My first water loop (yay!), help/critique

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Doubl3KiLL

2[H]4U
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Nov 13, 2002
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Well, ive finally been looking into getting a water setup, after many years of scoffing at it, Im ready to take the plunge. Ive pretty much came to a final conclusion on the layout/setup im going to go with based on my usable area in my case (ATCS 840). My questions are:

  • Will the MCP355 be able to handle this loop without problem?
  • Will this loop have sufficient cooling capactiy left when it hits the video card? (GTX 480, overclock=most certainly)
  • I very much so would like to stay with a bay res with built in pump (my drawing is depicting a XSPC bay res with MCP355 support), however if there are better options im open to them, money is a factor though, and I would like to stay around the same price range ($45 res/$65 pump)

So have at. Like I said I'm not looking to go on a spending spree, but Im open to alternatives. Thanks.

waterloop.jpg
 
One useful thing is to have the res at the highest point whenever possible. This allows the trapped bubbles all to collect there in the first week of use.

Easiest way to do that with this design is to put a few bricks under the case's front edge for a few days.
 
Since you are building one big loop you might want to get some quick disconnect make life much easier for drain or maintenance. MCP355 + aftermarket top should able to push through your loop fine.
 
rhiridflaidd said:
One useful thing is to have the res at the highest point whenever possible. This allows the trapped bubbles all to collect there in the first week of use.

Easiest way to do that with this design is to put a few bricks under the case's front edge for a few days.
Click to expand...

I think what I may do is just take the 360 and mount it low with the side panel off for those few days. Unfortunately with the layout of this case the res will be lower than the top rad no matter what, I would have to rotate the computer almost a full 90* to get it above.

prtuc2 said:
Since you are building one big loop you might want to get some quick disconnect make life much easier for drain or maintenance. MCP355 + aftermarket top should able to push through your loop fine.
Click to expand...

I dont see these quick disconnects, I'm shopping on sidewinder. Any link to them? thanks
 
Get rid of the single radiator on bottom, get rid of the motherboard blocks, and you dont need quick disconnects. I just saved you about 250$ and you wont even notice any difference! ::D Any other questions?
 
sok0 said:
Get rid of the single radiator on bottom, get rid of the motherboard blocks, and you dont need quick disconnects. I just saved you about 250$ and you wont even notice any difference! ::D Any other questions?
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I agree with most of that. Motherboard blocks, be they VRM/chipset/RAM/whatever are generally very restrictive and aren't necessary. They're generally more of show than practicality, as all of those parts can easily be air cooled. However, I recommend keeping the 120mm rad or maybe hanging a 240mm rad out the back (unless you wanted to keep everything internal). I don't think a single 360mm rad, even a really ballsy one, is going to comfortably hold an i7 920 and GTX 480, especially once the volts and clocks get pushed, at decent temps unless you get some insane airflow through it. I'd also rethink the pump/res combo. While an awesome idea in theory, I wasn't impressed with them in person. They can be very loud because they transmit all of the pump noise directly to the case, and the 5.25" bays act like a sounding board.
 
The main reason I said to get rid of the 120mm on the bottom is that you either have to exhaust hot internal air threw it to use it (making it a lot less effective), or have the fans pulling from the bottom of the case, which in itself isnt very effective imo. And I actually cooled a q6600 @ 3.6ghz and a gtx 260 overclocked pretty heavily on a thermochill 120.2 w/900rpm fans for 2 months while I RMA'd my bad one. Worked almost as good as dual 120.2's. I would think that a triple with good fans could cool all that pretty well. Although it's not ideal.

A mcp355 w/modified top is probably the best pump you can get unless money is no object, then the best is an Iwaki for 3 times as much. I'm not sure about the mcp355 installed into a reservoir . Though the xspc res top(which I have) is awesome.
 
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- One DDC 3.2 (AKA mcp355) is enough, especially with an aftermarket top.

- I also would not use motherboard blocks. They cost way too much, and add complexity to the loop. The airflow from the fans on the top radiator will bring air over the motherboard components anyway.

- I don't like Bay-Reservoirs with integrated pumps much, but that's because I'm worried that they'll vibrate my case chassis. I suppose that's a personal preference. I've been trending toward quiet cooling to the extent that I now want mcp350 pumps as opposed to mcp355's.

