How much improvement will I see...?

[Optimummind]

How much improvement do you think I'll see when I go from a Chevette heatercore that can mount one 120mm fan to a 1977 Bonneville heatercore than can mount two 120mm fans??

Everything else will the same, of course, such as the coolant used, tubing (3/8"), and the GPU waterblock (the DangerDen NV-68).

As of now, I'm getting 49C idle for the core and 33C idle for the ambient (card is clocked to 420/1100 with 1.4V for all three modes through BIOS flash).

My room is kinda warm and I only turn on the AC during the midday. During the evening, the AC is off. The temp I noted above was measured at 9:52pm tonight.

Is it worth it go for a dual 120mm setup? BTW, my pump is an AquaVia 1300 that has been modified to reduce the noise and vibrations. By looking at my reservoir, I can see that the flow is pretty strong due to the turbulence of the water inside.

 

[R!P13y]

I dont think you will see anything being better/cooler

I dont think it would be worth the modding and swapping but that is up to you

 

[Sideroxylon]

I dont think you will see anything being better/cooler

I dont think it would be worth the modding and swapping but that is up to you

I disagree. I bet you'll get at least 5c drop and probably more. Also, difference between idle/load temps should drop also. I don't know how your pump will do with the extra restriction that dual rad is going to give you though. It should be fine.

I say if you have the room and the motivation, do it.

 

[R!P13y]

I stand my ground still, I have had 2 watercooling systems now in my life, so i know what i am doing with it all. My system now i had in a different case and everything was the same but I had a big DUEL black ice xtreme 2 RAD from DD and it was big and load with 4 120mms on it 2 on each side. MY point being I had that and now you can see i have only one fan (120mm) one a single 120mm RAD and I did not see any drop or raise in temps,

The thing about water cooling is that if you are running ambient temp you can not do any better/ any cooler and that is final and anyone that knows anything about watercooling will tell you that. If you are worried about the load to idle temps, well i dont think you will see anything there either, mine only have about a 5c change when idleing to F@H and that is really good saying F@H making a very high load on a computer and that is F@H and CSS LOAD temps

 

[DFI Daishi]

as someone else recently tried, you could just stick a normal thermometer into the water of your res/T-line to check on your coolant temps.

if your coolant temps are only a bit above ambient, then a bigger rad is very unlikely to help. if your coolant is close to the temp of your processor, then a bigger rad might help.

i'm just talking about a normal glass thermometer, btw.

alternately, if you have some exposed brass or copper on the heatercore, and thermal probes, then you could rough up the surface with a bit of sandpaper and tag a probe on there with some tape and thermal paste (short term) or thermal epoxy and thermal paste (long term).

 

[R!P13y]

as someone else recently tried, you could just stick a normal thermometer into the water of your res/T-line to check on your coolant temps.

if your coolant temps are only a bit above ambient, then a bigger rad is very unlikely to help. if your coolant is close to the temp of your processor, then a bigger rad might help.

i'm just talking about a normal glass thermometer, btw.

alternately, if you have some exposed brass or copper on the heatercore, and thermal probes, then you could rough up the surface with a bit of sandpaper and tag a probe on there with some tape and thermal paste (short term) or thermal epoxy and thermal paste (long term).

Yeah that is a very good way of testing, can not think of a reason why i did not think about that,

 

[Optimummind]

Thx for the many good advice. I think I'm gonna try the thermometer trick to see how far the water temp is away from the ambient room temp.

If I do buy a dual 120mm radiator setup, I was thinking of buying the DangerDen dual 120mm heatercore. After adding in the cost for a 120mm fan and a shroud, the total cost after shipping is $69.79.

I'll probably pay for this setup instead of building my own for 2 reasons: one, the dif in price is only $5. Second, the trouble I have to go through to drive to 3 dif places and to find a way to saw off the barbs off the 1977 Bonneville heatercore is too much trouble.

I'll update this thread if I go with the dual setup.

 

[Optimummind]

Ok, I went ahead and bought the DangerDen Dual 120mm fan radiator. The temp of the core load and ambient load changed by about 2 C. Not drastic, right?

Actually, it was pretty drastic because by having two 120mm fans running, I could lower the rotation speed of the fans to about 1/4 the speed the knob on the Vantec fan controller would let me. In other words, I got lower temps compared to a single 120mm radiator setup that was running at full fan rotation speed despite the fan speed of the dual 120mm fans being 1/4 that speed.

I'm happy with the outcome and the reduction in noise.

 

[DarkenReaper57]

I went from an external bonnie core to an internal chevette. idle temps went up 8C, and nd my load went up about the same. I plan on going back to an even better external setup this summer. BTW, for reference, I idle at about 38C, load at 46C.

I think your 3/8'' tubing is holding you back. Your pump could be too, since the NV68 is rather restrictive if memory serves me right.

Double check for kinks too

But hey, if you are happy, that is all that matters .