I have an XFX Radeon HD 7950 Double Dissipation Edition 3GB GDDR5 (FX-795A-TDJC) which is a non-reference card so is there any company that have made a waterblock for it or one that would work for it. Following on from this I am looking at the watercooling parts required as if I am upgrading to crossfire, I either need a new case or could spend a bit (a lot ) more and get a proper watercooled loop. Basically can someone glance over this and give their opinion on whether it is all compatible. The current case I have is a silverstone tj08-e which can hold a 180mm and 120mm radiator without too much difficulty, I already have a coolermaster eisberg 120L which would provide the pump res and 120mm rad of the loop and can be expanded. I also have the idea of buying an additional windowed side panel and top panel from silverstone, and then with the top panel I want to mod it so that there is a 120mm fan mount where the top optical drive would be, this is just to give a bit of extra airflow as my pump (cm eisberg) isn't going to be powerful enough to cool everything at prolonged periods of full load. I was thinking of sending it to chilled pc as they do laser fabrication or radiator cut outs which I could use, the alternative is to send them my current panel and get them to replicate it with a 120mm fan hole and no psu vent as then I can have the psu exhausting out some of the gpu heat. Has anyone had any experience with chilled pc modding or know of other similar places as I don't have the tools or skills to do it myself. Cheers, atc95 P.s. sorry mods if this is verging on a modding thread but it is mainly hardware
PCB version I have is compatible with the waterblock so have now sort of decided what I am going to do, see op!
Had a reply from watercooling UK saying that 400L is "just about enough" and that I would need at least another 360mmx120mm radiator on top of the current 120 that I have for the loop that I am planning. Is this really the case, I would have thought a loop of the following would be fine for 400L and a 180+120 rad: Eisberg cpu pump/block - 120mm esiberg radiator - Radeon hd 7950 block x2 - alphacool xt45 180mm radiator. Can someone confirm how effective my loop would be, I have seen several photos online of people using an almost identical radiator setup and having no problems with cf / sli loops!
Rule of thumb is to have at the very least 120x120 of rad per component. So if you're cooling the cpu and 2 gpus, you'll want an extra 240x120 rad, but a 120x360 will give you more headroom and allow you to run the fans at lower speeds and therefore less noise. Although a 180x180 rad has more surface area than a 120x240 rad, there's only one fan pushing air through so it will have to work a lot harder to shift the heat.
Hoping to be able to have either the 120mm or 180mm in push pull so hopefully I can have a bit more airflow but I thought the 180mm rad would have been plenty tbh. The other option (seeing as I am putting a fan intake in the top panel anyway) is to use both 525" bay spaces for another 120mm radiator although then my pump and res will be even more stretched. Plus I will have to find a very unique way of mounting my hdds and ssds.
It'd be really tight and although push/pull config would help a little, it wouldn't make a massive amount of difference. I think that in reality, with out some full-on nodding you're not gonna get enough cooling in that case. Only thing I could think you could do it strip the psu from the back, mount it at the front and use the roof for a bigger rad. Serious work involved in that though.
Back to getting a new case then although now that I am thinking of the watercooling route I could get one with 4 expansion slots rather than 5!
An alt would be to use an external rad - i personally use this & the 480 version for my 2 machines. Looking at the case you have, you'd need to put a couple of holes in to run the tubing & a molex extension cable out, but it'd be far less work than trying to mod it to add extra internal rads & move the PSU &/or HDDs/SSDs about... ...& you should get noticeably better temps as you're then using the room's ambient air temp rather than the internal case temp. Yeah, just an idea.
Haven't found a case I like more than the tj08e so far, how bad is a 180mm and 120mm rad going to be for 2 7950s and an i5, surely it will still be quite a bit better than air cooling, especially for gpus. Also is a 400L pump enough as the watercooling email seemed to want me to buy a whole pump and res, whether that is for their benefit or mine I'm not sure.