How much water?

[liquid]

Hi,

I'm obviously a newbie to water cooling. I've put together and am testing my water cooling system. It's a simple closed-loop system comprised of an eheim-1048 water pump, innovatek aluminum reservoir, black ice-extreme radiator (mounted on sunon 120mm fan), and danger den maze 3 water block.

I began testing the system last night. I didn't have any leaks as of this morning. HOWEVER, it's a bit noiser than I expected. This is probably due to not adding enough water. I've checked out a bunch of forums, and I've seen folks claim that their system is silent or at least as close to as silent as you can get.

So, how much water do you add? Should the entire system be full of water (ie, the hoses, radiator, and reservoir)? Is it bad if you don't have it full, assuming you bleed out the air? I ask because the innovatek reservoir is on the small side. I've tried filling it each time the water is pumped out, but I've only managed to get my carpet wet for the most part . Does anybody have any advice on what to do and how to go about it? Thanks!

Kind Regards,
liquid

PS I can't believe that handle wasn't taken

[jtroutma]

Welcome to the Procooling forms!

(hehe beat BigBen for once )

You should fill your entire system with water but leave a small air gap in your res. Your res. should be the only place where there is any air in your system.

If you are having specific problems with your system and noise, you might have something configured slightly out of place.

First of all:
How do you have your water system setup? AKA positioning of your components; be specific.
Is your res. the highest part of your system?
Do you have all 1/2" tubing or 3/8" tubing?
Do you use a additive in your water like WaterWetter?

Those details will help us out a lot when trying to figure out why your system is now noisy.

[bigben2k]

(Oh sure, I step out for a 2 hour lunch and... )

The important part is keeping the res inlet and outlet submerged, i.e. under the water level. Badly setup, you might have a vortex that sucks air in the res outlet (the outlet of the res should be at the bottom).

Also, you might consider using clamps on the tubing, especially around the pump inlet.

We have very few details of the setup. A pic would help. Can you see air bubbles in your tubing? DO you use some kind of airtrap?

PS: Welcome to ProCooling!

[liquid]

Ok, thank you jrautmo and bigben for the feedback! I am only testing right now, so I'm not terribly concerned, but clearly I need to add more water. It's going to be tricky when I do that, as the reservoir is quite small. I'm probably going to have to fill the radiator and/or the lines first, otherwise it will take me hours to fill. The problem is that the fan/radiator component were a pain to mount to my case. It won't be fun doing that when the system is full of water!

Ok, here are details on my setup (case is an Antec 660AMGPLUS).

For starters, the pump, radiator, and block all have 1/2" barbs. As you might expect then, I am using 1/2" tubing. The res mates directly to the pump, and the inlet has a 3/8" fitting. I think I will have to buy an adapter join and some 3/8" tubing for that, but I haven't experienced any leaks during testing (well, I'll see when I get home tonight!). Oh, I am using clamps on all of the barbs on all components.

Secondly, because of the way the res mates to the pump (you can check out both innovatek and overclockers.com to see pics), I've had to mount them in the bottom of the case. In contrast, the fan/radiator are mounted to the top of the case. I realize that's the reverse of an ideal situation, but the pump isn't having a problem circulating water. I'm using 3 1/2 feet of tubing at most, as my case is only 17" tall. So, the water is flowing from the pump at the bottom to the block, from the block to the radiator at the top, and from the radiator back down to the reservoir.

I'm not using water wetter for testing. There are definitely small water bubbles in the lines though I bled the system, but I'm fairly confident that's because I didn't add enough water. The line from the pump to the block is completely filled, as is the line from the block to the radiator, but the line running from the radiator to the res is not- I think it's filled about half way. Like I said, I had a rough time filling. The res is only like 1 1/2" wide and deep by 3" tall. It's a rather unique set up the way it mates to the pump. You remove the gray housing from the eheim and then insert the exposed shaft through the outlet hole that is cut into the reservoir. They mate very nicely, so the shaft is technically submersed in the res, but the whole pump does not sit in the res obviously.

Sorry I don't have any pics. I went to take some last night, but I've recently upgraded my OS to XP, and my software for my webcam is incompatible. I hope I've given you enough details here. I think you've answered my question in any event. I'll be happy to send you pics when I have this up and running and when I get some compatible software for my cam.

Kind Regards,
liquid

[liquid]

Sorry for butchering your handle there, jtroutma. I wrote the message offline and forgot to double check that.

[jtroutma]

"Ok, thank you jrautmo and bigben for the feedback"...........(I'll say )

Anyways,

Pictures are worth a thousand words but your discription should do nicely as well

Ok, yours systems water lines should be full at all times. The lines should never have air in them - it just looks tacky for one thing
The purpose for a res. is to simply be a place where air can collect and be separated from the water. It just accelerates the "bleeding" process. It also serves as a convienent place to refill the water in your setup.

If you have an all copper setup (i.e. copper waterblock, copper radiator, copper GPU block, etc) then I would suggest sticking to straight DISTILLED water. WW is best used when you are worried about corrosion caused by mixed metals in your cooling loop.

Also, if I read your reply correctly, why are you running a 1/2" tube system and the connection between your res. and the pump is only 3/8? Am I reading that correctly? IF that is the case, then I would highly recommend increasing that to at least 1/2", larger would be better. Some pumps will make a lot of noise if you have a restrictive inlet.

Finally, having your radiator as the highest part of your cooling loop is not stellar but workable. Keep in mind, air always wants to rise to the higest part of your loop and thus the air wants to sit in your radiator then; not good for cooling. Fill the system with water till no bubbles can be seen in the tubes and then gently rock the case back and forth with the pump running. That should knock loose some more air out of the radiator. Do that several times until you cant get any more air out of the system.


BTW why was my name soo hard to remember? Its rather easy to remeber: j + trout + man - n. Maybe I should just used my regular alias from now on; FireFox