WC placement

4 months ago I set up a watercooling system from Dangerden that you can see HERE

I bought a full tower case and I'm transferring my entire system into the new case, and I need advice for placement of the components.

For those of you too lazy to click on the link my old system looked like this:



I wasn't ever really happy with the temps, which hovered around 39 - 45C at the lowest, and 52 at the highest. In my new case I'm planning on making a fan shroud and possibly getting rid of my Bay-Res, if it would benefit my cooling capacity.



As you can see in the picture, I'm thinking about having my pump in the bottom front and my rad/fan in the top back, above my PS, and my Bay-Res in the top bay. The main problem I see in this is having too long of a system, therefore reducing flowrates substantially. I have the Hydor L30, so do you guys think it would be powerful enough to keep my temps low through this long system? I would have Pump> Rad> CPU> Res> Pump (I know; up, down, up, down )

Another option I could take is to take the res out of the system and just use a T-line. That should make it much smaller, but would it make that much of a difference? I wouldn't mind doing some modding either, to make it all fit.

Whoever else have full towers with WC please post pics, or suggestions to what may be best (or was, for you). I have all my old tubing to use (if i need to) and I have 7-8 feet of new Clearflex 60 to use also.

Thanks a bunch!

Your setup looks, good, and you might as well remove the res, unless you want your water to have cool dye, and you want to show it off.

The res adds nothing to the cooling, and some say it detracts from it. Other than that your setup looks great, hope it looks as good in practice as it does on paper

Good Luck!

The proposed setup looks pretty good, and I am one of those who avoid reservoirs

I do think a T-Line or Air Trap (modified T-Line with something similar to a res. on top) is better, but a reservoir done well should have fairly small impact at worst.

But I can point out what is badly wrong in that pic and hurt temps tremendously if you ran just like that:
Pump lines.

Your pump intake is very badly kinked and the output line is also kinked a bit.... The intake kink alone would hurt flow a lot, man.

In the old setup if you had stood the pump so that the intake was pointing straight up and the output pointed towards the rad you would gain in a few ways:
slightly shorter tube- very small gain
Fewer bends- decent improvement
No kinks- MAJOR improvement in flow rate.

Keep this in mind for the next case: while shorter tubing is good, keeping all bend radii as big as possible is BETTER.
Longer tube to prevent kinks is well worth it.

i agree with roger. those kinks have to go. ive never been a fan of the bay reservoirs (except they look neat glowing). if you want a res, i say get a small one, and have it right by, or connected directly to the pump intake. having the rad up top should help system temps some, by not blowing all the hot air into the case. all in all, your to-be setup looks good. but i say scrap the bay res.

I meant to fix that kink, but when I decided to get a new case I didn't bother. With this new setup I hope to get much better temps The only bad part is my new mobo doesn't have mounting holes for the heatsink, so I had to order a Socket A clamp from dangerden

One more question, I was thinking about putting the radiator upside down (so the barbs are at the bottom) but would this be a problem, as far as getting air out of it? Also, could I have the T-line, say coming off the hose right from the radiator, or it better to have it from the hose coming from the pump? Maybe it doesn't matter?

Ouch, that kink is ugly

Nothing to add other than I like my Bayres, sorta my flow indicator

Oh and, Yo! from Cleveland.

I actually live in North Olmsted, but close enough, right?

looks good but may i give a little piece of advice. You need more HD cooling!!! lol, that is horrible, those poor little hardrives.

That's almost he exact layout that I was planning on using when my water cooling stuff shows up. I have 5 exposed 5.25" bays, and only two of them will be occupied. Going to only use the bottom two bays, and as luck would have it, the top of the power supply and the top of the second cdrom line up almost perfectly, giving me enough room to duct some air in unobstructed from the front, and exhaust it right out the back.

Nice to know I'm not the only one that decided on that layout, and even nicer to know that (most) everyone thinks it will work just peachy. The joys of full towers.

drunkmonkey said:

looks good but may i give a little piece of advice. You need more HD cooling!!! lol, that is horrible, those poor little hardrives.

Click to expand...

I'd like to have em spread out more, but the case I have only has 3 3.5 bays

You can cool hard drives?
They need airflow?


I pay absolutely no attention to my hard drives, lol- let the negative pressure I try to run with get them any cooling they can

T-Line can really go anywhere, but I think it is most effective on the outlet of the radiator and as high as possible. Both, when I can.

I WOULD suggest keeping the outlet from the rad on top anyway- sideways would be ok, but both barbs on the bottom might trap air in the rad and reduce cooling efficiency.

link1305 said:

I actually live in North Olmsted, but close enough, right?

Click to expand...

Well hey I'm in South Euclid who would actually want to live IN Cleveland

link1305 said:

I'd like to have em spread out more, but the case I have only has 3 3.5 bays

Click to expand...

Seriously, If they are all 7200rpm I would make a rack or something to give them a good inch of space between themselves. I know my maxtor gets crazy hot when it isn't in a space with airflow.

Well I have an extra 3 - 3.5 bay rack from an Antec case I could mount somewhere.....The 2 60 gigs (Maxtors) are in RAID, so if one dies (would I hope would be unlikely anyway) then