Hi guys. I am new to water cooling and just created my first loop using 1/2" hose, I settled with this due to me thinking " higher water flow = more cooling" I am just wondering what hose diameter you use and if I would notice performance drop if I used a smaller one. 1/2" hose is far to thick for me to manage in my tiny antec 900, also what case would you recommend for a internal 3x120mm rad? Thanks guys.
1/2" hose is mostly for aesthetics as far as i know, your blocks should restrict you more than your tubing.
Basically, anything massive with a good cooling review. I went for a Cosmos S by Coolermaster. It will easily fit a triple in the roof, a twin or two singles on the rear and another single on the deck; however, I'm yet to venture into custom watercooling, but at least I've got the chassis to do so when the time comes. There's loads of choice out there though! Look at Antec's bigger stuff, Silverstone, Lian Li... the list is endless.
Tube size doesn't make a difference to cooling. In bigger cases 1/2'' tubing looks a lot better but, as you say, is not practical in smaller cases so changing your tubing won't affect your temps. The TJ07B which I have is great for a rad because it has the bottom chamber for itself and the PSU with grills on each side for the fans to push the heat out sideways. My flatmate uses the Corsair Obsidian for his waterloop which has a lot of space at the top above the mobo to screw a tripple rad onto the roof fans. If you go for the Obsidian make sure you DON'T use a res/pump combi as the drive bays use clips instead of screwing in so his pump unfortunately makes a lot of noise whereas if it was properly & firmly screwed down it'd be a lot quieter. There are cheaper cases than those two that do the job as well but I haven't looked into any.
Agreed..Any sharp corners will impede the flow. But wide bore hosing is better as there higher flow rates at slower speed purely because of the extra diameter being able to carry more fluid.
Tubing size does affect cooling performance... just maybe not much. Narrower pipe means higher flow speeds, more pressure loss due to friction, and for a given driving pressure from your pump, a lower equivelent flow speed than a larger pipe. Unless you have a huge loop with a lot of pipe and a fairly weak pump, don't worry too much. Also, it's not true that only the smallest component (eg a waterblock) sets the flow rate - that only applies for supersonic flow. Best way to think of a loop, is your pump gives you a static pressure rise. Each component takes some pressure to push flow through - the smaller the passage for the flow to go through, and the more changes of direction (eg in waterblocks, 90 degree fittings) the more pressure is lost. Even tubing has a small pressure loss, the longer the pipe the higher the loss. The pressure loss through the whole loop will add up, and the total amount sets how much flow goes round. Lots of pressure loss, flow goes down. Ofcourse, more flow = more cooling. You could make a comparison to an electric circuit: pump is the battery giving a fixed voltage (pressure), each component has a resistance (pressure loss) including the wires (pipe), and the lower the resistance the higher the current (water flow). So long as you don't have a weak pump along with 2gpus, a cpu, NB, ram and SB in the same loop, should be fine.
Thanks for all the help guys. Well,I went for a cheaper pump, the EK-DCP 4.0 which I got for about £40 which is why I thought I would need the larger tubing. However I ended up getting about 8ft of tygon which cost me a bomb, I would probably been better off with spending that extra money on the pump. I am planning on putting a water block on my GPU too, so my loop would include one CPU and one GPU, would it be too much to do this in one loop? Also opinions on N/B and S/B water blocks?
