New Setup

[james.m.flood]

I had been toying with a new idea for my WC setup, which no one else seems to have done... and a few days ago i took it all apart and tried it out...

the wc equipment i'm using can be seen in my sig,

basicaly what i did was take my one loop that had everything in it and split it into two loops,
1st loop: pump -> cpu -> rad -> pump (t-line after rad, using y-addaptor)
2nd loop: vga <-> northbridge <-> hard-drive <-> reservoir <-> vga

so yeah, the second loop has no pump, but the reservoir is the highest component in the system and it always feels a few degrees warmer then the blocks... i am not certain of this, but if i had to hypothesize i would say that it has to do with the heat convection occuring...

needless to say the first loop gives me WAY better temperatures on my cpu... around 33C,
and my temperatures on my video, nb, and hard drive are pretty good still... around 28C
it seems that the passive cooling on those components is more then enough

i thought this might be interesting to you tweakers out there who dont like the fact that the cpu is getting warmed up by the other components in the Water Loop, or the other way around, the cpu is warming the other components up!

Does anyone have experience with pumpless water loops and have any valuable insight to offer? would be appreciated

*i'll post pictures soon*

 

[BigTaf]

wont the water just heat up over time? Under use I mean. Id try playing an intensive game for a couple of hours and see what happens

 

[Erasmus354]

i thought this might be interesting to you tweakers out there who dont like the fact that the cpu is getting warmed up by the other components in the Water Loop, or the other way around, the cpu is warming the other components up!

The effect of components heating each other up is relatively minimal. Assuming you have a radiator that is large enough to handle the heat output of the components. The water does not really heat up as it moves throught the loop.read


As for the passive watercooling loop. You are going to want to at least have a radiator in the loop, once your videocard starts getting under load and putting some real wattage into the loop the resevoir wont be able to passively radiate off the heat. The idea has been discussed here. There was even a water cooling kit reviewed at overclockers.com a while ago that used the same principle. Overall the principle does work, but it does not provide very good cooling, certainly no better if not worse than air cooling.

 

[james.m.flood]

The effect of components heating each other up is relatively minimal. read

I read that thread, 0.5C increase is not minimal in my opinion, if you consider the amount of money that is put into dropping a few degrees.
Also, even if the other blocks are adding minimal heat to the loop, they are also decreasing flow. As a result they are increasing the overall temperature.

This i can state form experience, as one week ago my cpu temps ranged from 36 to 40, but now they are from 31 to 34, and they only get to 34 after 4 hours of cpu-burn while playing quake3 at the same time.

And the only change i made to the loop was taking out the other blocks.

As for the passive watercooling loop. You are going to want to at least have a radiator in the loop, once your videocard starts getting under load and putting some real wattage into the loop the resevoir wont be able to passively radiate off the heat. The idea has been discussed here. There was even a water cooling kit reviewed at overclockers.com a while ago that used the same principle. Overall the principle does work, but it does not provide very good cooling, certainly no better if not worse than air cooling.

I read that thread also, and no conclusion was drawn from it, it's just people arguing for 3 long pages, and not only that, no one there had actualy experimented with it to put their actions where their mouths are.
Also, they were talking about passively cooling the whole system,
my cpu generates significantly more heat then my video-card does.

I admit that this may be a ridiculous concept if you have a high end video card being overclocked.

In addition to all that, i have measured the amount of water in my passive loop to be about 1.5 cups (about 400ml) which seems to be enough of a body of water to regulate the temperature.

And had already done as you suggested, but forgotten to mention it. I did run intensive video, combined with cpu for several hours..

ALL said and DONE: i am getting lower temps all around...

 

[Erasmus354]

0.5C is minimal when cooling the processor, just because the water is that much hotter does not meant the processor is. What you pointed out with the blocks adding restriction however is very true. When watercooling, the flow is much more important than the water being a little bit hotter. Also, what radiator are you using? It could well be that your radiator was simply not up to the task of cooling all of the components in your system, by removing some of the heat you greatly helped the radiator in keeping a lower equilibrium temperature.

I also doubt that your second loop would work on anything other than an FX5200 or similar card Those low end cards come close to being able to be passively cooled with a HS anyways. I am glad that it has worked so well for you, and other people who want to watercool parts like their HD or NB might very well consider doing something similar to your setup.

 

[BigTaf]

hmm just noticed your using it on a FX5200 that should explain the low temps

I take it your not much of a gamer? if not I cant see how that passive loop for the videocard and chipset wouldnt work. Expirimented with my loop by simply unplugging the pump. Temps wernt great ~60c cpu but there was a point where they seemed to stabalize.

 

[james.m.flood]

well, i am a gamer.. just not the kind that seems to demand massive video perfomance... i seem to be stuck in the past playing games like
quake3, starcraft, emulated playstation: FF7, GT, GT2, Armored Core, emulated ZSNES, the megamans

for those applications my FX5200 well configured gives me well above 200fps.. even in quake with everything at highest res...

the only game i've wanted to try that was running slow was doom3, and apparently its dissapointing

is it wrong for me to assume that there are non-intense gamers out there who use watercooling? ;-)

 

[BigTaf]

is it wrong for me to assume that there are non-intense gamers out there who use watercooling? ;-)

Im sure there are, just as im sure there are people who dont game at all and use watercooling, but I think statistics speak for themselves, usually those who want to watercool, want more speed, and need it for something .

Anyway didnt mean to offend, but btw Doom 3 was great, once, after that it gets damn boring, Check out Chronicles of Riddick just finished it and its probably the most polished game ive seen in a long time