Restrictive Northbridge Waterblock
 

I just got my flowmeter from pHaestus (its an analog meter, so it does introduce a lot of head loss itself) And I've been doing some testing of different set ups. I won't go into too much detail here, but my concern is this: My dual pass Chevy Caprice heatercore plus my Maze3 waterblock take my flow down from 4 GPM to 2 GPM. My Z-chipset block alone also takes the flow from 4 GPM to 2 GPM. So basically that dinky little thing is half of the flow resistance in my cooling loop; it just doesn't benefit me enough for that much restriction. Whats a less restrictive northbridge design?

this seem to be a novel idea, to the world......

http://3rotor.homelinux.com/SCM-BB/c...l_dscn5827.jpg

please here me out first... :)

what you are looking at there, is 4 blocks.

1 cpu block... and 3 others. a NB, GPU and hard drive block.
all of which are made in the pin-grid fashion. arguable the most restrictive of them all.

What I do is I use the restrictiveness of the blocks, to my advantage, by connecting them in parallel. the way I have it in that picture, is a 2 loop config.... the one loop is the CPU block only, the other loop, runs the 3 other blocks in series, this insures that the CPU sees the bulk of the flow.

here is what it looks like in action.

that is a good idea, except for one thing- I don't have any blocks to run it in parrallel with yet.

Well you could open the NB block and cut/grind out some copper to reduce the drastic turns and open the block up.

Then after the block is opened up I'd dimple the bottom to have more surface there where it will do the most cooling.

Should lower the resistence some and may also improve the cooling.

Worth a try before tossing it in a drawer some where.

You might want to put the Z-chip in series with your CPU (Maze3) block.

Even though you notice a 2 gpm drop with the Z-chip alone, it doesn't mean that the flow through the Maze3 will suffer much.

Since you have a flowmeter handy, you can simply try it:
parallel the z-chip to the maze3 versus maze3 and z-chip in series. Hook up your flowmeter to measure the flow through the Maze3, because you really don't care about the z-chip.

Since you brought it up... I also have a z-chip, and I have the brass 1/2" connections on it. Which barbs do you have?

I have the 1/2" brass barbs too.

One main problem with that setup- I don't have any Ys :( And I don't have easy access to a hardware store either. I guess I'm going to have to figure one out thats a reasonably short bike ride though.

general consensus deems the z chip as a flow killer. i don't go around recommending parallel at all, so the only advice i can offer would be to build a TRUE DUAL LOOP if you're willing to spend the extra and have enough space for it. on the other hand if you are sure you can make the parallel thing work then do it.

Doesn't seem to impeed the flow from I can see, at least not as much as the DD Mase 3 GPU block.

~ Boli