Cooling the beast...

Joined
Nov 10, 2004
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58
Planning on the new 427w Domniator Pro for CPU, the MCW50-T from swiftech for GPU (i think thats the name of the cooler, 80watt TEC, i hear some people upgrade this to a more powerful pelt, any ideas on that would be awesome as well! :cool: ), and the swiftech chipset waterblock. the two options i see are...

1) Running this as one contiguos circuit...pump -> cpu -> gpu -> chipset -> radiator -> resevoir -> back to pump

Using one Black Ice Xtreme III (the one with 3 120mm fan slots) to radiate that massive amount of heat,

or

2) Running Two loops...

Loop 1: Pump -> Cpu -> Black Ice Xtreme II -> resevoir -> back to pump
Loop 2: Pump -> Gpu -> Chipset -> Black Ice Xtreme -> resevoir -> back to pump

Obviously, i could use a single resevoir and simply have it have 2 inlets and 2 outlets for ease of construction.

Anyway, which would be a better set up? i think that the 2nd option would be a more efficent cooler as the water must already be rather hot by the time it gets past the Dominator, therefore not very effective at cooling the other components.

On a side note...im planning on using the Meanwell Sp-750-24 to power that massive 427 watt pelt and the pump(s) (made by swiftech, 2amp pump) on my 420 watt Antec Truepower. would an 80 watt pelt need to be on yet another PSU? or would either the Antec or sp-750 be able to handle it? Again, any advice is much apreciated...i have very little knowledge of electrical needs, im a landscape architect major after all :p thanks all!

-Lucid
 
Your two loop option will beat your one loop because of the higher waterflow from the two pumps. But the water temperatures will be about the same, since you'd have the same about of radiator area.

With as much heat as your water will need to deal with, your should use as much (or as many) radiator(s) as you can. If it was me, I'd use a radiator from a small car. Oh wait, I do use the radiator from a small car! :) It's about 18 inches square and keeps the water only 4 degree over room temp with around a 400 watt load. With just a triple-120 worth of rads, I think your water would easily be 20 or more over ambient (unless you used screaming loud fans to push tons of air).

Unless you get the water temps down low, a non-pelted chipset block is a waste. A decent air cooler would be better.

The 80 watt TEC is probably only to be too much for your main PSU. If you had a 550 or a 600, you could probably stick it on there. With a 420? Nope.

You can stick a more powerful pelt in the MCW50 if the new pelt is a 40mm one. I've seen up to 172 watters in 40mm. 200 watt and up is usually 50 or 62mm.
 
2370 Kcal/hour (9404 btus/hour) is not sufficent cooling? how about with 120 cfm fans? :confused:

I guess another option is dual black ice xtreme III's...could probably work that out somehow... :cool:

Wouldnt the dual loop option also help temps bc the water would already be well above ambient by the time it got past the first block and into the second in the single loop design, making it a less efficent cooler? just seems logical to me...

My last question...since my 420 is insufficent to power the GPU TEC in addition to the pump(s), which supply would you sudjest for the TEC? or is it possible that the sp-750-24 would have enough juice to power both the CPU & GPU? or maybe something like the sp-750-36 or w/e the next step up is?

And thanks for the advice on the chipset cooler, ill definatley take that into account :D

-Lucid
 
Correct me if im wrong...
This is a 427 watt cooler....427 watts is about 1457 BTUs/hour (used googles unit conversion)...the Black Ice Xtreme II does 6270 btus/hour...isnt that WAY more than enough cooling?
Same for the GPU/chipset cooling loop, even if i upgraded the GPU to 172 watts, thats 587 BTUs/hour. the Black Ice Xtreme does 3134 BTUs/hour...wouldnt that be enough to disipate the heat generated by the GPU and Chipset?

If someone could either tell me or direct me where i could learn why this isnt the case it would be great. Otherwise, comments are all welcome :D

-Lucid

Also, i read up that my procc at 3.575 ghz would be about 140 watts (IE almost 480 btus)
EVEN WITH THAT, im over 4000 btus over what i need...
Now, i have no idea what kinda wattage/btus my GPU and Chipset would be putting out...but could it really be over 746 watts (IE 2547 btus)?
Hope those of you who are more enlightend about this stuff than me could take a moment outa ur time to help a poor n00b out :D thanks again!
 
