Thinking about going to watercooling..

[alghazanth]

And I want to go with a custom set-up after recently seeing my friend do it (and I was mucho impressed with the outcomde!). Now some questions I have are;


-What's the resevoir for (well, I know what it's for..), but over all would it be better then a fill tube coming out the back of my case?

-Pumps, what's good, what isn't? What's the difference between a pump inside a resevoir and a pump outside (performance wise)?

-Water blocks... my friend uses the something Spir@l and enjoys the nice amount of cooling he's getting (he did lap it, too). What would you guys recommend?


I've pretty much got the setup all mapped out, just those three things mentioned above are my only real concerns/questions.


Thanks.

 

[TheArchitect]

The resevoir does two things, it enables more water to be part of the system which makes it able to store more heat (this doesn't really do anythign but take longer for it to heat up or cool down), the 2nd is that i makes it easy to put water in and get air out. The T-section with a tube unless its a big T-section like 3/4 or bigger still is hard to get all teh air out, a resevoir just catches it.

The hydor L30 is wut i have and it is very quite and pushes a good amount of water with good pressure, there are others that are more designed for head but have less flow, or you can go with a bigger class like the hydor L50 which has huge stats but also very much overkill for anythign but multiple systesm being cooled.

The spiral is good but it is far from the best, the little river white water seems to be the leader still aside from custom order ones, but i perfer hands on so i made my own.

 

[z3r0-]

Best block would be the white water, RBX, or TDX. I deffinatly reccomend a res because after using a Tsplit I never want to again... Best pumps:well theres alot. The Hydor L30 and Eheim 1250 are the most commonly used but the Eheim is over priced and the Dannar Mag3 is a better pump. Than theres the Via Aqua 1300 which is the commonly used value pump. If you seal it up so it doesent leak its a pretty good pump. The three 12V pumps (dangerden, swifftech and aquaextreme. The latter two are the same pump pretty much) are also very good choices and since there pressure pumps they work great with the high flow resistant RBX and white water blocks.

As for running the pump inline (outside of res) or submersed (inside, duh) its all a matter of res size. If you have a large enough external or custom made res to be able to submerse the pump and its a submersible pump by all means do it. It makes filling a bit easier and bleeding alot easier.

 

[alghazanth]

Where would I go about purchasing this stuff, online retailer perhaps? And can't you buy a pump from a pet store? The fish section rather..

 

[Dark Ember]

Where would I go about purchasing this stuff, online retailer perhaps? And can't you buy a pump from a pet store? The fish section rather..

yeah, marinedepot.com sells pumps. Iwaki, Danner, etc. Don't think they have any 12V pumps there though, if thats what you're looking for.

I absolutely love the 12V pump Danger Den is selling these days (the Laing D4) though. That thing packs a punch! I'm using that with a white water block right now, and it pretty much kicks ass. I also prefer the res to the T line, unless you are *really* strapped for cash. Much less of a pain in the ass to bleed with a res than with a T line (i just switched over the weekend).

Check out this thread too:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=759705
Good stuff in there. Will probably answer a lot of your questions too.

 

[DeViLdUdE]

I have the RBX (Intel) Swiftech MCP600v2 and a reservoir from frozencpu which is all cracked up now but still holds the water and no leaks.

 

[mustang_steve]

I like the swiftech blocks myself, they may not be the best, but they do perform well, and are rather newbie friendly, many of the blocks having socket lug compatible hardware included.

As far as the res or a fill tube, I would go with the res since it is easier to work with than having a single tube.

For pumps, the eheim 1250 is great (i use one myself), the hydor l30, swiftech 600 (12v), and the danner mag3 all seem to be solid pumps. I know some of these pumps have been known to have vibration issues, but there are easy ways to deal with that.

 

[WuTangClam]

The only problem with submersing the pump in the resevoir is that the pump dumps heat into the water, which raises your coolant temperature. Whether or not this affects your cooling performance depends on your radiator, but for me the temps are the same whether I run submersed or not.