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Aqueous cooling gurus, I need your help!

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Wayward_Son

Member
Joined
Nov 10, 2006
Location
Southeast Texas
I need to get your input on a few upcoming purchases.

I'm about to start a new build for a mATX case, and I've decided I want to undertake the challenge of a water-cooled highly-clocked rig in a mATX format. I need advice on radiators and fans.

1. I need to know the best radiator for a single 120mm fan. Price be damned. Even if it's only fractionally better than a competitor, I'd like to get rid of every bit of heat possible.

2. Ditto, but for a 2x80mm radiator. Cost doesn't matter.

I need to get these radiators so I can test fit them and mod the case to fit the rads. Once the case mods are complete, then I will begin ordering the rest of the rig.

3. Not as important at this point, but I need some good advice on fans for the rads. Noctua's 120mm fans have been reviewed as very silent but they don't produce the pressure necessary to cool a water loop. However, I see that they have a new fan specifically for high-pressure-low-noise requirements:

http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/noctua-nf-p12-1300-120mm-fan.html

Will it work? This rig needs to be as silent as possible. It will have many quiet fans spinning to cool the radiators and other areas of the case, but I need to make sure they are spinning slowly enough that they are quiet while still providing enough airflow through the rad fins to keep the water cool. I need one 120mm fan in a pull configuration for the single 120mm rad.

4. Everyone is always looking for a good silent 120mm fan. What about 80mm fans? I know they are noisier, but I'm looking for some high-quality, silent 80mm fans. Decent airflow and pressure are a must. I plan on having four of them in a push-pull setup at low RPM through a 2x80mm rad.


I am using this case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119088
 
For the 120MM radiator you will want a thermochill PA120.1


don't get noctua fans they're pretty much a joke... get some yate loons from petras.



i'm not too sure on the 80mms.
 
Planning on outdoing me now? Hehe :D

I agree with above. I see your design idea, but I have a question: How many drives total do you plan on putting in the system? If you are going 1 CD/DVD and 1 HDD, then I see where you MIGHT be able to squeeze 2x120mm.
 
Use the Noctua NF-P12 you linked, it really is the best low RPM radiator fan out there when it comes to CFM per RPM and noise. Only downside is price.

The Thermochill PA160 is probably the best radiator for a single 120mm fan, but it might not fit the case, so the PA120 is a good bet if it doesn't.
 
Don't get a quiet fan for the rad, get a blaster of a fan, and put it behind a rheostat so you can blow the innards of your case out the back if you like. That way if you're in a game and crap starts getting warm, you just turn it up and keep going ;)
 
No, no outdoing going on here. I bought this case four months ago, got kind of bored with modding, bought a couple of guns, and now getting the urge to use this case. The vast majority of mATX cases don't lend themselves to watercooling, but this one does.

And I'll say again, if I could find a satisfactory way to water cool my PC60, I would do it. I just don't see a way to do it to my liking. :p

I plan on one hard drive, a Raptor 150 gig, although I may take a look at one of those new 7200 RPM units with the 32 megs of cache. I don't use a lot of hard drive space. Anything I want to watch is online. I bought the 250 gig WD in my sig almost two years ago. I currently have 181 gigs of free space.

This will also hold a few 70mm fans, but I need to find a way to mod them to acceptable noise levels. I plan on puttind two of them in the top as side-by-side blowholes. I've already cut a 70mm hole in the bottom of the floppy cage. I'm modding the floppy cage to accept hard drives (the quick-mount sustem isn't designed for HDDs) and I will put a 70mm fan on the bottome of the floppy cage blowing onto the bottom of the hard drive. If I can't mod them with inline resistors, then I'll hack and solder their wiring into one daisy chain with a single connector and plug that into the Zalman MCF2 which will go in the top 5.25 bay. That controller's aesthetics match perfectly the Cooler Master case, and it has some nifty features. As much as I love my Sunbeam Rheobus, the MCF2 is the perfect match for this new build.

