i would swap those for two
Seagate barracuda 410AS's, there faster, quieter and produce less heat since there is only one platter.
this will also solve any water cooling ideas you have or who ever brought it up.
if i had a lot (i mean a lot) of money i would get hdd water cooling just for the fun of it.
Thanks for link
The Samsungs are also only one platter, and quiet to begin with, which is why I initially chose to consider them. These look great too. It's certainly true that HD cooling is more expensive, and it adds restriction to the loop, requiring a pump that can pull it.
If that's the case, why even cool the hard drives at all? I didn't have a single bit of airflow over my Seagate ST325060AS when my rig was still together (I'm getting a new rig, but I'm using the same HDD), and that thing was absolutely rock solid, no problems at all. If it's not about the cooling, then why not just skip cooling the HDDs at all? I see you want to wrap them in sound insulation? I'd suspect the drives to overheat even with that, as only the sides of the drive would be getting very little cooling. The tops and botttoms of the drives will be suffocated by the sound-dampening. Have you run drives in a sound enclosure before? Will it get rid of seeking noise?
I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I personally agree with going for a 120mm fan at low RPMs (I mean, a Yate Loon Low-Speed undervolted I will guarantee is quieter than whatever pump you're using and is plenty to get some air moving over a hard drive), but whatever you feel like doing.
And RAM is the same way. I take some 14ga wire, and make a little bracket to fit in the fan holes of a 120mm fan (same length of a DIMM slot basically), and the fan then clips straight onto the DIMM slots of the motherboard (I don't have any pics ATM). Get another undervolted Yate Loon Low-Speed and you're set for RAM and HDD cooling, without wasting your time getting waterblocks for them.
Just giving you a little insight. Take it FWIW.
Thanks for the input! When I said it wasn't about cooling, I guess I should have been more clear.
It's about cooling, but it's also about noise. The particular enclosure I linked does cool them down enough. Take a look
here. It's in Danish, but if you scroll down to the graphs, the first blue is the temp of the HD in a standard setup, the second green bar is when the HD is suspended and the orange bar is temp of HD inside the enclosure. 38°C is good enough for me. Yes, that can also be achieved with a fan and
heatsinks attached to the sides of the HD, I am sure.
No, I don't know for sure that I can eliminate seek noise 100%, but I sure as heck can get rid of it a lot better than I can with suspension + fan. If it removes noise really well, I can even opt for faster and noisier drives with larger capacities.
Thanks for the tip about the RAM.
Wow I really like that enclosure!
I see your point about cooling the hard drives.
In that case I would do a separate loop for the hard drives and motherboard(if you still want to cool that). That way you don't have to worry about those restrictive bends
If you feel daring, I would get a 120mm rad for the hard drives and motherboard etc. and place it on the intake side of one of the PA160's(basically attach it to the 120mm fan). That way you dont have to get ANOTHER fan in there...
Aye thanks I did think of another loop.
It's an option I will keep in mind if
the pump I am currently looking at (4.2m / 13.77' max head) can't provide enough pressure in near silent mode.
Going back to the original topic, I found out on another forum that the total TDP of the X38 board is 26.5W according to Intel. Most of that will probably come from the NB. Add some overclocking and I am sure that'll go up further though.
The Yorkfield processor does run cooler than Kentsfield, according to
this review, so I am starting to think two PA160s are enough even if I watercool damn near everything in the case. Even if I round up to 110W from CPU and 40W from the chipset, that still leaves me with 150W for GPU, HDs and RAM. If I can get away with passive cooling of some of the parts (like SB, mosfets and ram) I'd prefer that though, because the pump will run quieter.
EDIT: I should add, I'll probably go with this
F-fitting from Swiftech for any chipset, RAM and HD cooling, meaning I'd be running those parallel to the CPU and GPU loop. That way the pressure/flow of the primary loop is still high, and the secondary loop is still good enough to cool the other parts, according to the reviews I have read so far.
Here's one of them.