- I prefer to use a simple Swiftech micro MCres v2 + pump. That MCres is easy to bleed, cheaper, and smaller. It has a top port for bleeding and a fill-tube, and a bottom port for a drain line + plug.

- I don't see the need for quick-disconnects in a system like this. I only use them with removable external cooling setups. If the system is easy enough to fill and drain, then it's not much of a hassle to remove components.

- Radiators: Some have fitted 240-rads in front of the HDD-cages in that case. I'd look at some other builds - it's a popular watercooling case. I do agree that it'd be nice to have more dissipation than a Triple-Radiator, however... especially with a GPU in the loop.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1422905 - here's a quick link of examples. That case has tons of room.
 
Ok. Im sold on the getting rid of the motherboard and VRM blocks, I wasnt to fond of the idea anyway... they are in no way a factor currently on stock air cooling.

I may go ahead and switch out the res/pump combo for a separated system. I was wondering if it would make vibration an issue being that it is bolted directly to the chassis.

Im keeping the 120 rad at the bottom. The 480 gets really, really hot when you start overvolting and overclocking heavily. I can get it to 880 on air and it goes full oven pretty easily. Pair that with an overclocked 920 and Ill need all the surface area I can get.

Just for reference I have revised my previous picture with air flow in the ATSC 840 with the rear fan housing attached. After spending a lot of hours figuring out how air moves through this case when I was deciding on placement for my H50 I dont think that the warm air created by using the bottom 120 rad pulling air from under the chassis will cause much issue with heat in the case, as most of it as blow/sucked out the back of the chassis. I've used a temperature probe at the top of the case with my current setup (H50 sucking in at the bottom) and temps up top are as close to ambient as I could hope to be.

waterloopwith%20air.jpg
 
You should be pulling cool outside air into the triple radiator, not hot case air. And an i7 920 @ 4.2ghz is around 250w of heat, and a gtx 480 overclocked to max is around 200watts of heat. That can be easily run on a triple high end radiator with good fans.
 
Pulling air into the top of the case feels.... awkward to me. Is this how its normally done? Theres not really any sort of vent up there for the warm air to be pulled away again.
 
OhMyGod said:
I also have the ATSC 840. I used the swiftech SANDWICH! It rocks!


http://www.swiftnets.com/assets/images/products/MCR320/mcr320-qp-staked.jpg


yes this fits up top.
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You know, I saw that, but it seemed to me that it would be more efficient to blow air over one giant radiator, rather than blow the warmer air over the second radiator.... I feel as though its counter productive. Unless of course the "warm" radiator gets the water first, THEN the "cold" radiator, then it would make sense, since the warm radiator would bring it closer to ambient still.
 
Doubl3KiLL said:
Pulling air into the top of the case feels.... awkward to me. Is this how its normally done? Theres not really any sort of vent up there for the warm air to be pulled away again.
Click to expand...
I would put air out of the case through both rads. Sucking warm air into the case over the rad is just counter-intuitive. Once you have all that hot air inside the case, you need more fans to pump it back out. I had the same dilemma when I just built my new water setup and here's what I ended up with: . I actually took that front 140mm fan out as well, so I have NO intake fans in the case and all air is just exhausted through the rads. This gives me great temps with a minimal amount of fans. I use the 92mm fan in the middle to cool my 5850 and mix the air between the bottom and top airflow streams to the rads.

I would also consider making that 120mm on the bottom as beefy as possible - I think an XSPC RX120 would be perfect. Also, I recommend changing your loop to res/pump -> CPU block -> 360mm rad -> GPU block -> 120mm rad -> res/pump . This will increase the pressure going to the block as well as cutting down on the amount tubing you need. This should keep your flow high while introducing the rads after heat sources to keep your water temps low.
 
Mr. K6 said:
I would also consider making that 120mm on the bottom as beefy as possible - I think an XSPC RX120 would be perfect. Also, I recommend changing your loop to res/pump -> CPU block -> 360mm rad -> GPU block -> 120mm rad -> res/pump . This will increase the pressure going to the block as well as cutting down on the amount tubing you need. This should keep your flow high while introducing the rads after heat sources to keep your water temps low.
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I feel like the CPU will be the largest producer of heat, at least most of the time, which leads me to feel like having the CPU first in line, and only the 120 to cool off the water from the 480 before it hits the CPU seems like I would see lacking results. MIND YOU, I am learning right now, so Im not arguing you point, just asking to make sure I understand this well enough.

