Very Ambitious Extreme Cooling loop, promise pictures as i build!
 

Dear Water-cooling veterans & experts ;D,

Please give me some advice, which would you loop would you recommend at the bottom?
Is it true that in my setup i should have the external reservoirs above the case to not hinder flow?
Does the tubing length matter?
Does having three pumps on one loop make it counter efficient?

My goal is to cool all these parts to minimize sound all while getting my parts around 40c idle. I will more than likely over-clock the CPU from 2.6 GHzto 3.6GHz. Budget is $1500.00 US dollars for cooling.

System Parts:

Thermaltake Mozart TX – Probably the most accommodating case for water-cooling since it has 4 chambers in it. I will use one for system and the second largest area to house all pumps to enclose noise.
Thermaltake Toughpower modular 1200w PSU (85%+)
Evga’s 680i (yes the south bridge does get super hot for all naysayers)
Intel Q6600 2.60 GHz ~> 3.60 GHz
2 EVGA’s 8800 GT in SLI (new version released Oct 2007)
Corsair Dominator 2GBs + Team Xtreem DARK 1GB = 3 GB dual channel DDR2 1066 memory
Highpoint Rocket RAID 3220 SATA-II RAID Controller
Creative Sound X-FI
2 WD Raptor 150GB Raid 0
2 Seagate barracuda’s 250GB Raid 1
1 Samsung Spinpoint 750GB

Liquid Cooling Parts:

Swiftech Apogee GTX (CPU)
2x Swiftech MCW60 + MCW8800 ram sinks (GPU + GPU RAM)
Swiftech MCW30 (NB)
EK NF4 (SB)
EK 680i MOSFET (MOSFET)
3x Swiftech MCP655 Pumps
3x XSPC 150mm Passive FINNED reservoirs
2x Danger Den Black-Ice Pro 120 Stealth
all in a ½” tubing

Which should I do?

Single Loop:

Pump1> RES> CPU> radiator1> PUMP2> RES2> NB+SB+MOSFET> radiator2> PUMP3> RES3> 2 8800GT SLI> radiator3> pump1

Three independent loops:
Pump>RES> CPU> radiator >PUMP
Pump>RES> NB+SB+MOSFET>radiator>PUMP
PUMP>RES>2 8800GT SLI> radiator>pump

Patiently Waiting,
Ambitious one

Re: Very Ambitious Extreme Cooling loop, promise pictures as i build!
 

A heat load calculation. What makes you think that setup will work?

Your heat sources will generate too much heat for those rads.

And you can't do a heat load calculation without knowing what fans (and hence how much air will flow through the rads).

Re: Very Ambitious Extreme Cooling loop, promise pictures as i build!
 

You'll find it's actually very cramped inside when it comes to watercooling - it's not really a suitable case for anything other than Thermaltake's own rads.

Loose the passive reservoirs - they're aluminium automotive transmission coolers that won't do a great deal for cooling at all. Pointless other than for looks, and why introduce aluminium into the loop unnecessarily?

You'd be better looking at a MountainMods Duality case and kitting it out with 2x PA120.3 radiators.

Have a look at http://www.over-clock.com/ivb/index.php?showtopic=19918

Re: Very Ambitious Extreme Cooling loop, promise pictures as i build!
 

@ bill - i meant three of them... but after reading alot more and doing the calculations...i will have to use three mcr320s.. with yate loons or nexus fans.

@ Marci... first of all i have to say i really admire your builds and your expertise..i have been reading alot of forums and see your post quite often. but to the point...i liked the reservoir looks and in my theory if water i can introduce more water in the loops and have the reservoir also cool then i would be able to lower the fans... hence less noise. Mountain mods are very nice looking cases but they cost top dollar... and are huge! i just might go with that though. i know the XSPC res. is a debataed part..but my friends temp stayed the same with his fans at half speed when he incorporated it into his loop.

once gain thanks you all

Re: Very Ambitious Extreme Cooling loop, promise pictures as i build!
 

Evening all, nice setup your going to run there. Im fairly new to the world of custom setups but ive got 8 years of race engine building experience behind me so shifting heat quicklys what i do.

When i built a setup for few mates of mine (and the same system im building now) i was appaled at the amount of money people were spending to get was is quite ineffective cooling.
First off how vital is it to you that everything is contained inside the case? on all the builds ive done ive always insisted on a rad outside of the case. Its completely illogical to take heat away from a system only to have the fan blow the heat from the rad straight back over the areas youve just cooled and raise the ambient temperature again. Youl never be able to cool every nook and cranny but drop the ambient temps and you find everything runs a whole lot smoother. my setups have all had external rad boxes with 2 rads mounted at 45degs one above the other so they form a point with the fans sucking through into the v. Its the most efficient way to cool them without having them laying flat with the fans sucking up through them but that takes up more space.
We also used ally 'tunnels' around the mobo to completely seal it in in its own air venturi to get as much air speed as possible over the board and keep the noise of the suck and the blow fan in.
one of the setups was used heavily for long hours every day so to keep it even cooler the fans and rad blowers were ducted down through the ceilings fromt he roof eaves and through a drypack filter:dome: very cool if the misses will let you get away with it!
The other advantage of an enclosed ducted system is you can get huge airspeeds and efficient cooling without any of the noise and with far less power, if i had to design something to stop laminair flow it would be the inside of a computer case
And finally the most important point in any fan cooled system (and most bedroom activities hehe) SUCK dont blow. without going into the physics of it a vacuum will even its self out around objects in its way with minimal hassle, a pressured air wave like that from a fan will hit stuff and bounce off all over the place destroying the airflow. Straight smooth airflow is fat and fast airflow cools.

hope that can help some people with the basics of a good system, after all a poor design with a big rad and loads of fans is a lot noisier and more complicated than a good system with few components. And my apologies to anyone that this is below but ive seen some of the systems used by people and hopefully that can out them back on the right track:)

Re: Very Ambitious Extreme Cooling loop, promise pictures as i build!
 

What's the world coming to, or back to...you here, BillA on OCForums?????