Hybrid vga cooler - pump question

[vxspiritxv]

Anyone here ever run into an issue of a pump being too small? (on a single cpu / single vid loop)

Had the idea of cutting off the rad from a hybrid cooler (example: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC2 GAMING HYBRID) and adding 4 x 120mm rad and cpu block to it.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Hmm.

I've never chopped up and customized an AIO. I can say with confidence that people worry too much about pump capacity when it comes to custom loop components. A basic D5 or DDC pump will power damned near anything unless you are going truly over the top and exotic, but those little AIO pumps are designed with the small AIO loop in mind, and may be a bit wimpy for anything larger.

Be careful adding components to a chopped up AIO too. You'll want to make sure you don't have dissimilar metals. Many (most?) AIO's use aluminum rads. Most custom loop radiators are made of copper. You absolutely do not want to mix the two, or the thing will corrode itself to oblivion.

 

[VanGoghComplex]

I've done this before. The pump is strong enough to work, kindof. Once the loop is primed it will move enough fluid to function as a loop.

However, in my much less ambitious mod, the only thing I added was a reservoir. Even given this, the pump was still not strong enough to bleed the loop. This difficulty was compounded by the fact that the pump was mated to a GPU block, so it was facing upside down, meaning case gymnastics were of limited help.

You can read my thread on it here:

https://hardforum.com/threads/aio-converted-to-open-loop.1936904/

In short, it was an interesting exercise but not something I would probably want to run with long-term. In your case, adding another block and a much larger rad, you may have worse results than I did. The Asetek pumps in AIOs are engineered to the ragged edge - they are just enough to work in an AIO.