Yet another new to watercooling thread

[Daemas]

I am not water cooling right now (obviously), but will be water cooling my next PC (whenever sandy bridge comes out) and I wanted to start getting together a list of parts (or types of parts) to be on the look out for in the hot deals section of various web sites.

I was probably going to go with either the 800D, or Corsair's second case, or a MM Pinnacle. I will probably go with the MM case because I can customize it, etc.

So here's what I'm looking to water cool:
CPU (sandy bridge, 4c/8t) OCed to probably 4-4.5GHz
Northbridge (if x68 has one, hopefully not)
VRMs/mosfets/misc power circuitry
southbridge (only if I end up doing a full board block)

I think that I'll probably only need a 120.3 for that (maybe even a 120.2 depending on how awesome 32nm voltage is). I'm probably going to go with low or medium fans so I need a radiator that works well for those types of fans. I heard that the Thermochill PA120.3 is king of the hill in this price segment. Is there anything better out there? (while keeping prices reasonable)

Was probably going to go with a shroud + 3 yate loon mediums or 3 1850rpm gentle typhoons on a fan controller (unless of course better fans come along in the next year). thoughts?

I was thinking about maybe adding a ATi 6870/7870 to the loop later on and was hoping that I could just add a 120.2 radiator to the loop instead of making two loops. If I were to do that, how good/powerful of a pump would I have to get? Is the Swiftech MCP655 a good one?

I keep hearing a bunch of talk about tops on reservoirs. What's a good res and top combo? (links please) (no 5.25 units because I'll only have 3 bays in the MM case)

3/8" or 1/2" tubing? Was probably going to go with Tygon unless something else killer comes out? thoughts? I'm just gonna run distilled water plus silver.

HK3.0 water block? anything else out there that is as good/better?

Finally, since most of the parts I just named off are probably going to be obsolete in a year, what stats should I be looking for in my parts? Whenever I read reviews of water cooling parts I see a bunch of graphs about flow rate and this and that but it all might as well be in french because I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to be looking for in a pump/rad/water block.

thanks in advance.

 

[flogge]

This is pure speculation, but I would bet the stock TDP of the Sandy Bridge CPU is the same or higher than i7 parts. If they can get better clocks in a lower TDP, they will just keep pushing the clocks until they get to the max feasible TDP.

You can effectively cool a full board and a CPU with a 2x120 radiator, but to max out the OC you will want to use a 3x if you have room for it. By then 2x140mm radiators might be more mainstream. I don't see any problem with running a series loop like res->pump->block->rad->GPU->rad->res etc. Or if you can fit a monster rad like a 4x120 or a 3x140 you could cool CPU, board, and GPU all with one radiator.

Swiftech Apogee XT CPU block seems to test out just a hair better than a HK 3.0, but some think the HK is a little better workmanship while Swiftech has a customer service presence in the US. I'm betting a new KotH will appear before you build this rig.

Swiftech MCP 655 is a solid pump according to most reviews and such. The talk you hear about tops and reservoirs is talking about pump tops. the MCP350/355 can have it's performance nearly doubled by putting a better top on it. Some companies have created pump tops that are also reservoirs so you get better pump performance and you eliminate a tubing run between res and pump.