Been researching, have questions

[JeremyCT]

I've done a lot of Googling and come up with few answers to my questions. I'm looking to make my new rig (currently in planning stages) as quiet as possible, I'm tired of fan noise as my current apartment is very "open". IOW, I don't want to hear the damn thing droning away if I leave it processing something overnight.

New system will include and have watercooled:

Q9450 (most likely)
mid-high end nVidia card, maybe a 9800GX2

Possibly:

Northbridge (depending on MB chosen and case airflow when I figure this whole thing out)
Power Supply (maybe, that new Koolance PS isn't going to be cheap and would be wattage overkill, but damn would it be cool)

I've looked over Koolance's stuff and have to admit I like the integrated stuff, but wanted something that could cool the same with less airflow. More surface area, more fans turning at slower speeds. There are plenty of options, but few that fit inside a case. 4x120 would work on top of precious few designs, so I started to look at a separate enclosure for the rads. HOWEVER, the big hitch in that plan is that automatically controlled thermo-sensitive fan controllers don't seem to exist. Does anybody know of a fan controller where I can set a temperature for when I want the fans to go to 5V, 7V, 12V? At least 2 levels would be good, more is bonus. With an external rad enclosure I'd just leave it "on" all the time and let the fan controller dictate when the fans need to run independant of system power status.

That may not possible though . . . onto "Plan B", the Mozart TX case.

A monster, no doubts. However, if I mount a quad core radiator inside the case, where do the fans go? I've read that they work better when they "pull" instead of "push". In light of that, it seems that things should get mounted: back of case, fans, radiator if the rads go insde. This seems to be a lot of stress to put on the fans enclosure, and I'm not sure how you mount them to the case anyway. Long screws with nuts and washers? Will the radiator come with mounting hardware? Many seem to like to mount the rads off the back of the case, is this to pull cooler air over the rads? And then I come back to fan control again. Even if I spring for SilenX fans, I'm still going to hear the air moving through there, so I wouldn't want all of them on full speed all the time. Koolance's "control unit" handles fan control based off temperature input, but includes a pump I wouldn't consider to be great with a reservoir I'd rather place elsewhere at a price I don't really like, so that's pretty much out. However, it's all I've been able to find.

So many questions, I know, I'm sorry. I've been trying to design this setup for over a month now and I can't find everything I'd need to do it the way I want. Searches on this forum have given me lots of insights and information, but haven't turned up what I'm looking for. I'm not into overclocking as a general rule, but may take another crack it with this new rig, who knows.

Jeremy

 

[billb]

HOWEVER, the big hitch in that plan is that automatically controlled thermo-sensitive fan controllers don't seem to exist.

They do. See Vantec Thermoflow fans.

But that's not going to work. If you stop and think about it:
You don't want to key the fan speed off of the air temperature. The temperature of the air flowing through a rad is more related to the flow rate of the air through the rad than to the temperature of the water. With low CFMs the air is warm so the fans would speed up, which makes the air cooler, so the fans slow down, which makes the air warmer, so the fans speed up...over and over.
So you have to key off the water temperature. But the water temp not only varies with CPU/GPU loads, but also varies based on ambient air temps. So what would be an acceptable temperature to change from, say, 7v to 12v today, may not be the temperature at which you want that chance to occur at tomorrow.
So you need a controller that takes into account the ambient air temp and combines that with the water temperature and then figures how how fast to run the fans to match the current loads. Doing this is neither simple nor inexpensive.

Have a look at the Innovatek IPC controller, aquaMatic 2 and aquamatic 2 PRO.
I would imagine those will be difficult to find though.

In the end, a CPU temp monitoring program (CoreTemp) and a rheostat is the best solution considering cost and performance. You can add water temp monitoring (Thermaltake CL-W0033, remove the sensor and epoxy it into a tee) and flow monitoring (DigiFlow 8000T or Swisflow SF-800, put on a valved bypass loop to avoid excessive restriction, they're 3/8") for added information.