Also, if I can figure out a way to mount a 240 rad to the HDD cage (there is a mount for 2 120mm fans on the inside most part of it), and mount it cleanly, I may switch the 120 to a 240. Most of the installs with a 240 in that postition have to ride it up the cage because the mounts sits nearly flush with the bottom of the chassis.

Mr. K6 said:
I would put air out of the case through both rads. Sucking warm air into the case over the rad is just counter-intuitive. Once you have all that hot air inside the case, you need more fans to pump it back out
Click to expand...

This was my take on it. I feel that with the amount of air I can move in this case that temperatures would not be effected largely by having the rads in an exhaust setup. I had the 120 as intake but that could easily be flipped (if it even stays in the build.

In that case air flow should work out nicely, with the front 230mm feeding cool air to that area, and the rear 120 and expansion area feeding cool air to the 360.
 
Also, would it be acceptable to use my Swiftech MCRES in a large loop? I use it now in my modified H50 setup, but if I can I wouldn't mind moving it over to this. Is there some large benefit to having a large res?
 
Sucking warm air into the case from the outside? I guess you dont have air condition. Because my fans are blowin 72F(68F in the winter) air conditioned air threw my radiators. Yours are blowing hot air from inside the case outward.
 
Don't worry too much about the direction of your airflow, as long as you have a general direction with the airflow, it won't make that much difference in the long run. The rest of your components, since you are watercooling, aren't going to let off that much heat into the air. Your ram a little, and hard drives barely any.
If you're looking for max overclock/highest cooling, then it might make a difference.
I have a pretty large loop, and I use the swiftech Microres. It required a bit of manipulation when first filling the system - I had to pretty much feed the res for the first few minutes in order to fill whole system. I think it was mentioned that the res should be above the pump or you want to get a reservoir pump top. The loop will work if the res isn't above the pump, but it's usually a big pain to fill and drain.
There are a couple of benefits to larger reservoirs. It's usually very easy to fill up the system, since they hold so much. Also large bay reservoirs are easy to see the water level. I use to use a large bay, but I'm happy with the microres now.
Other things to keep in mind for the first build is tubing size, fittings - I'm sure you've read by now that the common fill liquid is distilled water with pt nuke and/or silver kill coil. Definitely research if you haven't by now how to test your loop outside of your comp.
 
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=260074 - another atcs 840 thread I randomly came across...

Yea - I have to spend a little more time filling a small reservoir. If I wanted a larger one, I'd go with a tube-style multi-option reservoir, or perhaps a Bay-reservoir w/o the integrated pump. I just like the versatility of the Swifty MCres, and it seems to bleed more easily than the other (thicker-skinned) reservoirs.

Airflow direction: No way to prove which orientation will be best for your setup w/o trying it. If you have enough directed airflow, then the case air won't be significantly hotter than ambient anyway.

If you want to intake through all radiators, then you'd need to flip the top-rear fan to exhaust. You'd need more exhaust overall to control the heat expelled from the radiators. If you think you can create a predictable and controlled flow path, then go for it.

Whereas if you exhaust through the radiators, then fresh air will be drawn into the case toward the radiators. There will be one primary flow pattern - less chaotic. This choice is probably more common, but I can't say which one will work better.
 
My temp probes that are connected to my t-balancer inside my case read 29C during gaming. My ambient temp in my room is between 22-23C. And I probably have a slightly positive pressure fan setup with 4 120mm radiator intake fans, and 2 120mm exhaust fans, and the psu exhausting as well.
 
Ok, I think I'm pretty much set as far as layout and components go. So much reading has been done.

Now my questions are:

  • I'll be going with 1/2 inch tubing. What is going to be the difference between using the 1/2in. x 5/8in. vs. 1/2in. x 3/4in.. Ill be using a barb/clamp combo for fittings and I have plenty of room for large bends, if either of those factor in.
  • Which is a better option: silver coil thingy or liquid anti microbials.

Thanks for all the opinions thus far as well.
 
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