Enough rad for me?

[blu3phoenix]

I was thinking about a hwlabs GTX 240 to cool my i7 920. Would I be able to add anything else to my loop? NB/SB? Maybe a videocard?

I noticed this rad is dense fpi, dual flow and thicker which allows it to cool more than thinner, lower fpi radiators.

 

[Necere]

So it entirely depends on how much noise you're willing to put up with, and what temperature you want the components to be.

If you absolutely require a 2c air-water delta with a fan spinning at 600rpm, then you might be able to cool 20 watts of heat. On the other hand, if you can stand your fans running at 2800rpm, and a stable but warm 15c delta is acceptable, you could cool over 1100 watts (Numbers from here). Up to you.

Keep in mind those high FPI GTX rads are inferior to other similar-sized but lower FPI rads up to around 1200-1400rpm, so if you're after quiet you may want to look elsewhere.

 

[blu3phoenix]

So it entirely depends on how much noise you're willing to put up with, and what temperature you want the components to be.

If you absolutely require a 2c air-water delta with a fan spinning at 600rpm, then you might be able to cool 20 watts of heat. On the other hand, if you can stand your fans running at 2800rpm, and a stable but warm 15c delta is acceptable, you could cool over 1100 watts (Numbers from here). Up to you.

Keep in mind those high FPI GTX rads are inferior to other similar-sized but lower FPI rads up to around 1200-1400rpm, so if you're after quiet you may want to look elsewhere.

I'm planning on putting 4 Medium YL, 1650rpm, in push pull config.

How do you know how many watts it can cool? Is there a chart with radiators and fans and their rpm to see how much they can dissipate?

 

[Necere]

There's a link in my post, in case you missed it. The first table in the link shows data for that radiator. Bear in mind, that's the 3x120 version, so you'd want to multiply those wattage numbers by .66 to get a ballpark for a 2x120 version. edit: it's maybe not clear, the numbers in the table are wattage numbers, e.g, at 610rpm and 15c delta the rad dissipates 231 watts.

Here's a more detailed review of the GTX with some pretty line graphs. You'll get somewhat better performance running with a push-pull config.

Most people will probably tell you a 2x120 is only enough for CPU and you'd want another rad for a video card, for example. But the reality is a radiator can handle an awful lot of heat; the real question is how much can you handle - how much noise, how important are low temperature numbers to you. If you're not planning on overclocking, air cooling temps are perfectly fine.

 

[FaRKle0079]

A BI GTX240 is more than enough for an OC'd i7 920. You can easily add your NB to that without worry, although personally I think chipeset and VRM blocks are a waste of money (you don't really gain anything from it).

 

[blu3phoenix]

There's a link in my post, in case you missed it. The first table in the link shows data for that radiator. Bear in mind, that's the 3x120 version, so you'd want to multiply those wattage numbers by .66 to get a ballpark for a 2x120 version. edit: it's maybe not clear, the numbers in the table are wattage numbers, e.g, at 610rpm and 15c delta the rad dissipates 231 watts.

Here's a more detailed review of the GTX with some pretty line graphs. You'll get somewhat better performance running with a push-pull config.

Most people will probably tell you a 2x120 is only enough for CPU and you'd want another rad for a video card, for example. But the reality is a radiator can handle an awful lot of heat; the real question is how much can you handle - how much noise, how important are low temperature numbers to you. If you're not planning on overclocking, air cooling temps are perfectly fine.

The one thing I don't get is the 2/5/10/15 delta. It says 2delta is a extreme performing loop but it dissipates less watts? Thanks for the tip about rads. It got me thinking outside the box. I can always get high speed fans with a controller and turn them down since I probably won't be running load very often but gives me the option to dissipate more heat when I do.

A BI GTX240 is more than enough for an OC'd i7 920. You can easily add your NB to that without worry, although personally I think chipeset and VRM blocks are a waste of money (you don't really gain anything from it).

Yeah I realized its only for aesthetics or if you have money to waste .

 

[FaRKle0079]

The one thing I don't get is the 2/5/10/15 delta. It says 2delta is a extreme performing loop but it dissipates less watts?

If you put more heat into the loop then the temp of the water compared to the air will have a greater difference. So if you put less heat into the loop, you'll have a smaller difference (delta) between those temps. So what those charts say is, if you're shooting for a certain delta with that radiator, you can only put x amount of heat into the loop.

 

[Necere]

The one thing I don't get is the 2/5/10/15 delta. It says 2delta is a extreme performing loop but it dissipates less watts?

The delta temp is how much hotter the water is than the ambient air temperature. So the smaller that number, the lower your water temp. Lower water temp = "extreme" cooling.

The reason why it dissipates so much less wattage at a low delta t is because the rate of heat transfer increases as the relative temperature difference increases. Like if you put an ice cube in a hot room it melts faster than in a cold one. So in the case of a radiator heat won't be radiated as quickly the smaller the temp difference between it and the air. You can move a lot of heat at a large delta t, or a little heat at a small delta t, or anything in between, for a given radiator+fan. You can move more heat at the same delta t by increasing your surface area (more/bigger rads, higher FPI), and/or by increasing the amount of air moving across that surface (more/bigger/faster fans).

 

[EricFX1984]

i would really consider a 360

 

[Necere]

Real world example of what you can do if you're not dead set on near-ambient temps: this guy, running an i7 920 oc'd to 4.3ghz and SLI'd GTX 480s all on a single MCR320 rad.