Simi-New to water Cooling

[azuros]

Ok, So this is what i am looking at doing. I bought a Q6600 and an 8800GTX a week or so ago and i have been contemplating where i want to go with them. I have dabbled in water cooling in the past but not a whole lot. I am running the DFI Lanparty P35 Board the following is what i am looking at as a set up:

D-Tek Fuzion cpu block
D-Tek Fuzion chipset blocks
DangerDen 5 1/2 drive bay reservoir
Swiftech Stealth Extreme Duty G80
Black Ice Xtreme 2
Swiftech MCP655 Pump

The case i plan on putting this all in is the Cooler Master Stacker 830, so i am sure i have enough room for it all.

Now what i was thinking was running it all in a single loop. Going gpu, nb, cpu, sb, rez, pump, rad.

Now those two areas are where i need advice. i have looked around in the forums and found a bit on it but not much guidance.

So with that Thank you for reading.

 

[videogamer323]

I guess the first questions would be:
Are you looking to overclock?
Which components are you planning on overclocking?
What kind of overlocks on which components (insane on both cpu/gpu or just casual) are you looking for?
What is your budget?

Which 2 areas do you need advice in? Are you talking : “Now what i was thinking was running it all in a single loop. Going gpu, nb, cpu, sb, rez, pump, rad.”

If so sure you could run it in a single loop if you aren't overclocking or very minimal with what you have selected, might even want to look for a triple radiator. And if you are asking about the order of the loop, it doesn't make any noticeable temp difference in a small closed loop system. Make your tubing runs as short as possible and just put the reservoir before the pump (feeding the pump) to keep it from running dry when bleeding, which will makes things a lot easier.

So once we have some more info we can give some better suggestions as to what you need.

 

[Wshmaster0]

Does your P35-T2R have the all in one cooling solution or is it separate?

If you have the all-in-one I would suggest that you do not cool the south bridge with a WC block, instead get a good mosfet cooler as it will gather a lot of heat once you take it off the heatpipe.

Use a simple copper block with an active fan cooling solution for the southbridge.

The clearance between the CPU and the NB is very minimal so you will need to find good tubing that won't kink at that angle.

 

[azuros]

videogamer323 Wrote:
Are you looking to overclock? Yes
Which components are you planning on overclocking? GPU and CPU
What kind of overlocks on which components (insane on both cpu/gpu or just casual) are you looking for? GPU casual ant to get the core clock close to the 8800 ultra from the gtx clocks, CPU is a Q6600 and i want to get it to 3.7
What is your budget? as much as it costs

Which 2 areas do you need advice in? Are you talking : “Now what i was thinking was running it all in a single loop. Going gpu, nb, cpu, sb, rez, pump, rad.”
~as for this you answered the order question i had, so it is more the viability of a single loop or do i need multiple loops

If so sure you could run it in a single loop if you aren't overclocking or very minimal with what you have selected, might even want to look for a triple radiator. And if you are asking about the order of the loop, it doesn't make any noticeable temp difference in a small closed loop system. Make your tubing runs as short as possible and just put the reservoir before the pump (feeding the pump) to keep it from running dry when bleeding, which will makes things a lot easier.

So once we have some more info we can give some better suggestions as to what you need.

 

[azuros]

Does your P35-T2R have the all in one cooling solution or is it separate?

If you have the all-in-one I would suggest that you do not cool the south bridge with a WC block, instead get a good mosfet cooler as it will gather a lot of heat once you take it off the heatpipe.

Use a simple copper block with an active fan cooling solution for the southbridge.

The clearance between the CPU and the NB is very minimal so you will need to find good tubing that won't kink at that angle.

~yes it is one of the P35-T2R's with the all-in-one nb-sb.
to add to this portion then, would it be effected as much on a separate loop, say just a miro-rez with just the nb and sb on the loop?

 

[Arcygenical]

Go for a Swiftech MCR320 radiator if you plan on overclocking at ALL... That Black Ice Xtreme is useless, unless you're using fans over 60cfm. The double radiator would be no better than an Ultra 120 Extreme or something... Might even be worse. For my Q6600 + 8800GTS, I use a triple radiator, and another single radiator somewhere in the loop... Which allows me to turn down my fans some.

Run a single loop. No need for double loops. Infact, double loops would just be cluttered.

Get some Swiftech Smartcoils to help prevent kinking at tight quarters.

And I wouldn't go with that bay res... I had one, they're freaking annoying. Get a Swiftech Micro-Res, or something.

 

[azuros]

Go for a Swiftech MCR320 radiator if you plan on overclocking at ALL... That Black Ice Xtreme is useless, unless you're using fans over 60cfm. The double radiator would be no better than an Ultra 120 Extreme or something... Might even be worse. For my Q6600 + 8800GTS, I use a triple radiator, and another single radiator somewhere in the loop... Which allows me to turn down my fans some.

Run a single loop. No need for double loops. Infact, double loops would just be cluttered.

Get some Swiftech Smartcoils to help prevent kinking at tight quarters.

And I wouldn't go with that bay res... I had one, they're freaking annoying. Get a Swiftech Micro-Res, or something.

Thank you, a couple of those things i had already planned on implementing, like the smartcoils. As for the triple radiator, i might go with 2 dual radiators just because of case layouts, but that might thwart my concerns with adding the nb and sb to the loop.

