Watercooler for custom case.

Custom Watercooler for custom case.

in the case i'm going to be building, i will have a seperate compartment on top to house most of the watercooling parts. Below is a rough 5 sec design of how it will basicly be laid out. My question is, should i have the fans:
1) Suck air through the HCs and exhaust out with the front fans blowing cool air into the compartment
2) Front fans blow cool air into compartment with the other fans blowing the air through the HCs and out of the box
3) Fans sucking air through the HCs from outside and the front or rear fans exhausting the warm air out
4) Fans blowing air through the HCs from outside and the front or rear fans exhausting

Does that make sense? All advice is appreciated.

Anyone have any suggestions or comments? Anything?

not really this is goin be a pretty big box

I would say, have fans on the back (120mm or bigger - bigger would be better) pull air out of the box and no fans on the heater cores. You will have to make sure that your box is completely sealed but that's not too hard.

pwnt by pat: I don't really understand what you are saying. How would that help cool the two dual heatercores if is completely sealed aside from the rear exhaust fans? it would have no air to be pulling through the HCs.

Iceblaster: Yes it is going to be a pretty big box. I fully understand and intend on that. But then again, so will the rest of case. I wanted lots of room to work around in and such. I also don't plan on moving this case very often if at all, so weight is of no consequence. So what I am looking for with suggestions on this watercooling compartment it a means of maximizing my cooling abilities.

Im really bad with schematics... they make my eyes water andf my head hurt trying to understand exactly what they are trying to display. That drawing just doesnt make much sense to me... why arnt the fans connected to the cores to draw air through... why arnt they touching.. shroud included?? Oh there i go, tylenol time.

Yeah sorry. I though I mentioned it already. Yes the 2 heatercores will have shrouds (unless a reasonable suggestion as to why not is given) with dual 120mm fans on them. And why aren't they drawing air through, that is because I am asking you all how to most effectively set them up for that to achieve maximum cooling.

(To skip somewhat detailed explination see bottem)

Well let's do it this way (imagine this): you have a completely sealed, airtight box. Now put two fans on it blowing out, both sealed on the sides to the box so no air can get around the housing, only through the blades. Why won't this work? It won't work because the fans will be trying to pull air from a container where no other air can replace the air being expelled - in essence trying to create a vacume.

So you have some fans trying to make a vacume.... Now cut a large hole in our pretend box and see what happens. The air has to come through the hole to replace the air being pulled out. Correct? Now imagine that you can put your hand behind the hole inside the box. The air comes through the entire hole (no deadspot). If you make the hole the size of say, a heater core, and you seal around the heatercore then all the air has to come through the heater core. Since there is no deadspot on the origional hole, there won't be any on the heatercore.

(simpler expliantion)
Doing this will eliminate any possible deadspot on the rads making them more efficient than putting the fan directly on the rad with a shroud (which has a deadspot).

Clear enough?

Edit: You should also set it up so the air is drawn through the heater cores, over the pumps, and out the back fans.

Ok OK Ok. See i understand what you meant a little better and now it makes sense. Before I didn't know you meant to have holes to the outside where the HCs were. Now that does make sense and is quite logical. Thanks.

Secondly though, I thought that the shrouds would eliminate the deadspots? How does it not?

Shrouds help make the deadspot smaller. Even with a two inch deep shroud, a 120mm fan will still have a deadspot. I'm not sure the exact size for 0 deadspot though. I'm sure someone has found out.

cool. Thanks. What about masking the holes for the HCs? Say with a mesh material like window screens or something. Would this decrease effectiveness much?

Not at all. It would be wise to use some kind of air filter for the rads as well.

ok. I am planning on cutting a design or two in the front bottom of the case for the blue LED intake fans and then just covering the holes with some black mesh screen so that the airflow is there, it's will semi-filter, and the blue light will shine through illuminating the design. So i guess i'll just throw some of the screen over HCs too. Thank for the help man.

