I have am going to water cool my sig rig. I have a xspc rasa rx360 kit on the way which has the thicker radiator. I also am going to water all 3 gtx470 and have a full cover nb/sb/mosfet block. My case is a HAF932. Iam going to put the rad inthe top. Will the single triple rad be enough? Should I put a secong rad in the loop? Perhaps a single on the rear fan? Let me know your thoughts.
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Help me cool my sig rig please!
- Thread starter rjolin01
- Start date
push pull dont matter.
Just get some good fans on the rads and let em rip. I like my rad inside my case, fans sandwiched between rad and top of case and they suck the air through the rad.
I also believe in equalizing the airflow from intake the exhaust. If you have 3 120mm sucking air through the rads at 100cfm each then you need 2-3 fans pushing 100 cfm each to equalize the flow. Too little and you get a hot vacuum like case, too much and you just have extra noise from turbulence.
If you are moving a combined 250-300 cfm through the case at all times and you can stick hand right in the center of the case above your ram/pro/slots etc... and feel air moving good and fast you done it right in my op.
Also make sure your ambient room temps are acceptable. Your loop will heat soak a lot of ambient energy reducing the cooling capacity of the water in side the loop.
I use scyth Kama Flex 100+ cfm fans and all the fans in my case are motherboard controlled and synchronized or programmed for a certain amount of air flow. A constant steady stream of air:noise:temp ratio takes some time to balance out to your preference. Of course I have the Asus maximus IV extreme so it has like a jillion fan headers all RPM controlled by bios.
Also as for second rad that depends. Coolant has a property where it equalizes temperature across all devices. For instance if you have a GPU | GPU | PRO in that order the processor is going to eventually receive the same temperature of coolant as the first GPU. The rad sucks the heat away from the coolant but water will not get "hotspots" as long as it is flowing. It is not a property of water to get hotspots. So I would see first if your triple rad can equalize out to an acceptable temperature after a good gaming session and then make your decision based on that.
I personally do not like to see my liquid temp get over 5-6c hotter than my ambient room temp and if setup right it will not. If you see a 10c or more difference you might want to explore adding a single rad for your Proc. I bought a thermocouple for like 10 bucks from frozen cpu that I use to measure my liquid temps at the reservoir. I think that is the best part to measure the coolant as it is coming out of the rads, picked up the heat from the pump and then whatever the temp is at that time is what is going to cool all 3 devices in your proposed loop. Of course it will be hotter when it comes out of the cpu but it will eventually equalize across the whole loop so once again you should not get a hot spot.
EDIT** - I just got off the phone with Swiftech because I am doing research as I will be adding my 6990 (should get it next week) and my 6970 in the loop with the CPU.
Swiftech recommended that if you are using a large rad, such as a triple 12cm rad, it is more thermally efficient to utilize one loop. They were explaining load values between the GPUs an the CPU etc... It made perfect sense. When the GPU is under heavy use during gaming, the cpu is low to light usage. The loop is only really responsible for cooling the gpu/s and not the cpu during this time. Same goes with the CPU, if you are doing heavy video encoding for example and the gpus are sitting idle, then the loop is working only to cool the CPU and the gpus have a minimal thermal impact. If you are going to be doing heavy use stuff like bitcoin mining where you are running a GPU mine and a CPU mine at the same time then you are nuts anyways and probably want separate loops but for 99% of normal people one loop is more than suffecient. They did stress to make sure you are using a high enough flow rated pump in order to keep the pressure higher in the loop when cooling multiple elements, but this I already knew.
Just offering some information. Use it as you see fit and good luck in your water cooling adventures.
Just get some good fans on the rads and let em rip. I like my rad inside my case, fans sandwiched between rad and top of case and they suck the air through the rad.
I also believe in equalizing the airflow from intake the exhaust. If you have 3 120mm sucking air through the rads at 100cfm each then you need 2-3 fans pushing 100 cfm each to equalize the flow. Too little and you get a hot vacuum like case, too much and you just have extra noise from turbulence.
If you are moving a combined 250-300 cfm through the case at all times and you can stick hand right in the center of the case above your ram/pro/slots etc... and feel air moving good and fast you done it right in my op.
