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Water Cooling newb..Will This Work?

A

awspeed

n00b
Joined
May 10, 2009
Messages
12
waterloop.jpg

This is my first attempt at water cooling and I hope to get a stable 4ghz from the 955 and I don't yet know what clock I will flash to the 295 if any.
My drain tee will be lower than both the Radiator and the Pump. I'm using tees with main flow traveling straight through and hope this won't create too much restriction.I would like to set the pump with the inlet facing up to keep sharp bends from restricting flow. I'm using 1/2" barbs and intend to use 7/16" tube for a tighter connection. Or should I use 1/2" hose? I read here that using the smaller hose could help prevent leaking and I know from experience that over time,constant changes from hot to cold can cause plastic tube to become hard and loose. Should I go with the old metal worm gear hose clamps, Acetal Snapper Type Hose Clamps, simply use wire ties or maybe you can advise something better?
I'm wondering if it would be worth the possible flow restriction to add a y branch so as to add a temp. sensor and for ease of mind should I add a Flow meter? I'll be using a Scythe KM01-BK "KAZE MASTER" to keep an eye on temps and fan speeds and was thinking of using one of the controllers to monitor the temp of the water and controll the three fans on the Feser 360. I was told the slower fans would work well with the Feser 360 and the fans I chose have a top speed of 1600 RPMs and 63.7CFM.
Most importantly do you think the Feser 360 will be enought to cool the unit. If so, do you think there will be any headroom for say the addition of another BFG 295?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
FinishedWaterLoop.jpg
 
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the layout of the loop is good. i like to use a reservoir because they look cool and theyre easier to work with, but a fillport and drain work just fine if youre careful and set everything up right. it looks like you thought things through pretty well.

that should be enough cooling for the 295. remember that that is 2 GPUs youre cooling, in addition to the CPU. if you wanted to add another 295 i would say adding another radiator into the loop, a 120.2, would definitely be necessary. you may not need another pump for 2 rads ant 3 water blocks, but if you notice your flow is especially weak after that then add another pump midway through the loop, or create a second loop.

T fittings will not create noticeable restriction in your loop.

as for clamps, i always recommend worm clamps with 1/2"ID tubing. safest way to go. with hose clamps you dont need 7/16"ID and you actually might cut it easier with the clamps. tighten until theyre snug, but not overtight. never use zip ties unless youre prepared to deal with leaks and like ugly things. the plastic clamps appear to work pretty well but you do have to work pretty hard to get them tight enough, and theyre a pain to remove. pretty much go with hose clamps unless you really hate the look, or you cant fit them in a tight area of the case. 1/2" or 7/16" is up to you. either one works great if you just do it right.
 
Diagram looks like it should work fine.

The tees are fine.

7/16" gets my vote.

Worm Drive Clamps.

Flow meter is fine - I'd suggest Koolance's new one.

The fans you chose are fine - but the Kaze's seem to make an annoying clicking noise when undervolted... But, with your heat requirements, I doubt you'll be able to undervolt anyways.

The Feser rad is enough for your current loop... But I don't think you'll get great temps unless you keep your fan at 12v (and even then, you're putting a hell of a lot of heat into your water).

Absolutely not on the dual 295.
 
Great!

I love forums when it comes to doing something you have never done before. I spent several days learning through the forums before designing this loop and it seems I've done well.

I expected the Feser 360 would be close for this loop and started to go with the 480 but I need a starting point to get a feel for the amount of heat the different componets are capable of adding to the loop. Response time should be a little quicker with a system that is close to tolerance. Once I learn more about Water Cooling, I will decide whether or not to go further with the loop (such as Memory, Hard drive,Chipset...)or just stay with air. I believe WCing may be needed for the chipset if I get the overclock I want from the CPU.

Having been an industrial mechanic for 20+ years, I felt the worm drive clamps would be best but I also know they will be the ugliest component in the case so I was hoping there might be a better alternative.

Now if I can find an inline temp. sensor to go with the Koolance Flowmeter...Does anyone make a combined Flow/Temp sensor?

Anyhow thanks for your input, all the help I can get is greatly appreciated.
 
Also, if you want to save some money, get the same performance, and keep the quad radiator, look at XSPC's RX480 radiator. Same performance as the Feser for about $30 less.
 
dont cool your memory or hard drive or an x58 chipset unless youre just looking for something to do. absolutely not worth it for the cost.
 
Yeah. Most of the heatsinks are fine. The X58 runs pretty cool and the heatsinks they give with these boards are good enough. Good to point that out Ekuest.

If your going to cool two 295's, your going to need another triple at the minimum. Those bastards put out a lot of heat.
 
The GIGABYTE GA-MA790FX-UD5P is the motherboard I'm going with so far. I haven't seen a AM3 board that suits my PCIe slot layout other than the Gigabyte.

