Upgrading a Koolance

[JoeKamel]

I have a friend who bought a Koolance for the bling factor and now, two months later isn't very happy with the performance. He asked me for some help in terms of what he can change on it, and before I give him any reccomendations, I just wanted to double check that I'm at least sending him down the right path.

Since he doesn't want to buy new blocks, that leaves him the options of changing the pump, rad and fans. My first instinct would be to go to like a 1046, and hack up his Exxos to take 120mm fans on the rad - it appears that it should take 2x120 fine.

Am I missing something, or am I on the right track here?

I don't want to tell him to just ditch everything and discourage him from watercooling, I just wish he had read up more about what was out there before he bought what he had.

Edit: Yes, I realize that this isn't high end like the forum name, but I trust you guys hella more than most other forums.

[gruntledweasel]

"Ditch everything" might not be needed, but you're talking about a near complete system revamp anyway. I mean, with new pump, new fans, new hoses, you're halfway there. A heatercore and mcw6000 waterblock will only run you another $60, and the difference in performance is rather significant. Those 1/4" ID hoses and 90 degree bends inside the kit hurt flow lots, and I'm pretty sure the koolance waterblock itself isn't very good (def. not a cascade or mcw6000).

Honestly, what I'd suggest is keeping the exos and using it as a secondary loop to cool hard drives, north bridge, graphics card, etc. It would work pretty well for that, and there's no sense letting the blocks go to waste if you've got 'em. I had the guts of one of the earlier koolance systems working in this capacity until I decided to cannibilize 'em for a chiller project. Odds are with a fair sized case your buddy can fit in a heatercore and pump in addition to the exos stuff. Plus this way you don't have to jack with the exos itself.

at the koolance website, btw. The bluuuu LEDs are apparently a major selling point.

[Tempus]

Originally Posted by JoeKamel

I have a friend who bought a Koolance for the bling factor and now, two months later isn't very happy with the performance. He asked me for some help in terms of what he can change on it, and before I give him any reccomendations, I just wanted to double check that I'm at least sending him down the right path.

Since he doesn't want to buy new blocks, that leaves him the options of changing the pump, rad and fans. My first instinct would be to go to like a 1046, and hack up his Exxos to take 120mm fans on the rad - it appears that it should take 2x120 fine.

Am I missing something, or am I on the right track here?

I don't want to tell him to just ditch everything and discourage him from watercooling, I just wish he had read up more about what was out there before he bought what he had.

Edit: Yes, I realize that this isn't high end like the forum name, but I trust you guys hella more than most other forums.

First question: what koolance system is it? The external or one of the cases?
EDIT: Doh, noticed the exxos part.

One big problem with the case ones is the pumps - two little minis. Replacement would seriously help there.

I took one of the older PC-601s (or something like that) threw in an extra black ice 2 dual 80mm rad but it really didn't help the temps too much. I'm willing to guess the block itself wasn't all that decent and the pump power just wasn't.

[pauldenton]

Originally Posted by JoeKamel

Since he doesn't want to buy new blocks, that leaves him the options of changing the pump, rad and fans. My first instinct would be to go to like a 1046, and hack up his Exxos to take 120mm fans on the rad - it appears that it should take 2x120 fine.

Am I missing something, or am I on the right track here?

i don't think that's a good move - if all you're keeping from the exxos is the rad better to sell it off... it'd fetch more than a rad+ fans would cost...
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...tem=6708303746
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...tem=6708581973

[JWFokker]

I'm thinking he should sell it too, buy an Eheim, a 2x120 rad, MCW6000 and 1/2" tubing. He might make a couple bucks back by the end even. Especially if he still has the original packaging and sells the block with it, because to the best of my knowledge, the Exos doesn't even come with a block which would mean he might have bought something sub-par..

What block did he get?