Lucidguy_3000 said:
2370 Kcal/hour (9404 btus/hour) is not sufficent cooling? how about with 120 cfm fans? :confused:
How much air is needed for that 2370 Kcal/hour? How loud are the fans needed to push that much air? What water flow is needed for that 2370 Kcal/hour? How much warmer than ambient will the water be with a 2370 Kcal/hour heat load?

Without answers to those questions, their heat dissapation numbers are nothing but an advertising gimmick. :mad:

First, a few minor points. When a TEC is rated at 427 watts, that means is can move up to 427 watts of heat from the cold side to the hot side. It does not mean that its total heat output wil be 427. To figure that, take (the applied voltage)*(the applied voltage)*(the max current)/(the max voltage). In your case 24V * 24V * 24A / 25V = 553 W. Now that's just the power used by the TEC, you also have to add in the CPU heat moved by the TEC. Let call that 150 W for a nicely overclocked/overvolted chip.

Do that for the GPU too (60-80 watts; 120-250 for its TEC), add it all together, and your looking at 900 to 1000 watts of heat that your water needs to deal with.

Using the first graph of this page and guessing that a thermochill 120.3 is pretty similar to a BIX-III, 900 watts will give you a water temperature of 15 degrees over ambient. And that's using three Delta HE fans, which are louder than I'd tolerate. Quieter fans would mean warmer water.

Wouldnt the dual loop option also help temps bc the water would already be well above ambient by the time it got past the first block and into the second in the single loop design, making it a less efficent cooler? just seems logical to me...
Your dual loop would win only because the higher water flows. The temperature of the water in the single loop would only vary by a couple of degree between the hottest and coldest points. Running two pumps in series in a single loop would give you as much gain as the two loop idea. Anyway, more radiator area is going to be a bigger help than a second pump/loop.

Chipset block: if the water is five degrees or less over ambient - yes. More than ten over ambient - no, a heatsink will perform better. Five to ten - maybe...

Got links to the power supplies? I haven't yet memorized all of meanwell's products. :)
 
*slaps hardware labs*

I was all excited too :(

WELL THEN....moving on...

Would that mean...3 BIX3's would get me roughly 5C water? 3 times the capacity, 1/3 the heat? seems logical :p

Also, im planning on using the swiftech pump (this one )

Ne way, on to the power issues...
Im looking at the SP-750-24. its 750w, 24v, & 0~31.3A acourding to the Meanwell's website. this one was sugested to another poster after writing them an email about a TEC cooling system actually.

Now, if thats not enough power to take car of both the TEC's, which it very well might not be...

SCP-800-24 has 800w, 24v, & 0~33A.

do i need less voltage and more amperage? or just say screw this and get 2 psus?

I really dont know much about power, or heat as i proved above :p thanks again HeThatKnows, your savin my butt! btw, anyone think i should just buy a vapochill since this is looking like this setup will cost me more than a brand new one? :rolleyes:

-Lucid
 
A trio of BIX-IIIs would could your water reasonably cool, but of course you'ld have the sound of 9 (NINE!) fans to enjoy. That's why I suggested a small car radiator - it has about the same frontal area, will have a lower flow resistance, will cost less, and can be used with a single large quiet fan. And if you get one the right size, it can replace the case's side panel. :p

MCP650 is a great pump, I highly recommend it.

For powering a TEC, you need to supply it with voltage of 70 to 100 percent the TEC's Vmax. The Dominator's TEC has a Vmax of 25 volts, so a 24 volts supply is excellent, give 96% of TEC's Vmax. For amps, the supply need to provide at least that same percentage times the TEC's Imax. So for the Domintor, 24 amps times the 96% we just got = 23 amps. The SP-750-24 has 31.3 amps, so it will do fine providing the 23A you need.

The 80 watt pelt in the MCW50-T has Vmax 15.2 volts. The 24V meanwell's wouldn't work with it, they give too much voltage. Hooking it the 12V line of an ATX supply would give it 75% of its rated voltage, which is just fine. It has an Imax of 8A, and 75% of that = 6amps. Your 420W PSU probably doesn't have 6 amps to spare; a 550W one would. Or you could use any other power supply that gave anywhere from 12 to 15 volts and 6 to 8 amps.

To summarize, the Dominator would be happy with the SP-750-24. The MCW50 would like you to have a bigger ATX PSU.
 
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