPC Raystorm RS240 kit is $145 at FrozenCPU, throw in a low restriction GPU block and a 240/360mm rad and fans and thats a total cost of ~$300.

 

[mustangkr500]

I don't think I have that much room, I think I might do some custom cutting on my drive bays since I will never use them and make my own custom radiator spot, also my front vents are clear, so if I had red LED fans to my radiator it'll look badass.
What do you think?

 

[mustangkr500]

Wait. I'll put a single radiator on the bottom of my case where I have a 140 slot, I'll just a cooler on my CPU, my 7950 Sapphire, Vapor-X stays plenty cool and is silent already.

 

[manofchalk]

That could work yes.

 

[mustangkr500]

I notice you have an i5-3570K how is it? I have a i5-2500K, how big is the performance jump? Between my FX-8350 and my i5-2500K, my Intel seemed more snappier, but if I leave my AMD clocked at 4GHz instead of letting the clocks go down to 1.4GHz, it feels even snappier, both have SSD's. And if Piledriver is a huge upgrade over Vishira with the new architecture, no doubt I'll buy a chip. My AMD multitasks like a beast. I can play BF3, while running a minecraft server, and running Ubuntu in a VMware session with 2GB of ram and and the server with 2GB ram and still play the game with the same FPS and also go surf the web and have everything fast as ever. I am not sure how many cores BF3 utilizes, I am guessing two. My minecraft server I am almost certain uses 2. And Linux uses 2-4 according to what I using it for (Love being able to change the cores it uses xD). I haven't tried using my i5 for much multitasking, but it can play two games and surf the web at the same time. My AMD machine was built because it was cheap and well I wanted to be able to game and seriously multitask. I edit GoPro videos, photoshop, game, run servers, and do all kinds of things on it. I hate to see people bashing AMD, but I mean my Intel and my AMD does everything I want it to do the way I want it to do it just fine, so I am not gonna complain.

 

[manofchalk]

Cant say from experience the difference between a 2500k and 3570k, TBH my current rig is the first rig I built. Before that I was fairly clueless to computer stuff.
But from what I'v seen of reviews, typically between a 5 and 10% performance boost over a 2500k depending on what your doing.

Vishera = Piledriver (I think, AMD codenames are a bit confusing).

BF3 is one of the few games than can leverage more than two cores, though single threaded performance is still what will dictate performance.

 

[mustangkr500]

Oh my bad, I knew that xD I was in a hurry, I meant steamroller! And I wonder if Crysis 3 can use 8 cores? The version of CryEngine Crysis 3 runs off of uses 8 cores, but I don't know if they let the game utilize that.

 

[manofchalk]

The Bulldozer modules that are used in current gen AMD chips (and are what will likely be used in Steamroller) aren't exactly cores by the traditional definition. A core is defined as processing unit with a dedicated memory cache, Bulldozer modules are two processing units tied to a single cache.
So chips like the FX-8350 aren't really 8 core chips.

Whether Crysis 3 will benefit from increased multi-threaded (each "Core" powers a thread) performance, no clue. The game hasnt been released yet so we dont know.

 

[mustangkr500]

Well AMD typically releases a new architecture, the next year, revise it, and then make a new one, then revise it the next year, so on and so fourth.

 

[mustangkr500]

And I really wish the would take the Phenom II X6 chip and shrink it down, that would be amazing. Do a overhaul on the chip, make it capable of new tech. That would be amazing.

 

[mustangkr500]

Would you tell me to buy distilled water coolent or non-conductive? I'd kinda prefer non-conductive, but if distilled is better I guess I could use it.
Like this maybe? This would be cool to have
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/14161/ex-liq-191/EK_EKoolant_Premium_Liquid_Cooling_Premix_Coolant_-_1L_-_Blood_Red.html?tl=g30c103s183#blank

 

[manofchalk]

Best off getting Distilled water, pre-mixed coolants perform no better and cost a lot more. If the coolant has dye in it, eventually it will clump together and gunge up blocks and the like.
If you want colour in the loop, do it through coloured tubing and lighting.

Also it doesn't matter if its non-conductive when it goes in, because the metals in the loop seep into the water making it conductive. Happens pretty quickly as well.

If there is any leak with your water loop, you have a problem regardless if it says non-conductive on the bottle.

EDIT: Also dont bother buying "quality" distilled water. Its exactly the same as supermarket distilled and after about a minute in the loop any difference in purity will be gone.

 

[amuffin]

External loop.

 

[mustangkr500]

Best off getting Distilled water, pre-mixed coolants perform no better and cost a lot more. If the coolant has dye in it, eventually it will clump together and gunge up blocks and the like.
If you want colour in the loop, do it through coloured tubing and lighting.

Also it doesn't matter if its non-conductive when it goes in, because the metals in the loop seep into the water making it conductive. Happens pretty quickly as well.
http://martinsliquidlab.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/waterquality07.jpg?w=614&h=621
If there is any leak with your water loop, you have a problem regardless if it says non-conductive on the bottle.

EDIT: Also dont bother buying "quality" distilled water. Its exactly the same as supermarket distilled and after about a minute in the loop any difference in purity will be gone.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=35-181-031&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=5&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Keywords=%28keywords%29&Page=1#scrollFullInfo
Is this a good cooler? Is it reliable? And I like it a lot with all the feautures, would you recommend it?

 

[manofchalk]

Are you after a custom water loop or an All-In-One?

My advice when it comes to All-In-One units, don't bother with the single rad options. Need at least a dual rad for it to be worth it over mid-range aircooling.

 

[mustangkr500]

Can I buy the all in one unit and use the waterblock and pump? And add a res in the 5.25 bay and then add a second rad, and also, would a rad without fans do anything? Because I could grab a 140x2 for the top of the case? Actually, I think I am gonna upload some pictures too

 

[rubix_1011]

If you are going through that much trouble and money, you'd be better off just doing it right to begin with and not base the entire loop off a closed loop cooler to start with.

Get a proper pump and plan your loop around that, trust me on this. You DO NOT want to use a closed loop cooler pump to power anything if you are going the route of an actual loop.

 

[manofchalk]

There have been a couple of H50 mods, but pretty much all of them didnt really have any worthwhile success.
You can use take the H220 pump/Block and use that, but there again would be no point as an equivalent custom kit (XSPC Raystorm RS240) is only a few dollars more and has a better pump and block.

The radiators can cool passively with no fans, but you would need a lot of radiator space to do so successfuly. So unless your willing to buy 10 radiators to cool the CPU, you need fans.

 

[mustangkr500]

That thing is MASSIVE. I don't have room for that, it would hit my Ram.

 

[mustangkr500]

http://s1105.beta.photobucket.com/user/mustangkr500/library/Computer
There are pictures of my computer, sorry for the blurry external photo it's old. And I didn't know my camera was so good it could catch my fans spinning and make them looked turned off xD Also didn't know there was that much dust.