[JoeKamel]

Thanks for the advice guys. Seeing those prices on ebay makes me think I might be able to talk him into actually ditching it then. He's only cooling the CPU and GPU, so figure a (heatercore + something like an MCW6000A + mcp650 + MCW50 + tubing) - the $100 or so he could get for it on ebay with the blocks.... Yes, I might get him into a real setup after all hehe.

Thanks for the help guys.

[ferdb]

I've had several Koolance systems and modified them for better performance and efficiency, however those were all Case versions, not Exos. The Koolance cases have a major problem with the way airflow was set up, It's very restrictive and it also sucks hot exhaust air back in through the radiator. Oddly enough the reason they set up the airflow this way was because the pair of submerged pumps they use run off AC, and they use a transistor circuit and transformer on a controller board to generate this AC from the 12Vdc line. This controller board gets HOT, so hot in fact that without substantial airflow past it the thing melts down. The airflow path in the Koolance cases is deflected and diverted with a plastic sheet so that sufficient airflow ends up flowing past the controller board mounted on the rear roof of the case. If you remove the sheet to improve the airflow you will fry the controller board if you don't provide some other means of providing airflow to it. The simplest way to do that is use a power supply with a bottom fan such as an Enermax. Flip the supply over (you may need to file the mounting bracket a bit to get it to fit) and you will now get enough airflow past the controller board to keep it from overheating.
Now you can rip the Plastic airflow director sheet out and flip the fans over so they are all pulling air out of the case. This will substantially drop the temps of the water cooling system (as much as 10C or more) it also now will pull plenty of air past the harddrives to keep them cool (the Harddrive water blocks are a bad idea, I've lost several drives using them). You can now run the fans much slower and quieter and still achieve lower temps than before. Also you now have lots of airflow over the motherboard and cards where before there was almost none, unless you installed auxilary fans in the back of the case.
None of this may apply to the Exos system however. I'm guessing that the performance that is desired is just to lower temps, and that fan noise is not an issue. The Koolance case and Exos systems pumps have a flow rate of 2L/min, or about 32 Gal/hr. This is a fairly low flow rate compared to most water cooling pumps, however if you use waterblocks that are efficient at low flow rates like the Swiftech it's not a major issue. The Exos radiator is fairly large and thin, this works well with lower airflow rates and axial fans that can't generate a lot of pressure differential. If you measure the temp of the air going into the radiator and the temp of it coming out it will give you an idea of how much room for improvement you can get by increasing airflow.
The equation is T = 1.76*(Watts)/CFM where T is in Celsius
so for 100Watts and 40 CFM the delta T will be 4.4 degrees C. If you double the airflow to 80CFM the delta T will drop to 2.2 degrees C, thus lowering the whole water cooling system temp by 2.2 C. If you increased airflow to 160CFM you would drop temps by 3.3 degrees instead. Note that if you can drop the air temperature going into the radiator by 3.3C (by keeping it away from hot air exhaust say) you get the same benefit as Quadrupling the airflow.
More powerful pumps tend to benefit waterblocks that have small effective heat transfer areas, where high flow rates tend to cool the block off more because only a fraction of the water flowing through the block has a chance to contact the block and pick up heat on it's way through the block. Blocks where a large portion of the water flowing through contacts the block and picks up heat (like the Swiftech 6000) work well at low flow rates and benefit little from increased flow rates. Water has a huge thermal capacity. 140Watts will only raise the water temp by 1 C at a 2 Liter/min flow rate. Higher flow rates make almost no difference in this respect, they only help some waterblocks transfer heat to the water better, if you get a block that's efficient at low flow rates a higher capacity pump will not make for much system improvement.
I'd suggest getting a thermometer and seeing where the largest temperature differentials in the system are and work on those first. My guess would be that better airflow (and making sure the incoming air is not hot) and possibly a better CPU block like the swiftech would be the cheapest and most effective improvements. I tend to dislike the Koolance systems because of the 80mm fans that make so much noise because of their RPM, but then I'm a silent type freak. Hope you find something usefull in here, or anybody else who crawls through this thread.

