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Setting up a new water loop

Risant

Risant

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 19, 2004
Messages
160
I have a MCP655 pump and a few other components I don't plan on reusing.

I will be cooling a Xfx 7970 Black edition and a intel 2500k processor.

I am going to buy a Koolance full coverage gpu block and the Koolance 370 extreme cpu block. I plan to buy the Koolance 3x120 radiator which should fit in the bottom of my Silverstone RV-03 case.

I want to build a manifold (I like to build things with metal) and I am torn between using a copper block or stainless steel. Can anyone tell me an advantage of one over the other as the cost will be approximately the same for a similar sized block. I found a decent chunk at the local scrap yard of copper that they are holding for me, they don't take credit cards and were closing in like 5 mins. The other option would be ordering the stainless online which of course would take a while and I can't even start to build the loop until I have the manifold built, which would take a few days at least.

The other question is, can you even use stainless in a watercooling loop. I know Aluminum is a big no no, I almost went that route since I found a premade one that someone was throwing out, before I remembered that copper and aluminum in the same loop is very bad.
 
I am still a novice on water cooling myself, but I do know some things from a lot of research and trial. You want to stay away from anything but copper or nickel. You will find most of the best parts, like those used in the Maximum PC 2012 build use those alloys. Good, high quality parts are going to cost quite a bit, for example, the new EK "Full Nickel" CPU cooling blocks are about $95 each. However, you get what you pay for and should keep that in mind.

Wish I could help more, but using solid copper or nickel is best I think.
 
I did wind up buying the copper block to work on, found a chunk at the local scrap yard that was about 5 pounds it is about 2 1/4" x 4" x 1 1/4" now that I have the ends all squared off. I also have all my holes drilled. I have 2 holes in each end 6 on the face and 2 on both the left and right. I plan to tap them all to G1/4" bsp as soon as I get my tap. The block features 2 separate circuits so that I can distribute the water to several different blocks and then return to the same radiators and reservoir. I will take a pic when I get a chance. Nickel wasn't really an option, I couldn't find a place I could get a decent size block for less than $60 (i got the copper one for $25 with tax)
 
Stainless would have been fine as far as mixing metals goes, btw. It's just not as good as copper for thermal conductivity.
 
Wasn't concerned about conductivity, since it is only a manifold. If I manage to screw up the copper one I may try stainless. Went with the copper since I could get it the same price locally (as scrap)
 
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