According to most of the reviews I read 1-295 should suffice for now and if I'm correct Nvidia did not allow BFG to OC their 295. So there may be more head room with the card. I'm trying to future proof this rig but you know how that goes...2 years and its old tech.

So, maybe I can use 2 Feser 360s when I add the 2nd 295, or the next greatest Nvidia release.
The Gigabyte AM3 board I've chosen has a nice Heat Pipe setup for cooling the chipset and the 1200 has plenty of fans. The big problem is mounting the Rads. I think I'll be able to mount the 360 using barrel nuts off the back two fans but I may need to redirect the exhaust from the case fans so as not to add heat to the Rad. I'm looking around for a better way to mount them and if I have to I'm thinking of building a custom inclosure for them just need to decide if I need 2-360s or 2-480s. The first attempt will let me know.

I haven't added a sig to my posts due to not thinking an ASUS GS1n laptop is a real gaming rig. I'll wait till this new build is ready.
 
hm so i just realized when you said AM3 that you are not building an i7 rig. is there a facepalm emoticon somewhere? anyway idk about your chipset on that board, if it needs a cooler or not. i am AMD retarded. i also dont know how much/little your cpu puts out, so anything i said that relies on your build being an i7, just disregard. sorry! still gonna need a lot of cooling capacity for the 295s though fo sho.
 
hey however dumb you felt, you were just coasting off my original stupidity. imagine how i feel.
 
Sorry, Fellas

The Picture showed an AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition...Didn't mean to mislead.

The CPU is a 125 watt and I don't really know what temps to expect either.

Especially when I clock it from its stock 3.2 ghz to 4.0 ghz that I want to run at permanently
 
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you didnt mislead. i/we just totally blew it since we are all such intel fanboyz. thats why it was such a huge fail. :)

you have a pretty decent amount of heat. id say if you get another 295 then use the 120.3 on one and put the other and the cpu on a 120.4. or add everything into one loop.

EDIT: just checked, the 295s generate about 380W at full load. thats about 3 times as much as your cpu EACH. so yeah if you put the cpu and one one a 120.4 and the other on a 120.3 you should get about the same temps on each, and they should be pretty reasonable. if you dont want to do 2 loops, then id say a total of 120.6 in one loop with all 3 blocks should be ok, but no less.
 
lollerskater69 said:
get a 120.4 for the 295(s) and a triple for the cpu.
Click to expand...

the reason i avoided that setup, with the 2x295s on one loop is that then you have 6 times as much heat being dissipated through a radiator that is only 1.25 times as big. definitely dont do that. either split the 295s or put everything on one loop.
 
I agree,
I'll try running the CPU and 1st 295 on a 120.3 and see what my temps are. Then if too high I'll buy a 120.4 for that use and put the 120.3 next in the loop before the 2nd 295. I would rather stick to just one pump but once again I'll need to see what my flow rate is.
I'm told and I understand that the placement of a second rad in the loop isn't too important as the entire loop will eventually even out but I have a hard time believing that sending the accumulated heat from the CPU and the 1st 295 into the second 295 without loosing some of the heat first could be a good idea. Going through the 2nd rad before the 2nd 295 would sound better to me.
This all started when I looked into using a Thermaltake ArmorPlus(Armor+) for my case and then I saw it could come with a built to fit W/Cing kit. I then thought it would be great to cool my CPU and get the BFG295H2O as the promotions for the built in cooler lead me to believe it could handle it. Not being the kind of person to believe everything I read I started looking through the forums and now here I am.
 
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i wouldnt put the rad in between. everyone everywhere who water cools 2 cards in sli or xfire connects them directly to each other. everyone. and to route it out of one card, through a rad, and into the other would be a huge pita. i honestly dont think it will make a difference.
 
Yes this is what I'm told...not having experiance of my own to go on, I'll have to defer to those who have aready been there, such as you.

In a side note: Amazon.com sux...I ordered the 295 from them at the beginning of this month, because Newegg didn't have any in stock. I've been checking my e-mail and to this day they hadn't even charged my account or even started to process the order. I cancled it today and re-ordered from Newegg since they have sinced re-stocked. Ten minutes later Newegg charged my account and sent a e-mail showing that I would have the card within 3 to 4 days. Once again cause it feels so good to say it Amazon.com SUXs!!!
 
:DWell, its been....what, a year or so since I first came here looking to learn how to build my first water loop. I finished it quite awhile back but have been so busy with work that I am just now showing you the finished product.

I didn't go with the single or dual 295s when I found out that a 295 is just a 280 and 260 put together. Now if I had I could have had room for two of them but I figured that a dual 280 setup would be just fine for the latest and greatest games now out on the market.

