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Iratus

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 16, 2003
Messages
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Currently my watercooled PC is an Enthoo Evolv ATX with a EKWB PE360 and SE360 cooling a 7700k with a 1080ti, Aquacomputer blocks. The SE I had to get as it was the only one that I could get my hands on at the time that would fit in the front of my case. I know it's crap.

I'm about to change my case to a Define 7 so I can fit EATX and will replace three machines with a single workstation. As this will be a threadripper build I'm going to be looking at a ton of heat compared to my current water cooled machine (7700k and 1080Ti) and so I'm a bit concerned I need a bit of a cooling refresh. My 'working' delta t is probably about 15 degrees at the moment, but that is because I have a very gentle fan ramp and obviously the case is pretty crap airflow wise (I was going to sort all that when I got it but got pissed off with the build and just threw it together and gave up).

For existing and new, I prefer things to be ultra quiet as standard, ramping up when gaming / crunching as the GPU obviously chucks out a bunch of heat, and then can put fans full speed to floor it and when everything is maxed (the gaming instance will be like 8-12 cores I'd expect so this is more of a ws type load and would just walk away while it works so noise matters less)

I don't really have a budget given the spec and this being a 5 year purchase (GPU aside), but that doesn't mean I just want to needlessly spend money.

Current Cooling Set Up
Evolv ATX
D5
PE360
SE360
6* 120mm Silent Wings High Speed Edition
Aqua Computer Aquero

Future Build
Fractal Define 7 (standard not XL)
TR 3960 w/ Heatkiller 4
Ampere Titan/Ti depending on what comes out first. Figure 280w
Motherboard for reference will be MSI Creator or Zenith II but makes no difference for this ofc, same with the rest of the bits.

Questions
  1. Is it worth changing my fans as I'll be struggling to shed heat load, or will changing the SE360 out for a HWLabs 360 leave me ok.
  2. If #1 leaves me on the edge, is it worth adding a third radiator to the bottom with say a a Noctua Industrial 3000rpm as a sort of intercooler fan / top up cooling for when it's getting slammed, if so how much would it help
  3. How the hell do you drain a loop with a bottom mount radiator :D
 
Ideally GTR360 but they’re a bit hard to get hold of hence the ambiguity.

Fair enough that I have enough, given I have 300w now and it will be 750w it didn’t seem like that stupid a question given my general preference to run quiet. As I understand 750w needs both radiators to keep 10 degree delta t and that was with vardars at 1800rpm. I couldn’t find more relevent data and the whole matching wc components is beyond me. Lesson learned
 
Iratus said:
Ideally GTR360 but they’re a bit hard to get hold of hence the ambiguity.

Fair enough that I have enough, given I have 300w now and it will be 750w it didn’t seem like that stupid a question given my general preference to run quiet. As I understand 750w needs both radiators to keep 10 degree delta t and that was with vardars at 1800rpm. I couldn’t find more relevent data and the whole matching wc components is beyond me. Lesson learned
Click to expand...
No stupid questions, did not mean to come across that way. As you can tell by my typing I was feeling it last night. IMO dual 360 rads should be plenty, possibly even overkill to cool your TR. Now your build is obviously high end, so for aesthetic reasons you may want to switch to matching HWLabs, your call. Nothing wrong with your fans, see how the temps are and maybe get 3 or 6 more to go push/pull if your not quite satisfied. I like noctua fans, I use them, but I dont think you are going to see a difference worth the 150+ dollars it would take to switchover. Again, unless money is no object and you like the noctuas. The only way to drain a loop with a bottom radiator is to place your drain as low as possible, maybe on the bottom of the res, drain everything above the bottom radiator and then blow the bottom rad out with, yes, your mouth and lungs. However, you can also just do several flushes with distilled water until it is nice and clear. Even if you are adding some premix, the leftover clean distilled in the bottom rad will not affect anything.
 
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I won’t care enough to replace for the aesthetics thankfully, I’m just swapping out the SE360 because it’s a bad radiator and massively reduces flow. Absolute max I’d do for looks is to maybe spray them to be the same color (which I did for my current build anyway)

Thanks for the feedback on the bottom radiator. It’s what I figured. As youre suggesting I’ll try without and then I’ve got additional options in terms of extra fans. All stuff I couldn’t do in my current case.

Keeping the room cool is gonna be a bigger problem I think. Been trying to nurse an underpowered wall mounted ac until I can get ducted and double the capacity but this will PC will probably be the straw that breaks the back.
 
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