[jaydee]

The equation is T = 1.76*(Watts)/CFM where T is in Celsius
so for 100Watts and 40 CFM the delta T will be 4.4 degrees C. If you double the airflow to 80CFM the delta T will drop to 2.2 degrees C, thus lowering the whole water cooling system temp by 2.2 C. If you increased airflow to 160CFM you would drop temps by 3.3 degrees instead. Note that if you can drop the air temperature going into the radiator by 3.3C (by keeping it away from hot air exhaust say) you get the same benefit as Quadrupling the airflow.

Equations are not my strong point for sure but it seems to me this doesn't have any real world relevance. If you have a 40CFM fan on a rad at whatever pressure it puts out who's to say that replacing it with a 80CFM fan is going to double the pressure (or CFM for that matter) as well? It would seems to me the pressure of the fan needs to rise linearly with the CFM of the fan in order for this equation to work. Most fans are not built the same so I imagine one at 80CFM would have a different pressure rating than another at 80CFM. And being the pressure are not similar the over all CFM of the fan would be reduced by lack of pressure power of the fan. So just dropping a 80CFM fan may not in reality push an extra 40CFM through the rad and/or may not double the pressure completely throwing off your entire calculations making that equation useless.

Of course I would love unregistered or pH to set me strait here as this is just off the top of my head which may be in my ass.

[greenman100]

he said double the airflow through the rad, not once did he reference the free-flow rating of a fan

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by greenman100

he said double the airflow through the rad, not once did he reference the free-flow rating of a fan

And how are we to measure that? And I don't see were he said through the rad in the part i quoted with the relevant equation.

[JWFokker]

I'm with jaydee116 on this one. I'm not sure what he's getting at exactly. I understand everything he's saying, but where he's going with it....?

I don't think equations are particularly useful for anything other than theoretical exercises. So you take the thermal properties of air and you can figure out how much heat you could potentially dissipate in a perfect environment at a given air temperature and given air flow rate. It's great in theory, but you cannot calculate real life temperatures without knowing additional parameters.

For instance, the actual air volume being pushed through the radiator, which will vary based upon the design of the radiator and static pressure of the fan, not just the volume it's rated for in free air. You won't know any of this without extensive testing in a controlled environment. Then you have to consider the thermal dissipation effeciency of the radiator, which again you won't know until you've tested for it. But then all of this was done in a controlled environment, so how accurate is it going to be in the real world? All of this testing will only allow you to figure out your maximum potential in a ideal setting. You're better off just estimating and trying things out because each system varies too much.

[Rezistor]

Did somebody say 'modified Koolance'?







Nothing left from the original Koolance components except for the case itself, which now houses 2 separate cooling loops.

[ferdb]

Clearly a fan rated for 40 CFM in free air will flow less than that when put in a real system that has flow resistance through the radiator and the rest of the air path in the case. I refered to actual airflow through the system, not the free air CFM rating of the fans. I'm not saying that you can calculate exact results based on CFM ratings of fans. I was trying to clarify how the thermal system responds to increasing airflow, and to how to calculate numbers for an ideal system. Of course the systems we build are not ideal systems because of the fan CFM/backpressure curves and the thermal transfer characteristics of the radiator. However the equations can give you some reality checks on systems you are planning, especially in systems designed for quiet operation, where air velocities are lower and the system more closely approaches an ideal system.
1) Given a system, if you double the radiator area, and double the number of fans you will double the airflow through the system and reduce the coolant temperature above the ambient air temperature to roughly half what it was.
2) Since Fan CFM is directly related to RPM on a first order approximation, if you double the fan RPM you will double the airflow and half the temperature differential. This increases the fan noise greatly
3) If you reduce the fan RPM to 1/2, you'll halve the airflow and double the temperature differential. You will reduce the fan noise greatly.
4) If you double the radiator area, double the number of fans, but reduce their RPM to half you will end up with roughly the same system temperatures but much reduce fan noise.
5) If your coolant temperature is only 2C above ambient air temperature, no matter how fast you run your fans or how much radiator area you add you will not be able to reduce the system temps by more than 2C.
6) if your coolant temperature is 10C above ambient, then doubling your fan speed will roughly reduce your system temps by 5C.
If you are intending to hook up an overclocked/overvolted AMD64 CPU,6800GT video card, and Northbridge chip that is dissipating 200W into BI pro radiator, a Panaflo L1A running at full rpm couldn't possibly pull better than 50 CFM through that radiator and thus your coolant will be at least 7 C above ambient air temp, if not more.
The equations and all these examples are only to help you make prudent design decisions. If your coolant temperature is close to ambient air temperature already, adding fans and bigger radiators is not going to improve the system significantly. If your fans are too noisy, doubling the radiator size will let you halve their rpm and thus the noise. If your coolant temperature is significantly above ambient air temperature then the airflow through your system is poor because of fans, restrictions, or sucking hot exhaust air back in. Fix accordingly.
Make use of the information as you see fit.

