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submerged D4 pump

linger

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 18, 2004
Messages
290
So my pump has a pretty loud whine to it, and its starting to get pretty annoying. I have thought about encasing it in a box lined with sound padding, but i thought it might get too hot. Then i thought about submerging it... What i want to know is if its possible. If so is there any thing i have to make sure i do? Should i just used distilled water, or with an additive? Would it be worth it?
This is just an idea, and i have no idea if it will work
thx
 
Yeah, buy a different pump.

I wish I had gone with a different pump, but I mistakenly listed to people saying this thing was quiet... heh. I can only assume that aforementioned people live next to an airport or something.
 
this sucks... before i bought this thing i read people saying this thing was quiet too. Now that i have it i wish i could of gotten something else, but i cant just waste the $70 (I think thats what it was) i spent on this thing
 
i traded my D4 (a swiftech MCP650) for a hydor L30 II(2) with a criticool powerplant and a bayres


MUCH quieter.

get a different pump. <my 2 pennies
 
Thanks man, I almost bought the MCP650. I can stand the noise of the fans...it makes me go to sleep faster....hahhaha,but whine noise I can't stand...hahaha.
 
Makes me glad I stuck with my MCP600 after hearing reports of different new pumps and the whine and noise that goes with them. I've had mine about a year and it's still going strong.

...my $0.02...
 
I run a D4 pump and its wisper silent. The 2 biggest reasons people have noise with this pump are improper mounting or air. Did you use the foam pad to mount it on and bolt it down tight Its not resting against a interior case wall or part? Mounted @ wrong angle? If you have any air in your system it can and will cause the pump to whine a fair amount. Once I got all the air out of my system it went very quiet. Unfortunatly it seems that ocassionally air gets trapped in the pump impeller area and cause the noise. I had to cycle the PSU on an of to get the air out and then let my res help bleed the air out. Just my suggestions. Im pretty happy with my D4.
 
Actually the noise the pump makes has absolutly nothing to do with air or vibrations, but by the way it is powered which from my understanding cannot be "fixed"
 
That freakin' D4 pump makes noise regardless of whether you have air in it or not. Mounting has nothing to do with it either. It's just a loud piece of crap.

I got lucky and as soon as I fired mine up for the first time I emailed DD, where I got it from, and requested a refund on their supposedly 'quiet' pump I bought from them. They refunded me no problem. I bought the AQX-50Z-DC12 which I'm very happy with.
 
qbert95 said:
Actually the noise the pump makes has absolutly nothing to do with air or vibrations, but by the way it is powered which from my understanding cannot be "fixed"
can i see the source of that info, because i've always used the D4 pump design in one way or another in all of my wcooling setup's and every time (save the one time i didn't have vibration dampening stuff on it) it's worked like a dream with less noise than the fan's on my PSU set to low.

i'd have to agree with captin insano here, it just sounds like he either mounted it wrong or got air in it. either way don't let that stop you linger, the enheim's are a good line of pumps and i would recommend getting one if you really want to escape the D4.
 
qbert95 said:
Actually the noise the pump makes has absolutly nothing to do with air or vibrations, but by the way it is powered which from my understanding cannot be "fixed"

Ever owned a D4? Ive got 2. It has noting to do with the way its powered. Its a magnet drive impeller. There is no turning motor or anything but an impeller that has a magent on it and when you plug in the pump and turn it on it activates another magnet that uses push pull of magnetic force to drive the impeller and pump. Its the way they are mounted or that they have air in them. not powered.
 
Yes I own a d4 and there is not a single bubble of air in my line and ive got it mounted on 2 extra layers of foam. Besides the noise it makes does not come from the blades but from the square wave generation circuit that it uses for power.
 
THe more restricted is the loop, the noisier is D4. I experienced that myself, with shorter hoses, I couldn't hear the thing, with longer/thinner hoses, it starts to whine a lot.

