New to water cooling. Advice appreciated

Hey everyone. I'm new to water cooling and am excited to get my loop going. I just had a question about the most effective way to run my loop. I've got 2 radiators, a gpu water block, and a CPU water block. Below is an image of my case (Cyclone 7000) and some advanced, next level graphics produced by MS paint to show my idea.

Personally I think you need to turn the fans around to blow up and out for the top panel radiator. Sure, like you have it it will be drawing cool ambient air through the rad but then it will be exhausting it into the case where it will be picked up by the 158mm radiator at the top of the back panel. That's just my thought but really, you should experiment with it both ways. It also depends on whether or not the gpu needs cooling worse than the CPU or visa versa.
The fans in your case should be arranged to create a front/bottom to back/top overall pattern of air movement. Fans that oppose one another cancel each other out and create higher inside case temps.

trents said:

Personally I think you need to turn the fans around to blow up and out for the top panel radiator. Sure, like you have it it will be drawing cool ambient air through the rad but then it will be exhausting it into the case where it will be picked up by the 158mm radiator at the top of the back panel. That's just my thought but really, you should experiment with it both ways. It also depends on whether or not the gpu needs cooling worse than the CPU or visa versa.
The fans in your case should be arranged to create a front/bottom to back/top overall pattern of air movement. Fans that oppose one another cancel each other out and create higher inside case temps.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the response. I feel like the message was kinda confused though. My diagram is just for show of the directionality and path of the waterloop, not air flow. The 2 places the radiators are mounted are the 2 fans blowing air out of the case. Basically all fans but them are intake and those are the output through the radiator. Here is a link to the website for the case. It shows the fan directionality and I don't intend on changing that.

With that in mind, would the water be cooled enough from the smaller radiator to be effective on the GPU? One of my concerns is that the cpu has about a 20 degree lower operating temperature than my graphics card so I want to be sure I'm cooling my CPU well but, being inexperienced in this, im not sure if the GPU will give off significantly more heat and therefore needs to be cooled more.

my 2c

suck in air from back and front and exhaust on top maybe add another fan on the bottom sucking in if you can mount the pump+res on the mb tray

First and foremost, welcome to OCFs.

Loop order doesn't matter because the loop will reach its equilibrium after 30+ mins or so on load. There is a minor difference though, since CPUs are more sensitive than GPUs, the way your loop is routed should decrease a few degrees off of the CPU versus going GPU to CPU. The only way to lower temps and delta-temps for that matter is to either go with more rad and if space is limited you'll need to go with a louder loop, high FPI rads and high RPM fans.

I can't help it to ask, are those custom radiators you will be purchasing? I am not sure if you meant to say a 140.2 up top and a 140.1 in the rear. And than you'll need to add the 25mm fan. You'll need to do measurements to see how much space you have. There's a variety of thick radiators for all purposes and to figure out if you will be going in a push and pull or one of the two. If its filtered up top I suggest using the top as intake as well as the front and bottom while using the back unfiltered area as exhaust. Should create some really good positive pressure. Assuming cable and tubing management is done well in internally.

well since most rads add between 40 & 50mm for plenum chambers, port stops and such, is ee where the 285 is coming from , that would be a (120.2) 240mm+45 mm
In don't "see" the rear one thou, 158-120 = 38mm. Which brand/model is only 38mm longer as the fan?

If we're talking about 140.x rads, then these numbers are just impossible, it would be 5mm and 18mm