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by ferdb

1) Given a system, if you double the radiator area, and double the number of fans you will double the airflow through the system and reduce the coolant temperature above the ambient air temperature to roughly half what it was.

Being we are dealing with a system here you must take into account the other parts of it. If you double the rads surface area, then you also double the area the coolant will have to be pumped through. The coolants flow rate needs to be in here somewhere and adjusted accordingly.

2) Since Fan CFM is directly related to RPM on a first order approximation, if you double the fan RPM you will double the airflow and half the temperature differential. This increases the fan noise greatly

Problem with this is you are assuming identical fans. I don't know of any instanced this is true. Blade number and pitch and rpm will most likely be different on any fan that doubled the other fans CFM in the same size. (80mm, 90mm, 120mm etc..). This would be a usable fact if such a thing existed in this system. I don't think you can just double the RPM of the fans in it unless they are already turned down. And the faster the fan turns the more power it will take to keep it going because of drag (wind resistance?).

3) If you reduce the fan RPM to 1/2, you'll halve the airflow and double the temperature differential. You will reduce the fan noise greatly.

Sounds good to me.

4) If you double the radiator area, double the number of fans, but reduce their RPM to half you will end up with roughly the same system temperatures but much reduce fan noise.

Providing your coolants flow rate remained the same. Not likely though doubling the rad area and not changing the coolants flow rate.

5) If your coolant temperature is only 2C above ambient air temperature, no matter how fast you run your fans or how much radiator area you add you will not be able to reduce the system temps by more than 2C.

Huh? This has to be system spacific to a certain heat load. Makes no sense to put a certain number on this for all systems.

6) if your coolant temperature is 10C above ambient, then doubling your fan speed will roughly reduce your system temps by 5C.
If you are intending to hook up an overclocked/overvolted AMD64 CPU,6800GT video card, and Northbridge chip that is dissipating 200W into BI pro radiator, a Panaflo L1A running at full rpm couldn't possibly pull better than 50 CFM through that radiator and thus your coolant will be at least 7 C above ambient air temp, if not more.

Would love to see how you came up with this.

The equations and all these examples are only to help you make prudent design decisions. If your coolant temperature is close to ambient air temperature already, adding fans and bigger radiators is not going to improve the system significantly. If your fans are too noisy, doubling the radiator size will let you halve their rpm and thus the noise. If your coolant temperature is significantly above ambient air temperature then the airflow through your system is poor because of fans, restrictions, or sucking hot exhaust air back in. Fix accordingly.
Make use of the information as you see fit.

Let's not assume bigger rads are going to be better with the same pump. If the pump can't handle the larger rad then your results are not going to be much better.

[AngryAlpaca]

The radiator is not the issue here... It's a pretty big radiator, and 3 80mm fans move plenty of air. The pumps and the block are the weak points. I say keep the case and the radiator and change the block, tubing and maybe the pump ($60-150 for that, and you've got a pretty watercooling case, a decent radiator, and fans)

[JWFokker]

I still say sell it and put the cash towards a real system. Otherwise you're flushing $200 down the drain for a fancy case and fairly sucky radiator.

