Planning my first WC-Setup. (Radbox & Blowers)

[Noldor]

Hello everyone!


I'm in the planning stages of my first water-cooling setup which I'll order at around x-mas. I'm going for silence as the main priority, with as much cooling performance as possibly. I'm trying to mix the two as good as I can.

I will be housing all components in a radbox. Below you'll se what I've imagined. Please critique and point out all mistakes and tell me how to improve on the design. It will be made of either plexi or aluminum, or both.



As I'm looking for silence, I'm willing to compromize abit on cooling performance and use harddrive coolers for my 4 harddrives so I can keep them in sound/vibration-proof enclosuers. I will have both blowers on a controll so I can adjust speed/noise levels to my personal liking.


My suggested loop:

PUMP-->Rads-->Y-Split
Split 1: -->CPU-->GPU-->NB-->Merge Y-Split
Split2: -->4 harddrive coolers -->Merge Y-Split
Merge Y-Split-->T-line-->PUMP-->


Components:
2x Blowers (Please advice me on which ones to choose. I want to speed controll them)
2x Double Heatercores
Storm G4/G5
DD Maze4 NB
DD Maze4 GPU
Harddrive coolers. (which ones to get?)


Any tips, comments?


Thanks, Stefan

[bobkoure]

Originally Posted by Noldor

...I'm looking for silence, I'm willing to compromize abit...

For a blower, I'd suggest a single motorized impeller BUT with 2" thick cores I don't think you're going to get below 25dB or so.
IMHO, you'd have better luck with a thinner core.
If you haven't already, go to this ProCooling forums thread and download cores.zip.
Unzip - open the one named "cores-dimension-reference" - go to the "thickness" column and use Excel to sort on that column. Voila! You now know what sized heater cores you can get in thinner thicknesses.
To see what the cores look like and get a price, use the other spreadsheet to cross-reference the car model that uses that particular heater core and go to partsamerica.com or rockauto.com to look up the heater core.
To just look at the core, you can use this link
http://www.partsamerica.com/product_.../FEC/2-703.jpg
once you modify it - change the 2-703 to the core number you're interested in. There used to be a way to hack this site's links to get prices for heatercores, but they seem to have changed their system.

[gruntledweasel]

Heatercores should be in parallel, not series.

Might want to include northbridge cooler on loop#2, as this is not a point that produces a lot of heat.

If you dig around the forums you'll find a slew of homebrewed HD watercoolers that may well be cheaper (and possibly better performing) than what you could buy. It doesn't take much to keep them cool.

If you're building a radbox, it might be worth your while to incorporate a reservoir. They make filling/bleeding a whole lot easier.

[bobkoure]

Originally Posted by gruntledweasel

Heatercores should be in parallel, not series..

You mean to reduce water circuit resistance, yes?
So... if you get a bit less resistance you'll end up with a bit more pressure at the waterblock.
And... if you do anything so that more flow goes through one rad more than the other, then the lower-flow one will be operating at less efficiency (water in the rad cools down a bit more, heat transfer efficiency proportional to heat differential).
Just thinking it through...

[j14ast]

Originally Posted by bobkoure

You mean to reduce water circuit resistance, yes?
So... if you get a bit less resistance you'll end up with a bit more pressure at the waterblock.
And... if you do anything so that more flow goes through one rad more than the other, then the lower-flow one will be operating at less efficiency (water in the rad cools down a bit more, heat transfer efficiency proportional to heat differential).
Just thinking it through...

as airsprit showed with his rad bypass valve the increased flow is worth most trade offs in the non water block area(for those not familiar with his watter cooled stack he put a adjustable valve baypass ing his rad and got improved performance.

[Moony]

If you're going for silence pick up some of the sound absorbtive foam from mcmaster-carr and line the inside of your rad box. It helps immensely.

[gruntledweasel]

Actually, now that I think about it, is the extra heatercore even needed? I'd think it would be simpler to just obtain a single radiator of the desired size.

[Noldor]

Silence, to me is having the blowers below 30 db. That's good enough, and if I insulate the radbox with some sound dampening foam it'll be even better. I should find good blowers that are strong enough to blow through a double heatercore efficiently at 30 db right?

Another thing that might be worth considering is that the radbox will sit aprox 3 metres away from me, but the computer only 1.5 metres or so. That means that the computer components needs to be more quiet then the radbox as they will be more noticable.

Why only one rad? I'll have 4 harddrives, A64 3400+ @ 2700mhz, overclocked 6800, and a NB in the loop. Wouldn't a 2:nd one yeld better temps, and thus allowing for lower speed on the blowers?


Thanks for all the input guys?

[Noldor]

Actually, now that I think about it, is the extra heatercore even needed? I'd think it would be simpler to just obtain a single radiator of the desired size.

Are you saying I'd need to look for a rad that is twice as big as the double heatercore? Or just settle with one doubleheatercore?

[bobkoure]

Originally Posted by Noldor

Silence, to me is having the blowers below 30 db.

30dB? A whole different world than sub-20. You should have no problems with running fans with sufficient pressure to move air through 2" heater cores. Please disregard anything I said about "silence" being difficult to achieve - we were talking about different things.