 

[videogamer323]

Thank you, a couple of those things i had already planned on implementing, like the smartcoils. As for the triple radiator, i might go with 2 dual radiators just because of case layouts, but that might thwart my concerns with adding the nb and sb to the loop.

If you are going for 2 duals then might as well go dual loop. Will only up the cost a little and add a little more work in setup. Clutter won't be that bad imho if you do it right only need to place 1 extra pump, res and a little bit of tubing.
CPU on 1 loop (will allow max oc on cpu this way with lowest temps)
GPU, NB, SB PWM on the other

If you can afford it you can't beat 2 thermochill 120.2 radiators, as they will give you best performance with low/mid cfm fans. If money is no object than do it, it won't disappoint and give you some nice headroom.

As for the reservoir issue, I personally don't use them because I go for silence and you get a little water noise from them. But if you go bay reservoir it would look pretty cool although they are a semi-pain to bleed. If you want ease of setup go with 2 (dual loop) Swiftech Micro-Res like someone else suggested here. Also to keep it a little easy/safer make sure the pump is the lowest part of the loop. If you are doing dual loop you may want to look into dual ddc pumps as they are smaller and easier to fit than the big MCP655 pumps. Also if you think hose size is going to be an issue go with 3/8ths instead of 1/2 will save some space and you won't notice any temp difference in the tubing size. or go with 3/8ths for the gpu/chipset loop and 1/2 for cpu whatever floats your boat and works with the space you have. The options are ENDLESS! haha

 

[azuros]

that is probably the plan now, i think i will be going for the dual loop at this point. a small loop for the gtx and nb and one for the cpu and sb.

 

[Wshmaster0]

that is probably the plan now, i think i will be going for the dual loop at this point. a small loop for the gtx and nb and one for the cpu and sb.

I run a Q6600 on a single loop setup with NB and Graphics connected at 3.6 stable clock on a single loop with a 120.3 Thermochill rad.

If your goal is 3.7 then you need a couple of things to achieve this.

You need a fast low latency memory to compensate for the higher clock. If you plan to go 4GB then I would suggest you pick out sticks that are 2x2gb and NOT 4x1gb.. I can almost guarantee you a nonstable 3.7 on water with 4 sticks of 1GB of DDR2. Do not get PC-800, go for PC-1000 or higher. 2x2GB of PC-1066 are very hard to come by and they are just now being released in the mainstream.

You need to cool the mosfet area. I can't stress this enough as this was a bottleneck that I reached throughout OC'ing tests. Even with my NB running at stable temps, the mosfets which was not being actively cooled at the time was heating up too much and causing a lot of problems.

3.7 is a very high goal for a quad, I would not jump into trying to achieve this clock.

The P35-T2R is a very tweakable board but it is highly sensitive to changes and you will have to work with it a lot to get it to do what you want.

My tips are for you to do your research.

Read this article:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3129

Also keep the loop as simple as possible. The more items you add to the loop the stronger your pump has to be otherwise you will run into pressure drops. Running a two loop setup will be a pain in the ass. Unless you have a specific reason to do a 2 loop (aesthetics or running a multi cpu system) then it probably isn't worth the trouble.

Remember that watercooling isn't the same as phase change and you WILL reach a bottleneck of what the ambient temperature is in the room. Even if you have your CPU and the rest of your parts on separate loops, if the average temperature of the room is still fairly hot, then all your components will not reach temperatures below ambient.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

 

[azuros]

I run a Q6600 on a single loop setup with NB and Graphics connected at 3.6 stable clock on a single loop with a 120.3 Thermochill rad.

If your goal is 3.7 then you need a couple of things to achieve this.

You need a fast low latency memory to compensate for the higher clock. If you plan to go 4GB then I would suggest you pick out sticks that are 2x2gb and NOT 4x1gb.. I can almost guarantee you a nonstable 3.7 on water with 4 sticks of 1GB of DDR2. Do not get PC-800, go for PC-1000 or higher. 2x2GB of PC-1066 are very hard to come by and they are just now being released in the mainstream.

You need to cool the mosfet area. I can't stress this enough as this was a bottleneck that I reached throughout OC'ing tests. Even with my NB running at stable temps, the mosfets which was not being actively cooled at the time was heating up too much and causing a lot of problems.

3.7 is a very high goal for a quad, I would not jump into trying to achieve this clock.

The P35-T2R is a very tweakable board but it is highly sensitive to changes and you will have to work with it a lot to get it to do what you want.

My tips are for you to do your research.

Read this article:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3129

Also keep the loop as simple as possible. The more items you add to the loop the stronger your pump has to be otherwise you will run into pressure drops. Running a two loop setup will be a pain in the ass. Unless you have a specific reason to do a 2 loop (aesthetics or running a multi cpu system) then it probably isn't worth the trouble.

Remember that watercooling isn't the same as phase change and you WILL reach a bottleneck of what the ambient temperature is in the room. Even if you have your CPU and the rest of your parts on separate loops, if the average temperature of the room is still fairly hot, then all your components will not reach temperatures below ambient.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

Hey, thanks for the advice, i am about to read the article you linked on the P35-t2r board. I have yet to fully decided on the loop, but i have ordered at least the main portion of it, block, hoses, ect.. I knew 3.7 was ambitious when i set the goal, and i know i will have to set it up over a few weeks to break everything in to handle it. As for the room it will be in, it stays fairly cool throuhout the year.