[ferdb]

Originally Posted by jaydee116

Being we are dealing with a system here you must take into account the other parts of it. If you double the rads surface area, then you also double the area the coolant will have to be pumped through. The coolants flow rate needs to be in here somewhere and adjusted accordingly.

Because of the high heat capacity of water the temperature drop of the coolant is less than 1C going through the radiator, this is far less than the temperature change in the incoming air to the outgoing air so water flow rates make little impact on the heat transfer out of the radiator and we can just ignore this aspect.

Problem with this is you are assuming identical fans. I don't know of any instanced this is true. Blade number and pitch and rpm will most likely be different on any fan that doubled the other fans CFM in the same size. (80mm, 90mm, 120mm etc..). This would be a usable fact if such a thing existed in this system. I don't think you can just double the RPM of the fans in it unless they are already turned down. And the faster the fan turns the more power it will take to keep it going because of drag (wind resistance?).

Let me preface this response with the fact that I build all my systems for quiet operation and am always concerned with fans running at reduced speed on controllers. I mentioned doubling and halving the RPM of the fans to make the illustration simple. The relationship still holds for other rpm ratios. You could go from a 120mm panaflo L1A at 1700rpm to an H1A at 2500rpm which is an RPM ratio of 1:1.47 and get an airflow increase of roughly the same ratio in the system, the two models have exactly the same impeller etc, only the motor is different. Or you could be using a speed controlled fan, increase the rpm by 2x and you increase airflow by 2x. The basic concepts still hold. And yes the faster the fan goes the more power it takes, roughly 4 times the power for double the rpm. But the fan power is relatively minor in the system and I've never seen a system where supplying fans with power was a problem.

Providing your coolants flow rate remained the same. Not likely though doubling the rad area and not changing the coolants flow rate.

The backpressure of the radiator is usually quite low compared to the water blocks and the rest of the system so it's not the controlling factor on flow rates. Doubling the radiator will probably change the flow rates very little. Even if the flow did change substantially, as I mentioned above the coolant temp changes very little going through the radiator compared to the temperature change of the air going through. This means changes in coolant flow rate have little effect on the heat transfer out of the radiator. If the coolant temp drops 0.5C on it's way through the radiator and you then halve the flow rate it will then drop by 1C going through the radiator. A system temperature change of only 0.5C. The effective thermal resistance of the water blocks vs flow rate is another matter.

Huh? This has to be system spacific to a certain heat load. Makes no sense to put a certain number on this for all systems.

I picked 2C as an example of a realistic system to illustrate the point that no matter how big a radiator and how many fans you stack on it you cannot reduce the coolant temperature below the temperature of the incoming air. Say your coolant was 5C above the temperature of the incoming air to the radiator, no matter what you do in the way of radiators and airflow you cannot reduce your coolant temp by more than 5C. Also you can see that if you double the airflow through the radiator you would reduce your coolant temp by only 2.5C or so. In other words there is a point of diminishing returns on radiators and fans.

Would love to see how you came up with this.

I used approximate numbers from my current system and airflow/pressure curves for the Panaflo fans and ran the numbers. Equations can be useful. You just need to know what simplifications you can make, which you can't, what amount of accuracy you can expect etc and then can be powerful guides to design. It's much better than buying every fan and radiator under the sun and just trying them out.

Let's not assume bigger rads are going to be better with the same pump. If the pump can't handle the larger rad then your results are not going to be much better.

As I mentioned before radiators don't typically have large pressure drops so they don't tend to determine the overall system flow rates much. Also a larger radiator may have a LOWER pressure drop and thus the flow rates would actually be higher than for a smaller radiator.

Thanks for reading over my posts and bringing up points where I may not have been very clear in what I was trying to get across.