I mean u guys don't ahve to argue about it, it's noisy for some and dead-quiet for others ;)
 
Captin Insano said:
Ever owned a D4? Ive got 2. It has noting to do with the way its powered. Its a magnet drive impeller. There is no turning motor or anything but an impeller that has a magent on it and when you plug in the pump and turn it on it activates another magnet that uses push pull of magnetic force to drive the impeller and pump. Its the way they are mounted or that they have air in them. not powered.
This sounds like a very logical answer, so i guess i'll just go with what you say. I have it mounted on the pad, but part of it also has to touch the metal in the case. I knew this was a problem, but i didn't have a quick way to get around it and i didn't think it would be the cause for all the noise. The good thing is that i'm currently building a new case for my water cooling equipment, this time all from scratch, and i will have the room to properly mount the pump.
Thanks to all those that added to my thread, i appreciate all the help i have recieved.
 
Ever owned a D4? Ive got 2. It has noting to do with the way its powered. Its a magnet drive impeller. There is no turning motor or anything but an impeller that has a magent on it and when you plug in the pump and turn it on it activates another magnet that uses push pull of magnetic force to drive the impeller and pump. Its the way they are mounted or that they have air in them. not powered.

I'm pretty convinced that the people who have D4's and say they are quiet don't know what quiet actually is (or they have minor hearing loss in the higher ranges which is not uncommon. A lot of people can't hear certain frequency high pitched noises).

I can assure you my pump is not mounted improperly (it's on two layers of foam) and touches nothing metal in the case. It has no air, I've twisted and turned the case many times to get all the air into my res... the whole loops is totally air free. Initially, when there was air in the system, the pump was MUCH noiser, no doubt... but once the air was bled out, it "quited" down to it's annoying whine.

It's most assuredly the pump and not something that can be adjusted (except by chaning the loop perhaps, as someone mentioned) - so saying this pump is quiet is ridiculous. It's not. It's a noisey pump, and if that depends on the loop restriction then fine, but that doesn't change the fact that the pump is noisey. Trying to blame it on improper mounting or air is ludicrous.

My loop consists of a Black Ice Extreme 120.3, a reservoir a Sliverprop GPU block and a TDX CPU block, nothing else... all fittings are 1/2" with 3/8" tubing except for the reservoir which has 1/2" tubing to the pump.

Maybe I have unusually high restriction but I can't imagine that it's THAT unusual to make the pump whine like it does.
 
Inaba said:
I'm pretty convinced that the people who have D4's and say they are quiet don't know what quiet actually is (or they have minor hearing loss in the higher ranges which is not uncommon. A lot of people can't hear certain frequency high pitched noises).

I can assure you my pump is not mounted improperly (it's on two layers of foam) and touches nothing metal in the case. It has no air, I've twisted and turned the case many times to get all the air into my res... the whole loops is totally air free. Initially, when there was air in the system, the pump was MUCH noiser, no doubt... but once the air was bled out, it "quited" down to it's annoying whine.

It's most assuredly the pump and not something that can be adjusted (except by chaning the loop perhaps, as someone mentioned) - so saying this pump is quiet is ridiculous. It's not. It's a noisey pump, and if that depends on the loop restriction then fine, but that doesn't change the fact that the pump is noisey. Trying to blame it on improper mounting or air is ludicrous.

My loop consists of a Black Ice Extreme 120.3, a reservoir a Sliverprop GPU block and a TDX CPU block, nothing else... all fittings are 1/2" with 3/8" tubing except for the reservoir which has 1/2" tubing to the pump.

Maybe I have unusually high restriction but I can't imagine that it's THAT unusual to make the pump whine like it does.

I can assure you that my hearing range it better then normal I have no problems hearing sound waves @25k and I do know what quiet is. Maybe for you its the opposite. maybey you just get annoyed easily by noise and have over sensitive hearing. What ever the reson is I can tell you the sound of my 120mm fans are far more louder then the pump as well as the fact about the only thing you can hear (besides the fans) is the running water noise as it runs through the system. If the pump were noisy i wouldnt hear that. So just as everything else in this stuff that we do opinions and beliefs will vary. You dont like the D4 and I do. We can definitly agree that we dissagree.
 