By moving the single hard drive into the floppy cage, that opens up a bunch of floor space for the pump. Hell, if I really wanted to go all-out I could even mount a rad into the floor, but I'd rather keep it to my two-radiator layout.
 
...a water-cooled highly-clocked rig
...get rid of every bit of heat possible.
...This rig needs to be as silent as possible.

Hmmmmm.....
...$450
...laptop
...30,000 3dMark06

...600 horsepower
...40 miles per gallon
...$3K

...Turn lead into gold

...Perpetual motion

...Your proposal
 
Well, I was thinking, if you pull both the bottom bay and the middle bay out, then you might have room for a 2x120mm rad in front. It only leaves you room for a DVD drive and a hard drive adapted to full size, but the cooling capability would be awesome.
 
Acid, I'm keeping the middle bay. Top 5.25 will house a Zalman MCF2. Second will hold my burner, probably a Plextor. First 3.5 will be a Mitsumi floppy/card reader. Second 3.5 will be a Raptor.

PA160.1 w/shroud, huh? For $110, it better be damn good.

What about 2x80mm rads? Need some input in this area.
 
Hmmmmm.....

...Perpetual motion

...Your proposal
I'm was just suggesting that you firm up your goals a little bit as maximin heat removal and quiet are prety much mutually exclusive.

If you look at performance curves for rads, you will see that air flow increaces are very effective (while increacing water flow has diminishing returns). Of course the effectiveness of increaced air flow depends on the rad.

The "holy grail" is a fan that will move a lot of air with alot of pressure too, and still be acceptably (to you!) quiet. Generally these are thicker (38mm) fans. Have a look at this: Fan PQ curve.
 
I understand that, Bill.

My requirements for the "best" radiator for "maximum heat removal" take this into consideration. For a given amount of pressure and airflow, there has to be one 1x120mm radiator out there that outperforms all others. Whether i is being cooled by 10, 25, or 100 cfm of airflow, there must be one that is more efficient than the rest at transferring heat energy out of the liquid medium into the ambient air. Same thing for the 2x80mm rad. Those radiators are what I'm looking for.

As far as fan selection, I am looking for the best overall mix of pressure, flow and low noise.

Within these criteria I need an overall water loop that dissipates the most heat while producing the least noise. I figured that was lined out well enough in my original post.
 
Best rad is the Thermochill brand. That answers any question you had.

Fans: Yate loon Low speed.

All done!

Don't know how good a single rad will do tho. Your money, your noise tolerance.

Read up for a few days on the billions of fan posts. And just buy some YOU think are great.
 
The best rad on the market are the Thermochill rads- period.

As for fans, yate loons specifically from Petrastechshop are very good, quiet fans. His yate loons aren't the same breed as everyone else as he deals directly with yate loon.

The Scythe S-Flex fans are also very good, quiet fans, and they are fluid bearing so they will last longer (especially if the fan is mounted horizontally vs the yates which have sleeve bearings. Sleeve bearing fans don't last as long if mounted horizontally due to lubrication issues.)
 
For a given amount of pressure and airflow, there has to be one 1x120mm radiator out there that outperforms all others. Whether i is being cooled by 10, 25, or 100 cfm of airflow,

As far as fan selection, I am looking for the best overall mix of pressure, flow and low noise.
As others are syaing the PA series test as the best pretty much. Some rads perform well with low CFM fans, some don't. ..."Whether i is being cooled by 10, 25, or 100 cfm of airflow," ...doesn't work. When comparing two rads with the same fams on them, one may be better with 25 CFM fans and the other better with 100 CFM fans. (Of course, both will be better with 100 CFM fans than with 25 CFM fans.) But the PA series seems to be the best all around.

Have a look at Marci's PA testing.

Here's some fan tests too:
http://www.matbe.com/articles/lire/146/comparatif-de-27-ventilateurs-120-millimetres/page1.php
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=137832
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=170224

And Sidewinder has an online "listening room".
 
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