"Ok, thank you jrautmo and bigben for the feedback"...........(I'll say
)
Anyways,
Pictures are worth a thousand words but your discription should do nicely as well
Ok, yours systems water lines should be full at all times. The lines should never have air in them - it just looks tacky for one thing
The purpose for a res. is to simply be a place where air can collect and be separated from the water. It just accelerates the "bleeding" process. It also serves as a convienent place to refill the water in your setup.
If you have an all copper setup (i.e. copper waterblock, copper radiator, copper GPU block, etc) then I would suggest sticking to straight DISTILLED water. WW is best used when you are worried about corrosion caused by mixed metals in your cooling loop.
Also, if I read your reply correctly, why are you running a 1/2" tube system and the connection between your res. and the pump is only 3/8? Am I reading that correctly? IF that is the case, then I would highly recommend increasing that to at least 1/2", larger would be better. Some pumps will make a lot of noise if you have a restrictive inlet.
Finally, having your radiator as the highest part of your cooling loop is not stellar but workable. Keep in mind, air always wants to rise to the higest part of your loop and thus the air wants to sit in your radiator then; not good for cooling. Fill the system with water till no bubbles can be seen in the tubes and then gently rock the case back and forth with the pump running. That should knock loose some more air out of the radiator. Do that several times until you cant get any more air out of the system.
BTW why was my name soo hard to remember? Its rather easy to remeber: j + trout + man - n. Maybe I should just used my regular alias from now on; FireFox