Will radiator barb size bottleneck loop?

J

JRW21

Gawd
Joined
Dec 14, 2006
Messages
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I am building a new loop and I found a nice radiator I would like to add to the loop, however it is 3/8". My concern is my loop will be 1/2" and my radiator will be 3/8". I have a pump that delivers 370gph. I am wondering how much of a bottleneck the radiator will cause to my loop.

I was also wondering if putting a res before and after the radiator would solve the issue, if needed.
 
As Arcy said, not much of a difference at all. To be honest, the more stuff in the loop (or even the more hosing), the more flow-loss you're going to have.
 
If you are still concerned about it, you can get a multiple bonus by using 2 radiators in parallel as this wont be a bottleneck at all, will have twice the surface area and as the water runs at half the speed through each rad, it remains in contact with the surfaces for longer too.

To iceredwing
it looks like his barb size is the same as the radiator although you could be right from the way the thread is named.
 
its not a traditional pc watercooling radiator, so no barb changing options. And yes the nipple/barb size is the same as the tube going through the radiator, I worded the title a little misleading.
 
Nenu said:
If you are still concerned about it, you can get a multiple bonus by using 2 radiators in parallel as this wont be a bottleneck at all, will have twice the surface area and as the water runs at half the speed through each rad, it remains in contact with the surfaces for longer too.

To iceredwing
it looks like his barb size is the same as the radiator although you could be right from the way the thread is named.
Click to expand...

Do you have any more information on this? I'm interested in some more complicated loops and this looks like a good place to start.
 
well you could do something like, Resevoir -> pump -> blocks -> radiator so if the flow is hampering the loop, it would be at the end when it is dumping the water to the resevoir.

Ideally you want good flow when water is going into the radiator, so you could also add another pump in between the last block and the radiator
 
Monkeypillow said:
Do you have any more information on this? I'm interested in some more complicated loops and this looks like a good place to start.
Click to expand...

I only have my common sense to explain it as I'm done searching the web today :)
Parallel radiators have the following

Losses:
2 radiators will need an extra splitter causing a slight flow loss.
Pressure is halved in each radiator so there is not as much force pushing the water on to the cooling tubes.
This will reduce the max potential cooling but the loss isnt much.

Gains:
Much less resistance to water flow over the same radiator length so overall water flow may actually increase.
Double the surface area so there is double the amount of water in contact with a cooling surface.
As the water flowing in/out of the radiator setup remains almost constant and there is double the number of tubes for water to flow through, the flowrate is halved.
So you have now got double the surface area and water being cooled for twice as long.


As you can never get the water cooler than ambient temp, the temp differences are very small in degrees C but as the heat capacity of water is massive, those small differences can get you a higher overclock.

If you didnt have a barb bottleneck point, 2 radiators will still give better performance than 1 so in your case it will have more benefit if you have to use 2 of that same radiator.

Use Y splitters (not T splitters) to separate/join the water flow to/from each radiator as this gives less resistance to flow.

Dont stack the radiators, let them have their own cool air supply.
 
There is minimal advantage to 2 radiators in parallel compared to in series. The main difference is 2 radiators compared to 1.

The water spends the same amount of time in contact with the cooling surfaces in a series configuration as in a parallel. It spends twice as long in 1 radiator (parallel) or normal length of time in 2 radiators (series). No advantage there.

The only advantage might be if the radiators are a very restrictive type, then slowing the flow rate down could reduce resistance and improve flow. However, with a quality rad (Swiftech, ThermoChill, etc), this really isn't an issue.
 
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