Remember to have 'em exhaust, not intake.

lol. no worries man. Thanks for the help.

pwnt by pat: Hey i have a couple more questions for you man.
1) What do you think about using two of these http://dangerden.com/mall/Radiators/thermochill.asp (the triples at the bottom), one in each loop (2 seperate loops, 1 for cpu, and 1 for gpu & NB)?
2) what about adding another fan (for a total of 3) or two at the front exhausting also? You think this would help with increasing the air flow through the RADS much?
3) Anyone hear anything about this tubing here? http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/ex-tub-53.html It looks nice, but does anyone know anything about it? does it kink easy, etc.?

1)

Danger Den said:

Capable of dissipating 550W of heat at a 10°C coolant / air differential, more if differential is increased.

Click to expand...

An overclocked cpu would put out about 150w depending on speed, multiplier, voltage, etc. A gpu, depending on core, puts out about 50-70w (I'm not sure exactly but nv30/r350,360 are about 50 I think, the new r420/nv40 are closer to 70-100). A northbridge puts out a pathetic amount of heat, I'd say about 15-20w, more if you volt mod it. One of those rad's could EASILY do all componants plus some. I like those rads but I haven't personally used one, so I can't tell you how it performs exactly. I'm sure if you pm nikhsub1, he will tell you how nice it is to him.

The only thing is that it's crazy expensive (as far as rads go) and I think that if you were to buy 2x Fedco 2-342 (gdi 399090 @ autozone) and spent the money on another pump or two, you would see much better results, even all on the same loop. Two would be better though.

2) The more exhaust, the better. You can keep adding until your heart is content with the noise/performance ratio. Four/six 120mm fans at 5v all exhaust and with the case properly sealed would be pretty quiet and move enough air to make you happy.

3) I don't know about that tubing. It does look nice but its very expensive ($2/foot)and you can get somewhat of the same thing color wise with addatives and cheaper tubing.

If you have any more questions, feel free to just keep asking. That's why we're here.

I thank you for the help. It seems not very many people want to reply to my posts for some reason....i dont' know...oh well. I will PM nhiksub thanks.

Also, the reason for going with that tubing would be to avoid having to use additives. I was thinking of using that FluidXP stuff and didn't want to have to add anything to it. The price of that tubing doesn't bother me, it was simply the quality i was worried about.

The only thing i'm going to be worried about with sealing that box off, is the tubing going down to the inside of the case. I'm thinking about just drilling holes just big enough for me to barely fit the tubing through to feed it through each hole whenever it has to enter/exit the box. As for the door on the top of the box, i think i'll just use some foam or rubber lining around the edges to create a seal sort of like on a refrig. Does that sound good?

pwnt by pat said:

Shrouds help make the deadspot smaller. Even with a two inch deep shroud, a 120mm fan will still have a deadspot. I'm not sure the exact size for 0 deadspot though. I'm sure someone has found out.

Click to expand...

The shrouds will not make a true dead spot it will be more like lull in the airflow and it will be ½ the size of the dia of the hub of the fan

Ok I have an idea. What I'm thinking about is.....have two seperate loops. Have one loop go setup pump>rad>Y-Splitter>one tube to block1 and one tube to block2>pump where blocks 1&2 are each cooling the hotside of a 226w pelt both setup as a chiller. Then have the second loop setup pump>rad>chiller>cpu>gpu>NB>pump. That way the rad takes out some of the heat before it gets to the chiller and the chiller and get the temperature even lower. However, I run into issues with this.
1) I may only use one 226W pelt since the water will be running through one of those triple rads first
2) I would need a nice block to use on the cold side of the pelt and if i use dual pelts, preferrably one with both sides flat and barbs on the sides. Any suggestions?
3) Maybe I could use a smaller pelt to help avoid getting temps too far below ambient. Perhaps the 100 something w series.
4) Maybe I should just stick strictly to watercooling.
5) **** i am so confused and don't know what I should do!
6) Is there a way to hook up standard 12v molex connectors to this PSU so I can hook up fans, optical drives, lights, etc.? http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/mesc600wapas.html (isn't all that power sexy? )


P.S. Keep in mind that I do plan on O/C both my CPU and GPU. Both hopefully will be O/C quite a bit. And I will be using the Athlon xp 3200+ barton core and a geforce 6800 (if i get one since right now i'm running a geforce2 mmx200...****ing l33t!) if you wanted to use a more efficient heat wattage factor thingy majig.