If you are worried about the noise of the D4/mcp650 simply buy the AQX-50Z/mcp600. It is quieter in most applications (I say so only because of the confilcting reports of the noise produced by the D4) AND it performs better than the D4 in *nearly* ALL water cooling situations.
 
that would be nice, but i have already own a d4, meaning i have spent the money on it and can't just throw all that down the drain. So... to begin with i'm going to just try to dampen the noise, and if i can't do that then i might thing about buying a new pump
 
couldn't you just build a small wooden/plexi box around it and stuff it full of like pillow stuffing to dampen noise? if temps around the pump are concerned, use some insulation (such as the blow-in kind or get some fiberglass insulation). with a pump you don't have to worry about heat destroying it because i don't think it could ever get that hot, so just build a small enclosure and seal it off.

*note that i haven't tried this because i use an eheim :p
 
that was my original plan, but i wanted to think of something else because i was worried about heat. You mentioned using insulation, wouldn't that just increase the heat? Either way i appreciate the help.
 
Inaba said:
I'm pretty convinced that the people who have D4's and say they are quiet don't know what quiet actually is ...

This is a little rude. I expressly told u that the D4 pump produces more noise with increased restriction. U do have a fairly restricted system - just having 3/8"ID tubing is restricting, and u have 2 blocks. I had one TDX block, one 120mm HC and res connected with 7/16"ID tubing on the table and I couldn't hear the thing. I had to pinch the tubes to see whether water was moving. Later on, when I mounted everything in the case, I had to introduce longer tubing with a few 3/8"ID connections (outside of case, etc) and little bit of 3/8"ID tubing. I immediately heard the notorious D4 whine which I did not observe before.

All depends on what the pump has to fight against when pushing water. THe more effort is required of the pump, the more pronounced is the whine. It's a fact and Cathar actually mentioned it somewhere in his pump comparison thing. I observed it directly. Ppl who can't hear D4 simply have very nice setups with 1/2"id tubing which is fairly short, so D4 does not exert itself as mush as urs. That's why they can't hear the whine and u do.

Just try a simple experiment - build a very short loop outside of the case and see whether u would hear D4. It'll give u an incentive to improve ur setup a lil :D
 
it would produce more heat but how hot can it possibly get? it's not exactly a combustion engine. it's just a magnetically driven pump, but i dunno about that model. i know my eheim wouldn't even flinch
 
i know what your saying, but to the touch, the back of the pump feels somewhat hot, and i'm not sure what would happen.
 
It would get hot and eventually would burn up. That would be the case with any pump. Mag driven or not. The reason is that there is still forms of friction ahppening inside the pump and the do generate heat that way as well as electrically. Not o good Idea to pack it in insulation or box it in unless it were cooled and vented to the out side with a fan. Besides that the heat increase would be induced into the water amd then that would effect your temps to your rig.
 
thats what i was thinking would happen, thanks for the info, don't wanna go and fuck up my pump
 
Captin Insano said:
It would get hot and eventually would burn up. That would be the case with any pump. Mag driven or not. The reason is that there is still forms of friction ahppening inside the pump and the do generate heat that way as well as electrically. Not o good Idea to pack it in insulation or box it in unless it were cooled and vented to the out side with a fan. Besides that the heat increase would be induced into the water amd then that would effect your temps to your rig.


I think it would be a safe bet to say that most of the heat dispersed by the pump is due to electrical resistance, not friction. You can't say that the pump would definitely "burn up" in an enclosure, do you know the maximum temperature that the coils can sustain and the effective thermal conductivity of the enclosure? I know people have done this before, it's not impossible.
 
zer0signal667 said:
I think it would be a safe bet to say that most of the heat dispersed by the pump is due to electrical resistance, not friction. You can't say that the pump would definitely "burn up" in an enclosure, do you know the maximum temperature that the coils can sustain and the effective thermal conductivity of the enclosure? I know people have done this before, it's not impossible.


Ive delt with pumps from small to larger then most of everyones computers here. Most are magnetic driven some are still armature and assemblys that need oiled and the such. Pumps that pump thousands of gallons per hour like 25 to 50 thousand. I CAN tell you and will tell you that it can cause it to burn up if a pump cant breathe and have cool air upon it. As well as then the only thing that then cools such pump will be the water running through the system causing the temps to go up and thus defating the purpose of the water cooler for the computer componets. It may have been done but for how long and what did it do to the temps and did they have an outside airsource blowing on the pump? I bet they did. If a pumps nature is to generate heat wraping it in an insualtion or putting it in an enclosure that will completely deaden sound which means NO airflow. it will get hot and get Hotter until water temps arent good or the pump fails.
 
