General comments needed - newbie...

[bilbat]

Am planning first water cooling system; have no experience; thinking this:



using these:

1x Danger Den DD-CPX-Pro 12V Pump
1x Black Ice® GT Stealth 360 XFlow High Performance Radiator
1x Swiftech MCRES-MICRO Rev. 2 Reservoir
2x Zalman VGA Water Block for ATI Radeon HD3850, 3870 Series
1x EK-Supreme Universal Premium High Performance Water Block - Acetal
1x EK-SB GA-X38 Northbridge Water Block - Acetal
1x EK-NB/SB 5 Southbridge Water Block - Acetal
1x EK-Mosfet GA X38/48 Mosfet Water Block for Gigabyte Motherboards LGA 775 chipset X38/48
1x Koolance INS-FM17 Coolant Flow Meter & Adapter Board
2x Delrin/Acetal 90 Degree Fitting
4x Delrin/Acetal "T" Fitting

Is this flow diagram optimal, or -

do I need to somehow re-order the flow/splitting?
will I need ball valves after the 'in' tees and ells, to trim up flows?

Any ideas welcomed at this point, BEFORE I start committing cash!!!

Thanks,

Bill

[billbartuska]

Originally Posted by bilbat

Am planning first water cooling system; have no experience

Is this flow diagram optimal, or

You don't mention what motherboard/video cards/CPU you will be cooling, nor do you mention if your goal is a quiet computer, overclocking, or just adding some bling, so it's hard to predict the results you will get with that setup.
So I'll just offer some comments:

The Office/basement idea is not good. To much flow loss.
That pump is marginal, at best. Even though it specs at 211.3 gph, due to restrictions in a typical loop it won't deliver anything near that.
Using "full coverage" VGA coolers locks you into specific video cards - forever.
VGA blocks with copper heat sinks offer later upgradability without having to buy new blocks too.
The Black Ice series of radiators function best with high pressure fans (note, that's high pressure . The BI rads have rather close fin spacings, so they require high CFM (cubic feet per minute) fans with adequate pressure to get the amount of air that is optimum for the BI rads to actually flow through them. Here's a little article on P-Q curves. Note that the same principals apply to centrifugal water pumps.
There are better waterblocks than the EKs. Look at the D-TEK fusion or Swiftech Agogee GT, depending on what you're cooling and what flow rates you will have.
Cooling all that other stuff (NB/SB/mosfets) is rather useless unless you plan on massive overclocks, and even then only the NB will benefit from WCing.
Look at using a T-line instead for a rez.
Flow meters are rather useless. Once you're up and running successfully, they will always read the same. And running the "bucket test" (using a bucket and stopwatch to measure flow rates) will tell you everything you need to know.
Splitting the flow into parallel loops should be avoided. There is no way to control how much flows through each loop. You seem indicate that you realize this with your valve question.

Here's some typical single and double loop setups

[bilbat]

In the order you mention things (kinda):

GB GA-X48-DS5 w/f8a BIOS - Q9550 stepE0 @ 3.825Ghz:
Arctic Cooling Freezer7Pro w/92mm PWM 'daisy-chained' to CoolIt Systems RamFan w/EverFlow F126025BU 60mm PWM;
Sunon KDE1204PFV2 40mm/NorthBridge; EverCool EC3010M12CA 30mm/SouthBridge;
8Gb (4x2) 1066 G.Skill F2-8500CL5D @ 1080 (DDR2-8640) 5-5-5-15 on 2.4(6:5)mult/1333strap...
CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 w/Silverstone SST-CMD01 ESA 5ch fan controller/4ch temp sensor:
3 Arctic AC12L exhaust (top x 2 + rear); 2 Scythe SF12D (HDD cage top + rear); Scythe SF12E bottom intake...
Koutech IO-FPM220 3.5" Floppy & Card Reader; 2 IDE DVD's;
4 150Gb WD Velociraptors in two RAID0 pair-OSs & swaps; 2 1Tb WD RE3s in RAID1-data; 1 Sg 1.5Tb backups...
Multiboot via BootIt NextGeneration:
VistaUltimateX86/VistaUltimateX64/XpProX86/XpProX64(courtesy of TechNet)
Can run in excess of 4Ghz, but heat dump into small room (115ft^2) is atrocious! Less noise would be a plus, as well...

