Hey everyone, I was looking at fittings and tubing for my first water cooled build today. I was fairly happy until I saw the compression fittings. I know these are slightly more expensive and have read a few threads about the pros and cons. One thing I'm not sure about though - is there some special tubing required to use compression fittings with? So does anyone have any recommendations? If you use barbs, I would appreciate if you could recommend some good clips too, and state how easy you find them to fit and or remove if you have had to. Thanks a bunch, Redders.
With compression fittings you need to match the Inner Diameter and Outer Diameter of the tubing and the fitting. For example with 1/2" ID and 3/4" OD fitting you also have to use 1/2 and 3/4 tubing, you can't using 1/2 ID 5/8 OD tubing with the fittings. Also they won't universally fit waterblocks that have tight spacing (such as the Dtek fuzion) between ports. Otherwise they are quite nice and make tubing simple to add and remove. Other metal fittings work well if you're on more of a budget than compressions allow and don't make tubing as hard to remove as with plastic fittings.
I've never used compression fittings, just barbs. As far as clips go, I use the nylon hose clamps here. They lock on solidly and do not come off easily - unless you want to take them off. Just queeze them and they're on solidly, slide each end away from each other and they're off. I've never bothered with anything else as they do the job perfectly.
compression fittings are best and most secure fittings around, look nice aswell. However here in the UK i have found it difficult to find tubing for them. Tygon do some nice tubing 8mm ID but 11.5mm OD so the common compression fitting wont work with that tubing. What dosen't help is compression fittings are usually measured in the meteric system, and tubing is done in imperal units. So unless you can think in 1/16's and mm's at the same time, it becomes difficult shopping online. oh and with compression fittings, hot water is your friend, helps to ease the sleeve over the hose before fitting and tighting.
Are the fittings on most water blocks 3/4BSP? I've found 1/4" BSPP - 1/2" ID - 3/4" OD Compression Fitting (http://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=39_65&products_id=975) This would work well with tygon tubing since that's normally 1/2"ID 3/4"OD. Having said that, I'm conscious that compression fittings are already pretty 'big', so having an adaptor on every single block to convert from 3/4bsp to 1/4bsp would make them even chunkier. I think my PA120.3 thermochill rad is 3/4 bsp - I'm not bothered having an adaptor on one or two pieces. Edit: To make things more complicated, the pump I've been looking at, the Laing D5 has: • Connection size: 1/2'' barbs (12mm) :S
Most blocks are g1/4 so no adapter needed for the compression fittings. The 1/4 bspp is the thread size and the 1/2 and 3/4 refer the the tubing size. Some AC products use g1/8 and some older american blocks use nsp but everything new is g1/4 bspp. The pa120.3 will require adapters to use the compression fittings. The D4 has built in "barbs" that are simply part on the pump and not interchangeable without modding.
Ah okay - I didn't realise that most blocks were 1/4 bsp. I understand the difference between the thread and the OD/ID on the tube. I just realised that the barbs on the pump are actually the right size should I go with the tygon tubing that I've linked, so no troubles there. So I assume I'll need some hose clips for the barbs on the pump?
