single or dual loop for this

Hello everyone,
This is my first post here, happy to be part of the community finally. I am slowly starting to design a new system. Now with that said it will be a while before I start purchasing hardware.

This will be my second adventure into watercooling. My first one was about 9 years ago and boy have times changed.

This is what I am planning to cool: i7, motherboard, ram, and tri or quad sli.
Planning currently on three black ice sr1 480mm with quiet fans.

So with the d5 pumps should I go dual d5 with the dual bitspower pump mod top or run a dual loop, one for the cpu,mobo and one for the gpu's?

Thanks and cant wait to start posting pics of hardware and build once I get it all planned out.

Welcome to OCFs!

I am going to assume here you understand the basics since already having water cooled many years ago. On that note, it's time to party! Of course with your wallet that is.

Let me start by saying, since back than if you will, lots of things have changed. One example would be not watercooling the MB and Ram. That only adds more restriction to the loop and can impede performance. Only things we water cool nowadays is the CPU and GPUs. That's it.

Pumps are smaller, quieter and stronger. In your instance I would go with 2 pumps for such a complex loop and for the added redundancy should one pump fail while you're not around. The choice of pumps I would go with with a setup like that would be the MCP-35X2s. I actually use them for my much smaller and simpler loop. They won't disappoint you. I actually use this reservoir combo.

For reservoirs, cylinder or dual bay reservoirs are used. Some can be combo'd with pumps and others cannot. Most will pick the one that looks great with the build's theme. That choice is up to you.

Rads well, they always say you can't get enough of them. lol I am a huge fan of the BI SR-1 rads. I myself have a family of them even though some other brands have more options of thicker rads which I would assume helps out but shouldn't be a huge difference in my book in temps. Ok, enough of me blabbing away. You should have enough heat surface to cool all those components.

As for fan choices, the king of the hill is the AP-15s but unfotunately the company has gone out of business so I would steer away from them for RMA purposes since they don't exist anymore and go with the Noiseblockers eLoop B12s. Those 2 fans are premium fans hense the price tag. For more afordable fans the Helix120s are the best bang for your buck compared to its competitiors.

Bitspower is still one of the premium brands for fittings and their best ones are the newer designed rotary fittings. It makes it much easier to tighten your fitting and move the tubing around without actually unscrewing the fitting by accident.

As for tubing, Primochill Advanced LRT tubing is atm I believe the king of the hill for tubing. Been using their clear and colored tubing and have proven themselves to me and many others.

We don't advise colored fluid because it can cause buildup, more maintenance required and stains the hell out of your water gear. The choice of liquids used for today's loops are distilled water with a silver kill coil.

Before I end this, I am curious to know what case will all these goodies be housed in? My guess is its either going to be a CaseLabs or MountainMods case.

Hope I helped you some to better position you to whats been going on the last few years. Would hate to see you spend top dollar on old designs. Hope to hear from you soon and can't wait to witness this premium build log.

Thank you for such a detailed reply.
Yes everything has changed drastically. My last system was basic just cpu cooling, flex tubing, a dual bay res, orginal black ice rad, obnoxious loud 120's, and a pond pump. It was about the time when watercooling a Peltier cooler was getting popular and if I recall correctly leak testing outside of your system was common practice. Oh the fun of putting a loop together in the system then remove it entirely to leak test and then try to fit it all back in, not fun.

I see that some of my research paid off. I was planning on using bit power fittings (it took me a few days to figure out that I can use bitpower fittings with primochill compression fittings brain fart I suppose). Also glad to hear positive things about the black ice Sr-1.

I understand that watercooling the ram is not necessary, I was unaware that it is not advantageous to watercolor the motherboard. With that said if I am able to do this preferably with a single loop I would like to still at them for astethic reasons all conected with crystal link, even if this means I have to drop down to a tri ski setup. I hope to use all Ek waterblocks by the way.

On to fans. I will have to research those that you mentioned the noiseblocker looks like a winner. I had planned on using nf-f12 on the radiators where they will be out of sight and something like you reccomended where they will be seen. That is unless they outperform the nf-f12's. I also read that the nf fans are not as good on a pull set up. One rad will have to be a pull just for astethic purposes.

Finally on to the case that will hold all of this power. It will be a caselabs th10.

So with that said thank you and that puts me back to pump issues. If I plan on still on including the ram and motherboard should I step up to a dual top d5 with cylinder res.

The downside to all of this is it all seems to be following most of everyone else's design however I feel that if it's coppied it must be a well refined set up that works efficiently. Thanks again!

My only pieces of advice...

*Don't cool the ram or the mobo. Very restrictive blocks and yields nothing in the way of performance. Jack has you covered on the rest.

*I would only go tri/quad SLI if I had a multiple monitor setup. Otherwise, use the least amount of cards you can to save on heat load, power consumption, and overall hassle as inherintly, SLI/CFx is usually more hassle than a single card. What resolution are you gaming at? What is the point of this build?

I plan on three monitors so maybe back from quad to tri sli.

Personally, I would go dual cards with a 3x 1920x1080p setup... 2 290x or 2 780's/780TI's