Watercooling question

Ok, I want to take the plunge into watercooling. I wanan cool my northbridge, cpu, and video card. I would only need 1 radiator, right? But wouldnt the components warm the water, ineffeciently cooling the other components? Plz help, thnx. Also, i know NO lingo at all. Also wat is a TEC?

Yes you would only need one radiator. What do you mean by "But wouldnt the components warm the water, ineffeciently cooling the other components? "..... what components???
If you're talking about the pump and waterblocks putting heat into the water, then no. The radiator should have more than enough heat dissipation power to cool the water down.

TEC stands for thermoelectric cooling. Thermoelectric coolers are solid state heat pumps that operate on the Peltier effect, the theory that there is a heating or cooling effect when electric current passes through two conductors. A voltage applied to the free ends of two dissimilar materials creates a temperature difference. With this temperature difference, Peltier cooling will cause heat to move from one end to the other. A typical thermoelectric cooler will consist of an array of p- and n- type semiconductor elements that act as the two dissimilar conductors. The array of elements is soldered between two ceramic plates, electrically in series and thermally in parallel. As a dc current passes through one or more pairs of elements from n- to p-, there is a decrease in temperature at the junction ("cold side") resulting in the absorption of heat from the environment. The heat is carried through the cooler by electron transport and released on the opposite ("hot") side as the electrons move from a high to low energy state. The heat pumping capacity of a cooler is proportional to the current and the number of pairs of n- and p- type elements (or couples).

o wait, would i use seperate lines for each compinent, ie--- vid card, hdd, northbridge, cpu, etc. for each one i want to cool, if not, this is what I mean:

Ok, say I have the water first run through the vid card water block, would that not warm up the water? Than it would go through the northbridge waterblock,, warming it more, than go through the CPU with already warm water?

O ya, can someone help me with how a waterblock works exactly. I now it absorbs the heat, than water goes through it to take away its heat, but wat is with all these trenches and stuff in the gallery sticky?
Thnx.

ok i see what you mean. you mean that when water for example passes into the CPU block, and then goes to the gfx card (therefore the gfx card not getting water that is as cold as it could be)...

in my case, i used Y fittings. i have a very high flow pump, so when my water leaves the radiator, it gets split into 2 pices. one goes into the CPU, the other one splits again to go into the chipset and graphics card.... which results in all components getting the cold water. many people figure that the chipset is not as important to cool, so they just run the water that comes out of the CPU block into the inlet of the chipset. if you are cooling everything with a 300 or so GPH pummp, i would have it split once, have one end going to the CPU and the other end going to gfx which the outlet of it is wired to the inlet of the chipset.

since the northbridge doesnt give off a lot of heat, would it make more sense to run it there first before the CPU? Also, would it make more sense to use Y fittings to cool the vid card, than the northbridge, as I would imagine my tbredb xp2100 produces more heat than my vid card? Also, what is a good cheap pump that will do what you are doing?
Thnx.

ignore the putting CPU on own line, i missed the last part of your post

Nico3k said:

TEC stands for thermoelectric cooling. Thermoelectric coolers are solid state heat pumps that operate on the Peltier effect, the theory that there is a heating or cooling effect when electric current passes through two conductors. A voltage applied to the free ends of two dissimilar materials creates a temperature difference. With this temperature difference, Peltier cooling will cause heat to move from one end to the other. A typical thermoelectric cooler will consist of an array of p- and n- type semiconductor elements that act as the two dissimilar conductors. The array of elements is soldered between two ceramic plates, electrically in series and thermally in parallel. As a dc current passes through one or more pairs of elements from n- to p-, there is a decrease in temperature at the junction ("cold side") resulting in the absorption of heat from the environment. The heat is carried through the cooler by electron transport and released on the opposite ("hot") side as the electrons move from a high to low energy state. The heat pumping capacity of a cooler is proportional to the current and the number of pairs of n- and p- type elements (or couples).

Click to expand...

Heehheheee
I see some fellas don't snooz through Eletrical circuits lectures as I do.
Good explaintion but I think all that might overwelm some people, try and make it more lamen.