[Tempus]

Bigger radiators do not necessarily mean less water back pressure (and lets not confuse the fact that many "bigger" [ie. larger surface area] radiators also are thicker and have more air flow resistance) so bigger is not always better.

Component selection is very important and generalization of "facts" and figures/equations are only useful if most of the parts scale in some easily calculably way. They don't. Most of the time the performance is all over the board in regards to water flow resistance, air resistance, heat transfer capacity, weight, and bling-bling factor (oh and cost but hell cost sucks regardless.)


Also, while you are correct in that the floor temp is the temp of the air going over the rad, you are forgetting that system temps change over time. Systems with larger rads general have a slightly better resistance to minor temp fluctations just from cunductive heat transfer (err I hope thats the one)

Btw, the assumption that doubling the RPM = double airflow (on the same fan) is good on paper but neglects all sorts of air flow issues. Take a micro look at a fan in close proximity to the rad - and more specifically the output air from the rad. My empirical data doesn't support the doubling you seem to be seeing. Have you actually tested this or is it based on the physics of the motor and theoretical performance indexes and not realworld numbers?

[BillA]

ferdb
playing with numbers to pass the time

do you have even one set of data to demonstrate anything at all ?
tested an ideal system ?
how about a non-ideal one ?
tested anything ?

what is the term for technospam ? nulltech ?
bah

I've probably tested 100 different kit combos in the last 90 days, and not a one of your approximations is valid

but you did get it simple enough for your understanding
congrats

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by unregistered

ferdb
playing with numbers to pass the time

do you have even one set of data to demonstrate anything at all ?
tested an ideal system ?
how about a non-ideal one ?
tested anything ?

what is the term for technospam ? nulltech ?
bah

I've probably tested 100 different kit combos in the last 90 days, and not a one of your approximations is valid

but you did get it simple enough for your understanding
congrats

I was going to respond to his last post but answers to your questions would be nice to hear first. I feel I am wasting my time with him. Lot's of numbers thrown around that can not be used as a spacific number for all systems.

[BillA]

it is not that approximations cannot be made, just that his are junk
-> he needs to describe HIS basis (source) for each of those approximations
we will wait a while I suspect

[JoeKamel]

Okay before this becomes completely an argument concerning assumptions and how to predict fan rotational speed vs. airflow and all the assorted good stuff involved, lemme say thanks to everyone. Right now I'm in the middle of doing some hacking/prying/bending/cutting to switch it over to 2x120mm fans on the rad as he has a couple 120mm fans laying around. We're going to take a good look at how that affects things and depending on that, he's going to decide wether or not to start saving up for blocks/pumps for a 3/8" or 1/2" system. If he does that, I'm prolly going to point him in the direction of something like this or like 2xMCR120s. The transmission cooler matches dimensions of the rad in his exxos much better, and judging from what I've seen of them they would give closer to heatercore performance, but with the thickness being less than half of a normal core (and also a lower FPI count) it should perform better with an axial fan than a core.

[JWFokker]

Wicked. I'm getting a transmission cooler soon too. But one twice that size so I can fit 4 120mm fans.

[JoeKamel]

Originally Posted by JWFokker

Wicked. I'm getting a transmission cooler soon too. But one twice that size so I can fit 4 120mm fans.

Any luck finding copper ones? All the ones I've seen online are aluminum and the guy at the local autozone told me all the ones he carries are aluminum too.

He was completely taken aback at the idea of using watercooling for computers, asked me if it would make his Dell run faster. Hehehe.

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by JoeKamel

Any luck finding copper ones? All the ones I've seen online are aluminum and the guy at the local autozone told me all the ones he carries are aluminum too.

He was completely taken aback at the idea of using watercooling for computers, asked me if it would make his Dell run faster. Hehehe.

I have a copper tubed (with turbulators) and aluminum finned one. I got it at Federated Auto Parts a long time ago (4yrs). Maybe they switched to all aluminum over the years...