Is one 240mm RAD enough to cool 3x 7970s

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BostonHXC

Limp Gawd
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Is one 240mm RAD enough for 3x 7970s?

I originally was thinking of a dual/triple RAD loop that included the CPU. But I am now rethinking my plan to only cool my TriFire cards in lieu of overclocking them. Would a single 240mm RAD be enough for this task?

The RADs I have in mind are :

THIS

THIS

or

THIS
 
the way I see it:
1 x 120 rad > 1 x video card stock cooling
1 x 120 rad = 1.5 x video card stock cooling
2 x 120 rad = 3 x video card stock cooling
+ thick high fpi rad & good fans to be in the safe side
 
So I will look at doing a 240mm Thick RAD on the bottom and a 360mm skinny RAD on the TOP. the 360 will have a pull config and the 240 will have a push/pull. Does this sound like a better option?
 
Wow one 240 is just not enough surface area on the radiator for the heat transfer of those 3 massive video cards, even with push/pull fans. Your modified version sounds much better and should one fine. Make sure you get a good water pump
 
One 240 radiator won't get you great temps, but it won't overheat your card either. I've seen a guy run a GTX295 and 4GHz QX9650 on a dual 91mm radiator.
 
Thickness doesn't really help radiators as much as it's assumed. For the air flows we deal with and the heat loads we dissipate (read: air/water delta temperatures), the air is saturated with heat roughly HALF WAY through the radiator on thick radiators. The rest of the radiator thickness, the air isn't absorbing much more heat.

Martin from martinsliquidlab.org did some informal testing an those are his findings. He rarely recommends thick radiators and favors thinner ones like the Swiftech MCR series.
 
bacon11 said:
Thickness doesn't really help radiators as much as it's assumed. For the air flows we deal with and the heat loads we dissipate (read: air/water delta temperatures), the air is saturated with heat roughly HALF WAY through the radiator on thick radiators. The rest of the radiator thickness, the air isn't absorbing much more heat.

Martin from martinsliquidlab.org did some informal testing an those are his findings. He rarely recommends thick radiators and favors thinner ones like the Swiftech MCR series.
Click to expand...


Good to know and that previous article was very helpful.
Ill stick with just GPU cooling now and will go for 1x 360mm thin rad and 1x 240mm thin in the loop.

I just got conformation that the waterblocks will be back in stock next week.


Thanks again everyone for all the help, this is exactly why [H] is the best.
 
Thickness does help though. The RX radiators are identical to the RS radiators, besides thickness. The RX radiators have roughly 1.5 times the cooling capacity as I recall. The thinner, higher FPI EX radiators actually perform between the RS and RX radiators.

And the GTX radiators, high FPI and thick, are the best performing radiators you can get at the moment. However, that is only if you plan on using push/pull and/or getting fans above 1800 RPM. The GTS radiators, extremely thin, extremely high FPI (higher than GTX) perform worse than GTX radiators.
 
I am using a 360 Swiftech MCR Extreme radiator to cool just a GTX580 and AMD 965BE overclocked to 4.2 and am a little nervous of how much heat my card is going to add to the loop... I am also not going to be going with a Push/Pull style, just pull fans since I dont have the room for both. Parts are currently in the mail and I wont know the results of my setup until friday or saturday.

I would also agree that any 240 radiator you get wouldnt be enough for the 3 video cards alone, but throwing in the CPU too? I would say that by the end of the day, your temps will be comparable to air cooling, just much more silent.

If you have the space, definitely go with a dual radiator setup like your modified plan. But consider this, 2 large radiators, 3 GPU blocks, and a CPU block means you will need a HIGH QUALITY pump... dont cheap out there.

I would also recomment running a parallel setup rather than a series setup. There are some good articles talking about the benifit to running parallel vs series with that much restriction in the setup.
 
Yes! It is if your pump can push a high enough volume of water. However it will need some really good fans and ambient temp. Go for a triple rad and you are gonna have more than enough cooling power.

Trust me ;-P
 
I will re-use all the Noctua NF-P12 fans I just bought, seeing as I just dumped a TON of $$ on 8 of them and they are awesome fans with high static pressure.
 
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