So here's what I ended up with!!

Case: Antec Twelve Hundred Black ATX Full Tower
Power: CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W
Motherboard: MSI NF980-G65
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 OCed 3.6ghz (RB-C2)
Memory: CORSAIR XMS3 DHX 4GB 1600mhz 9-9-9-24 1T
Sound: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional
Graphics: (SLI) 2 BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 H2OC(Watercooled)
Hard Drives(Windows7):2 VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB Raid0
Hard Drives(Games): 2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB Raid0
Water Pump: Swiftech MCP655
Fluid: Feser One(Clear)
Radiator: Feser XChanger-TFC-360 Triple 120mm Xtreme Performance
CPU Block: D-TEK FuZion v2 CPU Block
Radiator Fans: Scythe S-FLEX SFF21F 120mm
Temp/Fan Speed Monitor: Scythe KM01-BK KAZE MASTER
Tubing: PrimoChill PrimoFlex PRO LRT UV Blue (7/16") Sealed Loop
Fittings: Bitspower G1/4 1/2" Barbs, Elbows, Tees, Fillports and Quad
Inputs: Logitech G-19, G-13, G-500 and Orb Cam
Display: Samsung SyncMaster 2232bw
Speakers: Roccat Kave 5.1 Headphones

http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae9/awspeed/My%20Computer/IMG_0395.jpg
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae9/awspeed/My%20Computer/NewSetup.png
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae9/awspeed/My%20Computer/IMG_0403-Copy.jpg
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae9/awspeed/My%20Computer/IMG_0408.jpg
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae9/awspeed/My%20Computer/IMG_0406.jpg
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae9/awspeed/My%20Computer/IMG_0405.jpg
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae9/awspeed/My%20Computer/36oced2.jpg

As you can see, it's a little dusty in there....well I have been running it for nearly a year. I've tried several different overclocks, including 3.4, 3.6, 3.8 and just a little over 4.0. the system was perfectly stable at all settings below 4.0 but I never quite got it to do 4.0. I beleive this to be due to my lack of skills(patience):rolleyes: Then again it could well be due to the C2 stepping. As for temps. At 3.6 I never see it going over 44C, even after several hours of BFBC2, which seems to heat it up more than any other game.

I have never needed to increase my voltage beyond 1.38 to achieve 3.6 or 3.8 to gain stability. At 4.0 no voltage seemed to help and the temps were reaching levels I didn't like.(55C+) If I took the time to reduce the Multiplier on the CPU and up the other settings such as the FSB and HT, along with the voltages, I could probably achieve 4.0 or better...Other than bragging rights, I simply don't see the need. This computer at 3.6 has Played every game I have thrown at it at max (sometimes beyond) settings and I'm satified. Yeah I know...Crysis would be the ONLY game that won't take max settings, but I have 180+ other games that will...Whats with Crysis anyhow? I even run Metro 2033 at max settings and still be playable...well almost.

There's only one other thing and I think it may be due to where you run your Physics but I've noticed that many people with better CPUs(i7s and such) seem to get a much lower CPU score with the Vantage 3dMark test than I do. I've always been in the 40,000 range, yet they are getting scores below 20,000. Wonder why that is.

Well, there it is and I have this forum to thank for all the ideas that made it possible. So thanks to all who posted on the fourm and made my first Water cooled system possible!!!:D
 
As long as you're happy with your setup that's what matters. 40,000 is a great score for that system.
I think it's your chip. Cos I too my i7 920 d0 to 4.1ghz on air with no sweat. Hopefully water will allow me to take it to 4.3, but we'll just have to see.
 
Thanks for coming back with an update. Your setup looks sharp. I really like the way the anti-kink coils look. I'm going to have to get some of those for my new setup.
 
timta2 said:
Thanks for coming back with an update. Your setup looks sharp. I really like the way the anti-kink coils look. I'm going to have to get some of those for my new setup.
Click to expand...

I added the anti-kink coils when I disassembled the loop to inspect for buildup of calcuim deposits in the heat transfer blocks. Having run the system for a year I expected to find something...What I found was basically nothing. What a nice surprise! Still, I had used Feser Fluid with a UV Blue dye and clear tube originally. I decided to put the loop back together using Primoflex UV Blue tube and Clear Feser Fluid. I added the anti-kink coils because the last setup had the tube going straight from the 1st GPU to the 2nd GPU using a very short barb fitting and a 3/4" length of tube:eek: This was my only possible leak point concern in the loop and I wanted to replace it with the elbows and a U-bend of tube. The old tube had shown some flattening in the bends after a short time of use so I figured the U-bend would be even worse. As it turned out the coils looked pretty good and installed corectly has controlled the flattening of the tube.:D
 
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