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Case Cooling Questions, In Win Dragon Rider

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tangletail

Member
Joined
Jun 19, 2011
I haven't bought the case yet, but I would like to know what some people have done with the case. As in where they placed Reservoirs, radiators and the pumps.

The designs seems to have been made for water cooling, but the pictures makes it look very cramped.

I plan on running two loops. One for the cpu, using a 120x1 radiator for the CPU and a 120x2 radiator for the gpus.
 
I have the Dragon Rider case I received for review but I'm not water cooling with it. Instead, I am using it as my heatsink test system case. And it shouldn't be that cramped to to set up a loop in, since it's a full tower case. The top fan position is set up to mount a dual fan rad, since the fan mount holes are on 15 mm centers. As for another rad, I personally would make or buy some mounts and hang the other rad off the back of the case. BTW, what kind of processor do plan to try to cool with a single fan rad? It can't be very high end for sure, because if you go try to cool an i7 or quad or hex core AMD you are going to have absolutely crappy temps. The heatload on them is just too high for a 120.1 rad.
 
The new octo core. And I don't quite under stand about what you mean. Most rads do not show how much heat they can dissipitate. The heat design for the hex is 125W while a Koolance single fan rad can remove 400W.
 
It's your money, but I am telling you that a single 120.1 rad won't deal with a modern high end quad core or higher heatload elegantly if you are overclocking even slightly. Especially if you value having a fairly quiet system. I know for a fact that it takes me a MCR220 rad with 2 Swiftech fans (which aren't the quietest in the world) to keep my 2600K at good temps running at 4500 MHz. I do have a QX9650 running at 4 GHz running on a single fan rad, but then the rad I am using is a Thermochill PA160 with a Panaflo L1BX, which is quite a bit larger than your regular 120.1 size radiator. And since Thermochill doesn't make the PA160 any more, your single fan choices are either a 120 sized rad or a 140.1 sized rad and the fan choices in 140 mm size aren't nearly as good. And by octo core, are you talking about the upcoming Bulldozer AMD procs? Or something else? Either way, you are looking at a processor that will probably be rated at 130-140 watts at stock speeds.
 
Not insulting you here, but isn't that a single pass radiator with an 80mm fan <______< that only pushes 24cfm of air. Seems like that's your problem there. I found a nice 120mm fan that can push 90cfm at 19dba Also, why are there water cooling kits with a single 120 fan radiator with push and pull o_O;
I am planning on getting the new Bulldozer. I will not be over clocking the CPU, I find it unneccsary because I can hardly notice the difference. And I get no real gain when it comes to development. Example being yes its faster, but its more erroneous. Also eight cores... if the games would just use that, it would be fine. Thank you BF3 for being more cpu intensive.

The GPU will be a different story. But if you insist what do you recomend doing with the CPU. And as far as the GPU I may be SLIing in the future.

And I realized that I misread that... god Intel has to stop making these weird serial codes to name their processors.
 
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Not insulting you here, but isn't that a single pass radiator with an 80mm fan <______< that only pushes 24cfm of air. Seems like that's your problem there. I found a nice 120mm fan that can push 90cfm at 19dba Also, why are there water cooling kits with a single 120 fan radiator with push and pull o_O;
I am planning on getting the new Bulldozer. I will not be over clocking the CPU, I find it unneccsary because I can hardly notice the difference. And I get no real gain when it comes to development. Example being yes its faster, but its more erroneous. Also eight cores... if the games would just use that, it would be fine. Thank you BF3 for being more cpu intensive.

The GPU will be a different story. But if you insist what do you recomend doing with the CPU. And as far as the GPU I may be SLIing in the future.

Not to insult you, but you don't know what you are talking about. This is a PA160 and it's one of, if not the best single fan radiator designs ever made. It uses a 120 mm fan that is fit to the rad by a shroud, since the rad is much bigger than a 120 mm fan. If you could find one of these I would recommend it in a heartbeat.

As for your Bulldozer, you will still need a 120.2 sized radiator if you want quiet computing, as the octo core Dozer will still have a 125-140 watt heatload rating. You could probably get by with a 120.1 sized radiator with a higher rpm fan at stock frequency, but it will be a bit noisy and load temps won't be as good. I would recommend going with a radiator like the XSPC RX240 with a couple of Gentle Typhoon AP-14 or AP-15 fans for the cpu.
 
You havent found any 120mm fans that will push anywhere near 90cfm @19dba, nevermind through a radiator. Unless of course the company posting the bogus specs is measuring the dba of the fan from like the next room over.

That being said, a 120.1 radiator is more or less what is used in the h50 cooling kits, which require push/pull fans to even come close to high end air coolers. Come close mind you, but not actually as good as the best air coolers.

Lastly, the koolance rad that can remove 400w of heat from a loop, there is a very important piece of information missing from that. The delta t that it can remove 400w at. You see, it doesnt matter if the radiator can dissipate 400 watts or 4000, if the delta between the ambient air and the water is 25c+, which is how koolance rates their rads, by using a 25c dt, in a world where a 10c dt is considered only average.
 
Sorry, that last post up there completely through me off I didn't notice you mentioned another CPU. I did a bit of research, the Zambezi's will be 95w-125w design. So far thats what most sites say, so 130 may be correct.

Where would you recomend mounting that radiator on the Dragon Rider? Because there is only one 2x120, a giant fan witch I don't want to remove, and a single 120. My computer will be under the desk so space is kinda limited outside.


You havent found any 120mm fans that will push anywhere near 90cfm @19dba, nevermind through a radiator. Unless of course the company posting the bogus specs is measuring the dba of the fan from like the next room over.

Hm... <__< haven't you say? :D well I certainly don't mean a computer case fan. Some modding will be required *cough*. But no my current fan set is actually 64cfm at 19 dba, the three together it's about 21dba. The fan I mentioned I ripped out of something a long time ago, I think it was a tv o_O, I don't know.
 
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I can have it hang out from my desk, I expect that from a full tower. And... sorry but all I have is a tape measure with inches only. And what do you do with the cords thats hanging outside the case from mounting the stuff outside. Also, about the GPU, if I plan on SLI would a 120.2 fan, be sufficient for a 580.

24" high 23" and a half deep 39" wide
EDIT: It does not have to fit under my desk, I can move some crap around, and there is actually something I can toss out now, I just don't know why I havn't.

EDIT2: I checked the price on that gentle typhoon... seriously 15 dollars for a 120 fan... <_< I might just use the in win's case fan for that... how much air do they push.
 
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With that many 580's in your system, you will need some serious raddage to tame all that heat, even though the gpu isn't as sensitive to heat as a cpu. You might want to look at a different case instead of a Dragon Rider with that kind of hardware being watercooled. With something like a Mountain Mods Pinnacle 24, you could mount a quad rad and a triple rad easily inside.

My reasoning is like this: If you are going to put a Dozer plus 3-580 cards inside, don't skimp on the case. ;)
 
Hm... I might stick with the dragon rider and have the rad outside. It shows the... nerd in me ;). What about the Corsair 800D?
 
I haven't seen or worked with the Corsair, but I've heard good things about it.

And don't dismiss the MM cases. They are expensive, but are very high quality. My main system is a MM U2-UFO case and I freaking love the room in it. :D
 
@muddocktor: Mmm yes, that may be the case, but you are talking to a notorious cheapskate. I built a Beowulf Cluster on a pegboard, and made someone a render farm, hanging from the rafters of someones shed by yarn, with USB pin drives for hard drives.

@Conumdrum. Where is the 120x2? And is a three rad sufficient for gpus? I don't need them OMG cold. Just cool and quiet.
 
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