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Need some help polishing my setup.

V

valleyman86

n00b
Joined
Apr 29, 2011
Messages
11
Here is the Spreadsheet of what I want to purchase

Disclaimer: I am new to this WC scene and have always wanted to do it. I have done research a few times building a dream setup or basically what I would buy if I did buy it. Well I just ordered a new PC with the new Thermaltake Level 10 GT case. I realize this case isn't the uber water cooling case everyone loves (HAF) but I do like it a lot. Now I have made another setup for my water cooling dreams and oddly enough hardly anything has changed over the years... Tl;DR - I am a newb please help.


About My Setup: Ok so I pieced it all together with cost into a spreadsheet for easy understanding and comparisons. What do you guys think about this? I want to get the best performance I can for the cost. If I have to spend $50 more for a 2-3 degree improvement then no thanks. Im not hardcore but I do plan to overclock my 2500k as much as I can for full time use. I will not be going with a GPU block this round as it adds significant cost and I dont plan on overclocking my video card. I will add this to the loop later so I need to make sure I have enough flow. I will probably need to add an additional radiator (see below for question).

Flow Plan: I would like to put my pump in the bays because this area is never used. I have 1 burner and thats it. I want the radiator to be on the top of the case with fans blowing out in a push config. The fluid will then flow the the CPU and then to the reservoir. For the reservoir I want to either A) mount it on the rear fan (not sure if this is possible because the fan is 140mm. Hmmmm B) Mount it on the radiator so that it is visible in the smallish side window on my case. I think this would look awesome. Then the flow goes back to the pump.

Questions:

1) I am not sure how to mount or where to mount my pump. I want it in the bays but are there any cheap ways to mount it here while keeping vibrations down and not resorting to a new top or res/top?

2) Kind of pertaining to the 1st question I was thinking I could get an xspc d5 res/top and mount everything very easily in the bays. This is ok but I dont know if I trust the acrylic as there has been bad issues in the past as I have read. It also makes my setup look less cool without my plan to mount a round res viewable in the side window.

3) Can I mount the DD Tube Res sideways? Is this a good idea I guess. I am a bit scared that if it ever leaked it would leak on my video cards...

4) I am not sure what to get for liquid/fans. I plan on buying some cheapos for use as shrouds but other than that I have no idea what fans to get for my setup. I read some review that said the radiator is better for low cfm quiet fans. For liquid it sounds like its best to use distilled water and additives? What additives do I need and should I worry about conductivity of it?

5) Is there a way to bring these prices down? I wanted to keep the cost about <$300.

6) I am pretty sure I had another question but I cant think of it at the moment.
 
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1. You can mount the pump wherever you think it's best, you should actually order the parts and see how it fits in your case. As long as the pump is below the reservoir with a direct tube from the reservoir to pump, you should be fine.

2. Personal preference here. XSPC tops are usually fine, you don't have to worry about them.

3. You can mount it sideways, as long as you have a fillport near the top and an outlet near or at the bottom.

4. Shrouds aren't really necessary, they help with about ~2-3 C on radiators like the MCR series. I would go with yate loons, medium speed with a fan controller, since you're only cooling the CPU. Distilled water and silver killcoil are all you need.

5. You can get an XSPC Rasa block, they perform within 1-2 C of the Apogee XT and is much less restrictive. Also about $25 cheaper. I would actually go for a Rasa RS240 or RX240 kit, total cost of those kits is $130 for the RS240 and $160 (I think, these are rough estimates) for the RX240. It's more than enough for what you're planning to do with the system. It also comes with two fans, so that's all you really need for the moment.
 
Hey thanks for that input!

1. I realize I can mount the pump anywhere but I am just not sure how this is usually done. Do you screw stuff into the case to mod a mount or are the solid (hidden) bay mounts I can use? I could mount it tot he bottom of the case but I feel the bays are unused and can be a good place for it especially since its up by the components (less tubing).

