Planning Radiators in Series?

Hi Guys. I'm in the process of designing a small but powerful rig for my bedroom PC, and I would like to have it watercooled. The case will be designed (and hopefully built) by me, and will house a Mini-ITX motherboard, will accommodate a full length graphics card, an ATX power supply and some 2.5" drives.

I've been playing with some models in Sketchup, and have come to the conclusion that the layout of the case will depend entirely on the watercooling components. I want to cool both the CPU and the GPU, and *possibly* the chipset.

So my options are to either have separate loops for the CPU and GPU, like this:

LOOP ONE: --> Reservoir --> Pump --> CPU --> Chipset (possibly) --> Radiator -->

LOOP TWO: --> Reservoir --> Pump --> GPU --> Radiator -->

This would mean that each component gets independent cooling, which is better. The problem is that I would need two reservoirs and two pumps, not to mention two radiators. Not only will this be additional cost, but it will take up too much room, and I want this to be as small as possible.

The other option would be to have all components cooled in series, like this:

--> Reservoir --> Pump --> CPU --> Chipset (possibly) --> GPU --> Radiator --> Radiator -->

In order to cool all of the components, I would still need two radiators, probably a 240 and maybe a 140 in series), but it would cut out the need for a second pump and reservoir. Is this feasible in any way, or is cooling performance reduced if you put radiators in series (I don't mean rad-stacking, which I know is inefficient)?

I'm not sure on the actual hardware yet, so I appreciate that any answers will be fairly vague without knowledge of what I plan on cooling. I can tell you that it will be something like an i5 CPU and a fairly recent GPU (mid to high range). If anyone has any experience with cooling in this way, please let me know!

Many thanks

 

You can cool an i7 with a fair clock on it and a 680 with a 240 and 140 rad so go for the series option i'd say. Get some ex rads an fairly good static pressure fans and away you go . The order of your loop makes little to no difference tests show less that half degree increase so don't worry about that. just incase you go down the other path you can get duel loop res's such as this one here

http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop...-Loop-Multi-Fascia--BR525DSPLT-pid-11112.html

 

I'm running GG's guts single loop with a 120x3. -That's chipset and all. I'd go single loop to avoid the extra clutter/maintenance.

 

+1

keep it simple...

 

If you have space for dula-loop, I would recommend to go with it.

In that way there wouldn't be any negative effects of heating one component to another.

 

Awesome, thanks for the feedback so far guys. To be honest I'm relieved to see that the single loop option is preferable, it will save me space and money, and will be easier to maintain.

With this in mind, I can continue with the design of the case and hopefully actually build something in 2013!

Of course, if anyone else has any further opinions on this, please do let me know

 

who says a dual loop is harder to maintain? if executed properly it can look great, be easier to maintain(only one part of the whole setup need disassembly for cleaning, only one loop OOC compared to whole loop for single loop) and you don't necessarily need a res per loop. you can use one res for several loops.
but for a single loop several rads i series is a-okay.

 

if your only taking one thing out to clean your loop your doing it wrong

 

normally, yes. thing is my gpu block always seems to get dirty faster. CPU block still looks a-OK, tho im still gonna do an overhaul pretty soon. CPU is getting kinda dated, same as gpu. 3 gtx 250s in sli don't always like to play nice with JC2, BAC, AC revelations etc. nor does a dual core penryn. *eyes up i7 xeons*

 

You still need to drain the loop to remove the gpu block maintenance in a duel loop and single loop is the same

 

*ahem* quick disconnects. i maintenance the cpu block every other time. no problems yet. i dunno whats causing the gpu blocks to get so bad so quick. of course thats irrelevant now because i left the thing unattended. my cousin(6 years old) played the i know everything card, and disconnected the cpu inlet while it was all on... you can guess the rest. i cam in, saw his hand on the fitting, smackked it away but just a tad too late. total damage: all three graphics cards are perfectly moisturized and a pretty corroded white in color, a nice and EXTRA-EXTRA crispy cpu, a traumatixed mobo, and a dead 1 tb hdd. ram and psu are fine but are only good for scraps, due to sheer age.

 

Sorry to hear that but you can still use quick disconnects in a single loop as it happens

 

Thanks for the feedback all. The plan is to build the case so that all the internal parts (including the watercooling loop) are mounted to a metal backbone, which can be pulled out for easy maintenance. The outer shell just covers it all, and offers little structural value apart from some rigidity and the base for the inside to rest on. I'll try and get some Sketchup drawings up soon. Now I know what I can get away with, it should be a bit easier to design.

 

I have had 2 personal water cooled builds (both a highly overclocked 920, gtx 285, p6t-deluxe, vrm, nb/sb, 1/2 high flow BP silver fittings, just shy of 1/2 ID tygon)

1st = slightly noisy (5 fans total added) Feser 480 all in a single loop D5 vario high

2nd = fairly quite Dual Feser 480 using 8 low speed fans in a dual loop DDC sharing a single Reservoir as shown in the pic below. I added flow restrictors between the 2 pumps & the res in the form of 1/4 barbs and lightly clamped hoses.

3rd = build in progress just for kicks and giggles = Dual Feser 480 series in a water box (built of shellaced MDF & full of Black Hole noise absorber). A total of 3 Feser Triebwerk fans to push the air through the water box and by extension through the 8 'fan' spots on the radiators. A total of 1 system fan to keep some air flowing across the board. Boy builds go slow with a newborn

 

I’ll also mention

Builds 1 + 2 have been going almost 24x7 for ~3.5 years.

Build 3 is a rebuild of build 1. I’ve never changed the water or cleaned the internals – only adding a small amount of distilled to the reservoir every year or so. All fittings are BP Silver. I included 4 silver kill coils. The distilled water had a double hit of Petras nuke.

After taking it apart about 2 weeks ago I have the following to report:
-The 3603 clear tygon is now milky white but still flexible.
-The Fittings no longer have silver on the inside – pure copper shows.
-The kill coils are gone.
-No blocks needed to be cleaned (EK VRMs, EK full board block, Apogee GTZ cpu block, Danger Den 285 v2) – all are bare dull cooper!
-Rad reverse pressure flushed with no visible contaminants
-The drained water was collected & baked – the bottom of the dish was full of silver scale.

Cheers & have fun!

 

So to speak. The loop splits in two at the res. Better?

Also. Nifty idea ssharing the res like that. No heat buildup in the res. I like.

 

Whether 240 + 140 radiators is enough will depend on fan speed. If you were for example to go slow and silent, say 800 rpm then you wouldn't be looking at being able to cool much above about 300W @10C Δ.

An i5 is 75W and a high end GPU is around 200-250W.

Once you started over clocking however the CPU could double to 150W and the GPU starts creeping up to maybe as high as 300W. Then you would be on a delta of 15C as you had overloaded the loop.

But if you go to 1200 rpm then you can cool a lot more (depending on the radiator).

So whether it is enough radiator or not will depend on fan speed, radiator choice and the intended wattage you wish to cool. An average loop should aim for a delta of 10C because past that it diminishes the benefit quite dramatically until its worse than air.