Water Cooling n00b seeks help & guidance!

[Colesy50]

I've been posting this all over these forums and only just realised I was doing it in the wrong place! (sorry to those who have seen this before in that case!)
I'm about to make the step up to water-cooling as i'm upgrading my entire system. Its going to look like this:

Jeantech Phong case (2x 120mm fans, 1 front & 1 back)
Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi (skt.939) M/b
AMD Athlon64 3200+ skt.939 winchester
either 2x 6600GT's or 2x 6800's (if i sell my guitar!)
3x HDD (1 = windows, 1 = games/programs, 1 = media) [yes i do need all 3!]
1Gb Corsair PC3200 RAM
Tagan 480W PSU
NEC DVD+/- RW optical drive

so ill be running SLi in some form or another!
i only need to cool the CPU, northbridge and the 2 graphics cards
i'm going mainly for complete silence but the cooling factor will help this beast run smoothly!
i want to fit the reservoir in the 5 1/2" bays (i have 3 spare!) as theres a blatant abundance of space in there.
i need advice on what kit/make/parts i need to buy. i assume all im going to have reservoir-wise is a 120mm one on the back fan (no room anywhere else) and also finding a place for the pump to live will be tricky!
i saw the Waterchill kits, but the reservoir wont fit in the 5 1/2" bays (i assume) so can i mix-and-match parts??

[Firelord]

If you want to cool a CPU and 2 GPUs then your gonna need a pretty hefty rad to cool it all down!

You would need something like:

DangerDen TDX or PolarFlo block
2 x New DangerDen Maze4 GPY blocks (with double DD etched in top and has a top that fits all blocks inc 6x00 series)
Thermochill 120.2 rad minimum
Res of choice (ie BayRes or DangerDen res)
Ehiem 1250, DangerDen 12v DD12v or 2 C Systems CPS750 pumps.
2 decent fans ie YS Tech 120mm 120CFM
Sunbeam Rheostat fan controller


Watercooling the northbridge is a waste of time and you'd be better to get a microcool northpole or thermalright NB-1

a single 120mm rad will not give you better temps than air. If you must you could fit 2 120.1 rads on each fan.

[Colesy50]

cheers for the reply. ive just this minute got the case (delivery guy woke me up!) so if theres a few tyos my eyes dont work properly yet!

theres no room for a radiator on the front 120mm fan as its tucked away between the front of the chassis and the HDD bays.

depending how much room the 5 1/2" reservoir bay takes up, i think i might be able to get another 120mm fan/radiator on the top of the case - to go with the other single one at the back (no room to fit a double on the back)

it'll mean some very careful planning but i think havin the tubes comin out of the cp slightly could look pretty swish!

if i just buy a Waterchill kit (with 1x 120mm fan & reservoir) is there a way i could mount the pump directly onto the back of an Aqua-Bay? i really like the looks of the aquabay and will fit in perfectly with the rest of the mods i plan on doing!

one last thing please - can you divulge a bit more into the 'northbridge' comment as that one flew right over my head!

cheers

[Firelord]

Cooling the northbridge is just a waste of time, you won't benefit from watercooling it and a decent heatsink fan would do a better job as it wouldn't complicate the plumbing.

I don't wc my NB I just run a TR NB-1 on it with a 10v fan but I watercool my gfx and phase change my CPU.

I would get a decent kit to start with and 1/2" tubing does get better flow rates

[Colesy50]

cheers for the help, think im gonna buy the waterchill kit (leave the NB block out - maybe sell it) and the AquaTube and AquaBay for the reservoir. now i have the fun job of waiting for my new parts, usin their boxes to sell my old parts - then seeing how much money i have left to spend on graphics cards!

ta

[pdf27]

DangerDen TDX or PolarFlo block
2 x New DangerDen Maze4 GPY blocks (with double DD etched in top and has a top that fits all blocks inc 6x00 series)
Thermochill 120.2 rad minimum
Res of choice (ie BayRes or DangerDen res)
Ehiem 1250, DangerDen 12v DD12v or 2 C Systems CPS750 pumps.
2 decent fans ie YS Tech 120mm 120CFM
Sunbeam Rheostat fan controller


1)TDX will outperform the PolarFlo block by a considerable margin, but the PolarFlo has a higher bling factor. Your choice.
2) Black Ice radiators are also available in the UK and are somewhat cheaper, if you know where to look. If you're going for silence the Black Ice Pro is more suitable than the Thermochill as it uses a thinner core, and so you can get away with quieter fans.
3) Concur.
4) Be warned about the C-systems pumps: quite a few of them are starting to show up with major corrosion problems, and this looks like it may well be a generic problem.
5) Fans will depend a lot on what your objective is - performance or silence. Performance just get the biggest 120x38mm fan you can find, while silence is rather harder. Either some of the Sunon 240v AC fans if you're feeling brave or the Nexus Real Silent ones will work well, and most others will be fairly quiet undervolted. Watercooling isn't a magic bullet for silence though - several pumps are loud enough by themselves to prevent a system from being classified as truly silent.

[Colesy50]

cool, cheers for the advice.

ive decided to put w/c my system on the back-burner for now. going to get my system all upgraded and put together - then see what it runs like. that way i figure i can know exactly what i need from a watercooling system, and also how much room i have to play with.

thanks for the info everyone, youre a credit to...erm...those people who help other people...you know...'helpers'

:D

[Firelord]

Black Ice rads don't perform to anywhere near the standard of the thermochill rad. They are the best on the market bar none for predesigned watercooling rads.

[daniel_owen_uk]

The nv68 is the mother of all blocks for those 6800's trust me :)

[daniel_owen_uk]

Black Ice rads don't perform to anywhere near the standard of the thermochill rad. They are the best on the market bar none for predesigned watercooling rads.

Have to disagree m8, in my experience there isn't that much between them.

And the bix definitely has the edge over any thermochill of the same fan size.

[pdf27]

There is performance data for the BIXes (at least, I think it's the Xes) done by Bill Adams (currently VP of Swiftech) on IIRC Overclockers.com, but that's about it - there is as far as I'm aware no other test data, and BillA's testing was really about comparing fans not radiators. There are some good threads on radiator testing over at ProCooling, which go a long way to explain exactly why nobody else has really done any of it yet.
Best guess from looking at BillA's data and the 120.1 sitting in my desk drawer is that the optimum choice of radiator will vary with case airflow, fans used and water/air delta T - there seems to be not a great deal in it. Accoustically the BIP is a winner, but only because it is thinner so you can undervolt the fans more for a given airflow/heat transfer.

[Firelord]

The TCs have a dense core and will remove more heat the BIX range.

They were designed for high performance application and for performance, they get better results in 99% of applications.

You look at most online watercooling specialists and they stock ThermoChill rads because they provide best performance.

Even dangerden stock the TC as a choice rad.

Its a british built rad and is built by one of the online overclocking stores ;)

[pdf27]

For the same airflow, yes. What I haven't seen is proper test data (not the standard review site rubbish) to indicate that with real world fans they produce improved performance. Heat transfer will scale directly with surface area for a fixed flow rate, but presure head loss will not. Since fan pressure head/flow rate curves are usually non-linear (often very non-linear).
Since most fan curves I've seen tend to be very flat (i.e. major changes in flow rate for small changes in static pressure), I don't feel confident that it is possible just to look at a rad and say that it is better because...

There are some design features on the 120.x series that I like (bleed nut for instance), but none of them are clearly performance issues. The only design feature that would improve performance indisputably is a single-pass radiator (barbs at opposite ends, water passing straight through), and there are none of those on the market right now.