Also make sure your ambient room temps are acceptable. Your loop will heat soak a lot of ambient energy reducing the cooling capacity of the water in side the loop.
I use scyth Kama Flex 100+ cfm fans and all the fans in my case are motherboard controlled and synchronized or programmed for a certain amount of air flow. A constant steady stream of air:noise:temp ratio takes some time to balance out to your preference. Of course I have the Asus maximus IV extreme so it has like a jillion fan headers all RPM controlled by bios.
Also as for second rad that depends. Coolant has a property where it equalizes temperature across all devices. For instance if you have a GPU | GPU | PRO in that order the processor is going to eventually receive the same temperature of coolant as the first GPU. The rad sucks the heat away from the coolant but water will not get "hotspots" as long as it is flowing. It is not a property of water to get hotspots. So I would see first if your triple rad can equalize out to an acceptable temperature after a good gaming session and then make your decision based on that.
I personally do not like to see my liquid temp get over 5-6c hotter than my ambient room temp and if setup right it will not. If you see a 10c or more difference you might want to explore adding a single rad for your Proc. I bought a thermocouple for like 10 bucks from frozen cpu that I use to measure my liquid temps at the reservoir. I think that is the best part to measure the coolant as it is coming out of the rads, picked up the heat from the pump and then whatever the temp is at that time is what is going to cool all 3 devices in your proposed loop. Of course it will be hotter when it comes out of the cpu but it will eventually equalize across the whole loop so once again you should not get a hot spot.
EDIT** - I just got off the phone with Swiftech because I am doing research as I will be adding my 6990 (should get it next week) and my 6970 in the loop with the CPU.
Swiftech recommended that if you are using a large rad, such as a triple 12cm rad, it is more thermally efficient to utilize one loop. They were explaining load values between the GPUs an the CPU etc... It made perfect sense. When the GPU is under heavy use during gaming, the cpu is low to light usage. The loop is only really responsible for cooling the gpu/s and not the cpu during this time. Same goes with the CPU, if you are doing heavy video encoding for example and the gpus are sitting idle, then the loop is working only to cool the CPU and the gpus have a minimal thermal impact. If you are going to be doing heavy use stuff like bitcoin mining where you are running a GPU mine and a CPU mine at the same time then you are nuts anyways and probably want separate loops but for 99% of normal people one loop is more than suffecient. They did stress to make sure you are using a high enough flow rated pump in order to keep the pressure higher in the loop when cooling multiple elements, but this I already knew.
Just offering some information. Use it as you see fit and good luck in your water cooling adventures.
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I will let you be the ultimate judge... however, yes I do think that a triple rad will be plenty.
Here is some good information for you to soak in:
http://www.swiftech.com/Resources/White_Papers/Dual Loop versus Single.pdf
Thanks for the link. Thing is that I wasnt planning on a dual loop. Just adding a second radiator to the single loop. but then again I see that doing so could be considered a "dual loop" just from one pump/res source.I will prob give it a try with just the single radiator and see how my temps are. The high for oc'ing a 970 is like 5.2 so if I can get like 4.8-5.0 I will know I am good to go.
Tsumi
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For 3 470's and a 970 at 4.8-5? I don't think a triple is going to cut it unless you run 6 2500+ RPM fans. And DO NOT get the slipstreams, they may have a high CFM rating, but they have really low static pressure, which is bad when it comes to radiators. You want high-static pressure fans. And you want a high FPI radiator, like a Black Ice GTS or GTX. RX360 is NOT going to cut it unless you get some really high speed fans (at least 500 rpms above what you would need with a GTS or GTX), it is a really low FPI radiator, which does not perform as well with high speed fans compared to high FPI radiators.
If you're getting the Rasa kit, the included pump is not going to cut it. You want at least the MCP355, best would be a 655 with parallel flow on the GPU's.
Go with single loop, for your purposes that is fine.
If you're getting the Rasa kit, the included pump is not going to cut it. You want at least the MCP355, best would be a 655 with parallel flow on the GPU's.
Go with single loop, for your purposes that is fine.