Radiators and Waterblocks -- What do you Recommend?
 

Well here's the deal. I'm gonna build a water cooled setup this coming summer when i finally graduate and get a real job. After asking on the hard forums I thought i'd come here and see what you all have to think.

In your opinion and experience what is the best waterblock that you can buy (i.e. no custom stuff unless u plan on selling it).


What is the best radiator?


Thanks,
Cyph3r

the BEST, imo, would be the DangerDen Maze2, and the BlackIce extreme due to the fact that its so damn small and performs damn good and looks great!.

Bruce, check these out eh?
Radiators - http://www.procooling.com/reviews/ht...on_1_-_8.shtml
Waterblocks - http://www.procooling.com/reviews/ht...t1-1_2_0.shtml
-Kev

Maze1c or Maze2 would be about the best blocks
Any decent sized heatercore, DDen sell them now too

I guess i should mention that i want to cool the cpu, gpu, and n-bridge, so i'll have a bit of heat to get rid of. Not near as much as a pelt i imagine. I'm probly gonna run an AthlonXP and i have a Ti200 vidcard.

But one idea i had and i don't know how feasible this is but take a look at this pic i made and see what u think.

The idea is that I want to run 1/2" main channels to and from the cpu waterblock as it's the main priority and to split off of it via Y connectors 3/8" lines to the n-bridge and gpu. Is this feasible? Will there be enough back pressure on the main feed to push into the other 2 blocks?

Cyph3r

yeah that idea would work fine, it is quite popular. The only thing you may need to be careful about is if you have a weak pump there might be most of the flow going through one loop

I planned on an Eheim 1250... That should be enough right?


Cyph3r

i had my setup just like that ... but i get better temps if i do a series loop from cpu -> vid -> mobo

it works much better, and even looks cleaner
its something you could easly test out though

with that pump, I'd probably have the MB and GPU in series in a 3/8" loop, and the CPU in it's own 1/2", basically like what you've got there, but NB and GPU in series instead of parrallel.

Digi, quite normal there, but your GPU and NB would have been warmer

So basically it comes down to whether i'd have enough flow to do everything in parallel...

If i do the cpu in parallel with the gpu and n-bridge in series as Brad suggests, then the hottest parts would get the coolest water and there would only be the one division of flow. Provided that the n-bridge doesn't need that much cooling.

Considering these things, what radiator would work best for this? What do u guys suggest? Or even what do u run? If u had the money to burn what would u get?

Block-wise i guess most are suffice... From what i've read on some ppls setups those that use DD work pretty well... What are your experiences? I want it cold and all, but my main focus is to keep it cool and quiet with the leeway for some overclockin... I'd prefer the system to be capable of at least a couple mobo/cpu upgrades b4 i have to change the water system. Most likely I'd imagine most cpu upgrades in the future will still probably hover around these temp points. If u notice that the TBird was hot but the XP was a little cooler until the Mhz went up. So i imagine that even if the die size goes down it will be counter acted by the freq going up. Regardless I'd like the Radiator to be able to handle the heat and bring the water temp back as close to ambient as i can get. I'm not in for some super cooling... :) Just cool with quite a bit of room to spare.


Cyph3r

the DDen Heater Core or Super Cube have easily cooled 600w heatloads in the past, with people using pelts, so you won't have a problem there at all.

my absolute fav radiator would be the BlackIce Extreme.

but as for your parallel vs series hookup, when you divide the flow up, each block will get less flow rate. I found that a series hookup works much better. But either way, take $2 and buy some vinyl tubing and test out a parallel vs series hookup and see what kind of temps you are getting.