i don't think there's enough juice running through a pc pump to cause it to have a meltdown, regardless of how you encase it. the eheim draws approx 10w of power, while stuff like the swifty are rated at what, 18w? that's not enough to melt anything. maybe with the open motor pumps like the swifty it will have more impact, but if the pump assembly itself has a shell around it then i don't think there's any way it could get that hot, just not really feasible with those power levels. i understand what you're saying when you talk about high-volume pumps, but you have to keep in mind that these are pumping around 5gpm or so running wide open.

with any power, something will not just keep getting hotter and hotter to infinity. it will get hot to a point and then stabilize, and with a pc waterpump i don't think that point is very high. as i'm sitting here i put my hand on my pump and feel very, very little heat. the only spot on the pump that i really feel anything at all is on the top near the outlet port, the rest of it is quite cool. and if you've taken one of these apart, the actual mechanical structure (moving parts) are very few and surrounded by water.
 
Devilpup said:
i don't think there's enough juice running through a pc pump to cause it to have a meltdown, regardless of how you encase it. the eheim draws approx 10w of power, while stuff like the swifty are rated at what, 18w? that's not enough to melt anything. maybe with the open motor pumps like the swifty it will have more impact, but if the pump assembly itself has a shell around it then i don't think there's any way it could get that hot, just not really feasible with those power levels. i understand what you're saying when you talk about high-volume pumps, but you have to keep in mind that these are pumping around 5gpm or so running wide open.

with any power, something will not just keep getting hotter and hotter to infinity. it will get hot to a point and then stabilize, and with a pc waterpump i don't think that point is very high. as i'm sitting here i put my hand on my pump and feel very, very little heat. the only spot on the pump that i really feel anything at all is on the top near the outlet port, the rest of it is quite cool. and if you've taken one of these apart, the actual mechanical structure (moving parts) are very few and surrounded by water.


One thing that Kills magnetic driven pumps is heat. In fact all manufactures will tell you that if you are servicing the pump and cleaning it to use only cold water as that hot water kills the magnet on the impeller. Ask anyone thats real big into Fish tanks that run whats called a wetdry filtration system and if they know their hobby they will give you the same info.I worked at a fish store thats huge for about 3 years.We run pumps there that are circulating thousands of gallons of water and most those pumps were as large as 25,000 gph.we ran 6 of those pumps and others that were much smaller.(total water volume in the store was fairly close to 10 to 12 thousand gallons) Well before anyone was using these pumps for pc's we were using them for fish tanks. I can tell you right now about many of pumps that I have seen killed by heat. In fact some of them have a thermal overload breaker that if it gets to hot it will shut off and wont turn on till it cools down.Pumps that are in the range that we use for our pc's Not just high volume stuff. Why would they do this? Especially if they are only rated at 10 to 20 watts. SO the watts that a pump is using means nothing at that point. There is a cause and effect that enviroment has on it. here is more that has an effect on a pump then just the watts. A pump that has to pump through restrictions will labor more and can cause added heat.Lets look at it from this aspect. Take a light bulb put it in a 12ft x 12ft room that has an ambient temp of 70 degrees F. The room isnt hot and nor does the temp in the room rise from the bulb. cause the area of air and flow is larger and cools the bulb. Reach up towards the bulb and the air around it is warmer, touch it its even warmer. posibly hot. As you get further from the Bulb its cooler. Now take the same Light bulb put it in a box that has no ventilation possibly even insulated and now run that light bulb. The temp inside the box is gonna get alot hotter and the longer it runs the hotter it gets. Yes It will reach a point of not getting any hotter but it will be much hotter then it should be for the pump to operate at spec.(remeber the pump compents are already in a box as it is the casing) Then throw in other items that are inducing heat The cpu and vid card. The system we are so using to cool with will become no longer able to cool. (With exception of adding MUCH larger radatior and fans.) You might not see any heat from the pump or feel much on the case but try touching the componets inside. Right on the actual componet. They are hot and if they can make the case of the pump actually warmer in temp then that proves those parts are hot. Give them less air and get it hotter see what happens? This is my experence and not just guessing or assuming. So take it for what its worth and do what you would like. but thats my 2c.
 
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