2. Yea this is what I gathered from post. Then I got this idea about the tube res sideways and mounted to the radiator and thought it sounded awesome. Of course in my mind everything is perfect.

3. That is exactly what I expected. I dont think the dd res has a port on the side. Are there any tube reservoirs other than frozenq that support some sort of fan/radiator mounts?

4. I know a lot of setups dont have shrouds. But 8 bucks to shroud a radiator seems too cheap to just let it go. I may skip this however and deal with it later when I am more experienced. :)

5. Im not a fan of the pump in that kit. I did some research and its is a great pump but I feel the d5 pumps have just been the way to go for years. They arent new and they are efficient. I can spend the extra cash and feel comfortable about the pump. I also may have found a deal for 80 bucks for a d5 with a bitspower top and a custom mod kit for it. Thats a good deal! I do like the idea of the rasa block. Looks fantastic for its price. I will ponder this a bit more.

Again thanks for the insight.
 
You can just get the Rasa kit and sell off the pump that comes with it, and get the D5 pump you mentioned. It would probably come off costing about the same or a bit less, depending on how much you get for the Rasa pump.

Not sure about reservoirs, I haven't looked much into them. I use a good old cheap Micro-Res V2.

Mounting is your choice. I have my pump sitting on the bottom of my case, not mounted to anything. You can just leave it on the floor of your hard drive bay.

Half of watercooling is your own creativity, using whatever you have at hand to make things work the way you want it to.
 
valleyman86 said:
Hey thanks for that input!

5. Im not a fan of the pump in that kit. I did some research and its is a great pump but I feel the d5 pumps have just been the way to go for years. They arent new and they are efficient. I can spend the extra cash and feel comfortable about the pump. I also may have found a deal for 80 bucks for a d5 with a bitspower top and a custom mod kit for it. Thats a good deal! I do like the idea of the rasa block. Looks fantastic for its price. I will ponder this a bit more.

Again thanks for the insight.
Click to expand...

Just a quick thought about this. You can buy the RX240 kit because all the other components are terrific and sell the pump for $30-$40. That money can go towards the purchase of a D5.

$160-$30+$80 = $210

Try and match this with custom parts and you see how close it is, so it is just a thought.

Like I said, its just a thought but the pump is really not that bad if your not going loop crazy.
 
Oh thats a good idea!

So do you think the radiator from the rasa kit is better than the swiftech?

Well I guess if yours isnt even mounted I could use velco and attach mine to the top of my cd burner. That sounds ok with me actually.
 
The RX series radiators are fantastic. I have the RX360 kit and I love it. The only you'll want to make sure of is that these radiators are very very thick so make sure you have enough room to mount it.

Personally I am not the biggest fan of the swiftech kit mainly because I don't see the cost savings that the XSPC kits have. The pump is the weak part of the kit but if you bought all the components separately with the XSPC kit, the price would be $30-$50 higher which to me is the cost of the XSPC pump anyways. So I look at it as getting a free pump.
 
I think if I were going very strict on a budget you guys are very right. I would totally just go with the rasa kit. I like it but after a bit of thought for my idea and case design that I have in mind I would only be able to use the rx240 and the block which comes out to about the same cost as my current setup when sold separately which is pretty damn good but then I would need to sell the rest of it because I still want to use custom fittings and tubing and the d5.

I see the rasa block is black. Is the fitting holes plastic? Also would they fit 2 1/2in compressions?
 
It will probably fit, I think that also depends a bit on the OD of the compression fittings.

I don't think the fitting holes are plastic, that just seems like it'll be really weak to me. I think it's more on the lines of acetal.
 
I ended up going with

Swiftech Apogee XT (R2 improved flow)
RX240 (it was almost the rs240 but I splurged...)
MCP655 Pump
The XSPC Dual Bay d5 res/top
Primochill Red UV tubing (because I read a lot of neg stuff about UV dyes in coolant)
Enzotech compressions
Scythe PWM fans (hoping my motherboard can deal with these)
Silver KillCoil
UV Cathodes

Thanks for the input. It helped a lot.
 
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