Problem: MOBO has heat pipe cooler on NB/SB/MOSFETs, so when I cool NB, they all have to go... Have MCH @ +.1V @ 1100 - could go higher; SB is pretty 'busy' too; normally run four demanding programs (logic controller development - video/touchscreen development - AutoCAD Electrical for schematics - Studio to develop Office/Interface 'glue') on four monitors, all cranking a half-dozen RAID disks...

Whole reason for WC is to dump the heat elsewhere! Drop from reservoir to rad/pump will be less than three feet. Am industrial systems guy, have done scads of water treatment systems - in a closed loop, gravity is negligible: the mass of the water being 'pushed up' is equal to the mass of the water 'falling'...


From feedback so far, some new info:

1x Swiftech MCP655 Water Pump - $80
1x Swiftech Radiator - MCR320 Quiet Power Res Series 120mm Heat Exchanger - $76
1x Swiftech MCRES-MICRO Rev. 2 Reservoir - $25
2x Koolance VID-385 VGA Water Block for ATI Radeon HD3850 Series - $75
1x EK-Supreme Universal Premium High Performance Water Block - Acetal - $75 (Still out on this - several people have spoken highly of Fusion - gotta look at it...)
1x EK-SB GA-X38 Northbridge Water Block - Acetal - $45
1x EK-NB/SB 5 Southbridge Water Block - Acetal - $45
1x Koolance INS-FM17 Coolant Flow Meter & Adapter Board $39 w/noz
2x Koolance Crossover SLI/xFire Slide Fitting

latest thoughts, & use finned heatsinks on MOSFETs:


Built this development system to last at least five or six years - will not be changing vid cards - proposed vid card setup:

Think this will work, as drop across each side, by definition, can't be anything but equal...

Have four fan speed monitors, w/alarms, on MOBO - will feedback the three (120 CFM+) fans, and flow meter to monitors; plan to power pump/fans from 40 watt 12VDC power supply in basement, switched by relay w/coil hooked up to machine's 12V aux supply... Won't be able to hear it if it stops - want the feedback for safety's sake!


Access to fill will be under 'built into the wall' desk in nook in corner - hard enough to deal with filling a reservoir, much less a t-line, and must be higher than highest block, so have maybe ten inches to work with... May mount on top of desk, & drill access holes through for lines...

[ben333]

Be sure that your pump has the head and flow to handle that kind of setup, but looks like a nice idea. T Lines aren't hard at all, especialy at the top of your loop. A res works fine but that micro res seems like it isn't ideal for this setup but more something for a compact WC solution.

[billbartuska]

Originally Posted by bilbat

In the order you mention things (kinda):

Whole reason for WC is to dump the heat elsewhere! Drop from reservoir to rad/pump will be less than three feet.

Won't be able to hear it if it stops - want the feedback for safety's sake!

..must be higher than highest block, so have maybe ten inches to work with...

Nice computer. As a "Drop back 10 and punt" thought, how about replacing what you have with a multi-processor (4?) motherboard? You'd be stressing the CPUs/memory a lot less, and get better performance to boot.

Back on topic:
Without doing the actual calculations, my guess is that, at the very least that rad/pump/loop combo is going to require some horrendous fans (3 x 200 CFM?) on the rad to handle that much heat . Can you say"Sounds like a vacuum cleaner." But since they will be remote that may not be an issue for you. Also, at those air flow rates, dealing with dust becomes an issue.

No, the rez/T-line fillport doesn't have to be at the highest point. It's a closed system.

The whole idea of an overheat warning is moot, as all modern Intel processors will throttle as they overheat. Intel has already taken care of that for you. If you still need the "comfort" of a warning, a pressure switch on the pump outlet hooked to a buzzer would accomplish that without the restriction/cost of a 3/8" flow meter. Another option is to put the flow meter on a bypass loop. You don't have to know what the flow is, just that there is flow. Even putting one of the temp sensors from your fan controller onto the side of the CPU would give you the warning you seek. I have a P4 setup that way, and the temp sensor tracks Tcase temp well.

You might want to double up on those pumps and rads. Maybe a Black Ice GTX 480 or 560 and an Iwaki pump (the MD20RZT, part of their high pressure series).

If you can find a copy of Martin's Flow Rate Estimator spreadsheet it will help you a lot.

Oh, an I don't think that's the correct setup for the inlets/outsets on the video card coolers. I think what you have will bypass the internal pathways.