I've been kicking this idea around since I picked up this case with 360 and 240 radiator mounts. My plan is to build a simple Res-Pump-Rad-CPU-GPU-Res loop using the 360 rad and then (later) add an additional loop to use the second radiator. The complexity comes in that since I will be using a T-Balancer I am able to manage thermal control of the pumps as well as the fans and I thought I would take advantage of this to have the secondary loop only cut in when the water temperature reaches a certain threshold. I would like to use this loop just to cool the water in the reservoir leaving the main look operating as before so the second loop is res-pump-rad-res. Now I have a Fass-o-matic reservoir with 5 ports which could do the job., though the ideal solution would be a multiport reservoir with a divider so that while the secondary loop was off the warm water would fill one chamber and flow over in to the second chamber but when the secondary loop was on the water would be pumped out of the first chamber and returned cooled to the second chamber (flowing back over the divider, assuming the flow rate is greater in the second loop). Has anyone good any good ideas on a reservoir solution or on the planned loop?
while that sounds unique and interesting...why? if your trying to make it quieter, just turn the fans for the second rad low or off until needed (or run all fans on both rads on low all the time). if your hell bent on doing this...why not use 2 small reservoirs connected together, one hot, one cold. with loop "B" turned off the reservoirs would be the same temp. but with "B" on, the cool res would soon be flooded with cooler water, which is then sucked into your primary loop.
I will set up the T-Balance so the secondary rad fans are off until needed. Two reservoirs would do but I think I need 4 ports each to work as I would need two lines between them. Does anyone know of a 4 port 5.25 bay res?
Yes, you're right. The main loop would be into res1 and out of res 2, then we have two line between the two reservoirs, 1 direct and one via the secondary loop. With the secondary pump off the flow would be through the direct line, from 1 to 2. When turned on this flow would be reversed. Now given I can't use up too many bays so I could use a pair of single bay Aquaboxes but I was wondering if I could do the job with a single Typhoon III which appears to have a lot of ports but I can't get a decent internal diagram to work out how it's set up when you're not using a D5.
which reservoirs you choose is pretty much an aesthetic choice...so its up to you. ive never seen one of those typhoon III's before, so ive no idea how they work.
It's a little more than aestetic here, due to the config. The Typhoon is on offer at £16 and has stacks of ports, but I'm wondering if having two separate chambers will work better for this setup.
The Typhoons 3 has a 85% failure rate... It's why I'm not using one... Edit: Did you mean using it just as a res? As it works out to be one large res then. Why are you doing dual loops? You realise the second loop will only drop the temps by 1-2 degrees...
The concept was to have a basic conventional loop and then have the second radiator brought in to drop the water temp only once the primary loop is starting to loose the battle. I don’t know what the temps will be until I get it runningso it’s hard to estimate the temp drop it will achieve. I should really get better results ith separate reservoirs as it should ensure that all the water flowing into the main loop has gone through the secondary loop once it is fully on whereas with the Typhoon there would be rather more mixing. I fully accept that this iisn’t going to be the most cost effective approach,or even probably the most effective with the components at my disposal but it should be fairly interesting and will use the T-ban to it’s full potential. I have a couple of swissflow meters to add to the mix and I guess I’ll get a couple more inline temp monitors so I can see what it’s all doing.
I think a better idea would be to use values. So when you want the additional cooling you can just change the valves and open the extended loop to the extra rad. This would save you an extra pump and res and would be much easier to implement. Also I think it'd give a much larger effect to the cooling.
I'd love to use valves and I've though about it before but I'd want it be automated and alas I couldn't do it off the T-balancer as you want it to trigger binary I/Os when all it does is fan and Pump control. (Fwiw I have a PCI relay card somewhere but I don't like the idea of running the cooling control from within the OS, so I'd need to program a PIC or some other controller and then it's a much bigger project). Still if I get it all going the response to heat load should be entertaining as I will first the primary pump and set of fans spinning up fromt he mimimum settings before the second lot kick in at all. Being honest I think this solution is possibly being applied to the wrong problem. I'm had a concept in my head for ages about having an external cooling loop (groundwater or major cooling outside the house, which is piped in to a larger split res (Hot and cold side with mutual overflow to balance) and then runing cooling loops from several PCs with no internal radiators, but it's not an option at the moment.
almost sounds like you would be interested in a heat exchanger system. a single heat exchanger with a closed loop system would circulate coolant inside the case, while external radiators (each with its own pump/fans/fluid) would kick in as needed to cool the heat exchanger.
You should look at the Arduino controllers... I plan on automating my whole cooling with one, once I've learnt how to use them. Luckily I'm doing a Robotics degree, and this is what I'm doing this year Anything is possible if you want it enough...
Anyway, I'm going to give this a try. My one thought is whether to use the top 240 rad (which I haven't bought yet) on the main or the auxillary. I should end up with a DDC and DDC Pro and the bigger one will go on the primary as there will be more restriction.
Something like a pair/four of these could be the answer. As they're normally open if there's a problem then they may loose power and open up, it closes at 12v. Attach them to one of the fan outputs of the t-bal and when the temperature is acceptable with the single radiator, it outputs 12v (100%) thereby keeping the second rad isolated. If the water gets too hot for the single radiator, it drops the voltage to 0v(000%) the valves open, and away you go.
It's possible I'm missing something here but I can't see the point. Make one loop with all the components in it then use the T-Balancer to switch the fan speeds up and down as needed.
I think you may be right and I may have lost the plot. The principal - using a the secondary loop with only a pump and rad as a water chiller is only relevant if that part of the loop has significant restriction, otherwise there's no reason not to run everything through all the rads with or without the fans. All I'm achieving is to manage a high flow rate through the second rad which, doesn't actually help much. Now given I have a lot of this hardware already (some of it has been gathering dust for a few years) I might as well throw even more hardware in. How about a passive primary loop and then having both rads on the secondary? You see I have an Evo 1080 gathering dust in the garage. How about having that on the primary without fans and then I have 360+240 with fans to come on when it's actually doing something? Or else I split the loops and just have CPU and GPU with one rad each which would be a bit more sensible!
since flow rate has less to do with cooling capacity than most people assume, i dont think you will gain much performance with a high flow loop cooling a low flow loop. at least in most of the tests ive seen, anything over a few LPM generally perform about the same and that flow rate is easily achievable in most standard cooling setups. and again passively cooling the primary loop begs the question, "why not just shut your fans off in low/no load conditions?".
Well granted is my plan the fans would run passive initially in any case but I agree it isn't making any sense (as I said I'm applying the solution for a different problem). It's going to be two sepoarate loops GPU and CPU. Not sure if I'll share the res or not but in any case I can independently control the two pump and fan sets.
