Cooling Options and Questions

[NExUS1g]

I'm going to be building a new system, and I was intending on using water cooling in the case. 2 4870 x2s, 1 CPU, triple-channel RAM, and of course the north and south bridge chips are what I have to cool.

- Besides air/heat sink and water, are there any other cooling options available?
- If using water, will each block have its own path to the radiator instead of a daisy chain?
- Are there blocks for water cooling RAM? Will they sit over the heat spreaders or will the heat spreaders need to be removed?
- Will I be able to cool all of the above using water?
- Besides using air on the radiator to leech heat from the water, are there other methods for leeching the heat away from the radiator to make cooling more effective?

 

[Zero82z]

- Besides air/heat sink and water, are there any other cooling options available?

There's phase change and TEC cooling, but neither is really practical for a system that will be used a lot.

- If using water, will each block have its own path to the radiator instead of a daisy chain?

No, components in a watercooling loop are generally daisy-chained. Sometimes the loop is split and then merged later, but I've never seen a single loop with all the components isolated from each other.

- Are there blocks for water cooling RAM? Will they sit over the heat spreaders or will the heat spreaders need to be removed?

There are blocks for cooling RAM, but they're largely pointless. The heat spreaders do need to be removed in order to install a block. However, OCZ also makes a line of memory with coolers that have waterblocks built in, if you decide to go that route. There's very little benefit to watercooling memory though, and it will also introduce unnecessary restriction into the loop which can negatively affect the temperatures of the other components.

- Will I be able to cool all of the above using water?

Yes. Whether or not you should, however, is a different story.

- Besides using air on the radiator to leech heat from the water, are there other methods for leeching the heat away from the radiator to make cooling more effective?

I'm not really sure what you're asking here. A radiator is by nature a heat exchanger whose purpose is to dissipate heat energy into the air.

 

[NExUS1g]

I'm not really sure what you're asking here. A radiator is by nature a heat exchanger whose purpose is to dissipate heat energy into the air.

Ergo, cooling the radiator by some means other than room-temperature air. For an epic failure of an idea to get the point across: pointing an air conditioner at the radiator.\

No, components in a watercooling loop are generally daisy-chained. Sometimes the loop is split and then merged later, but I've never seen a single loop with all the components isolated from each other.

Does this mean that I will have to determine which is the hottest/coolest and make that last/first (not necessarily respectively) on the chain to maximize cooling?

 

[Zero82z]

Ergo, cooling the radiator by some means other than room-temperature air. For an epic failure of an idea to get the point across: pointing an air conditioner at the radiator.

Well, that would work, but it wouldn't exactly be efficient.

Does this mean that I will have to determine which is the hottest/coolest and make that last/first (not necessarily respectively) on the chain to maximize cooling?

Yeah, in a manner of speaking. You'd be better off asking about that in the watercooling forum though.

 

[NExUS1g]

Well, that would work, but it wouldn't exactly be efficient.


Yeah, in a manner of speaking. You'd be better off asking about that in the watercooling forum though.

Ah right. My bad.