Just wondering

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Seeing the rise in popularity of AIO coolers, especially now for GPUs, I'm wondering again how much rad space is serviceable. I'm seeing now manufacturers are putting 120mm AIO coolers on their GPUs.Is it safe to say that a 290x at reference or slightly higher clocks would be cooled within an acceptable range with 120mm or rad space?

Reason I'm asking is I'm about redo my loop. I currently have a custom loop cooling only a X5650 @ 3.7Ghz with a 120mm rad in my NZXT Phantom. I recently acquired an 290x that I am going to add along with another 240mm rad. I don't see anything beyond the factory overclock being necessary for gaming at 1080p atm, so I'm wondering if I could maintain decent temps with just the 240mm rad.

I read conflicting suggestions. Some say 120mm per component, which tells me 240mm is enough. Others will tell say 120mm + 240mm is not enough.

Thoughts?
 
So the general rule of thumb is 150W of heat dissipation per 120mm^2 of radiator. Keep in mind this is extremely generic and you can probably get away with 400W of heat per 120mm^2 and still be within specs if you really wanted to. 150W per is just a good round number to tell most people so they end up with a pretty solid performing system. It all depends what your goals are with the system. The more radiator surface area you have, the better your cooling will be, which in turn means you can use slower and quieter fans.

You will be able to cool all of that within spec with a single 240 if you want to. However, if you have the other 120, and you have space in the case for it, why not use it and get better performance?
 
More radiator space typically gives you faster heat dissipation which will yield a more stable loop. That being said, a single 240mm radiator should be sufficient for both the CPU and GPU. But if you are going to doing some heavy overclocking it may help to either do separate loops, or add another radiator to help deal with heat spikes more efficiently.
 
wolfofsin said:
Seeing the rise in popularity of AIO coolers, especially now for GPUs, I'm wondering again how much rad space is serviceable. I'm seeing now manufacturers are putting 120mm AIO coolers on their GPUs.Is it safe to say that a 290x at reference or slightly higher clocks would be cooled within an acceptable range with 120mm or rad space?

Reason I'm asking is I'm about redo my loop. I currently have a custom loop cooling only a X5650 @ 3.7Ghz with a 120mm rad in my NZXT Phantom. I recently acquired an 290x that I am going to add along with another 240mm rad. I don't see anything beyond the factory overclock being necessary for gaming at 1080p atm, so I'm wondering if I could maintain decent temps with just the 240mm rad.

I read conflicting suggestions. Some say 120mm per component, which tells me 240mm is enough. Others will tell say 120mm + 240mm is not enough.

Thoughts?
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All of the 120mm this or 120mm plus x, y, or z is a bit of guesswork to be honest. What you need is the heat output of the card in question. Once you have that, then you look at available specifications of radiators or AIOs that can dissipate the heat output of the card efficiently (preferably with the fans turned down for lower noise).

I haven't used an AMD card since the ATI 9800 so I'm not really up on their stats. But I believe the 290x is a 300-400W card if I have recalled what I have previously read accurately. Maybe someone else here can comment and verify the heat output of a 290x for you.

Edit: As far as your loop goes. You already have the x5650 being cooled with water. So you need to add the heat output of that CPU with the heat output of acquired 290x to determine how much rad is needed. Obviously, there will also be additional extra heat if you intend to overclock, live in a hot [summer] climate or typically run your components at high load.
 
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cozumel said:
...I believe the 290x is a 300-400W card if I have recalled what I have previously read accurately.
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Starrbuck said:
But the 295x, which is, of course, two 290x's, only has a 120mm rad and fan..
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AMD doesn’t list the power consumption of the 290X in any of their documentation or specifications, and after asking them directly we’re only being told that the “average gaming scenario power” is 250W. We’ll dive into this more when we do a breakdown of the changes to PowerTune on 290X, but in short AMD is likely underreporting the 290X’s power consumption. Based on our test results we’re seeing 290X draw more power than any other “250W” card in our collection, and in reality the TDP of the card is almost certainly closer to 300W. There are limits to how long the card can sustain that level of power draw due to cooling requirements, but given sufficient cooling the power limit of the card appears to be around 300W, and for the moment we’re labeling it as such.
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Source: AnandTech - The AMD Radeon R9 290X Review

I haven't read the whole thing. I only 'skimmed and scanned'. But it appears from later on in the review that the card sometimes goes over 350W, that is, unless I took it out of context as I didn't actually read it properly (only skimmed/scanned)
 
The 290X generates a lot of heat . You don't want just a 240mm rad for it and a CPU. your temps will be barely better than a good air cooler. You want at least 360MM radiator space for that card with your CPU. How do I know? I own a 290x or two.
 
Thanks for all the feedback everyone. It looks like I'll be doing 240 + 120 on the rads with push/pull fans.
 
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