water cooling loop temperature examples

Adding more radiators to a custom loop will of course give gradually diminishing returns. At what point does it just get academic?

Would you mind posting your average water loop temperatures (under some load, say while gaming BF4 or equivalent) along with how many radiators, what type, fanspeed and approximately how many watts are added to the loop (or at least what type of CPU / GPU and how much they are overclocked. I know there will be lots of errors but I would just like to see where people are operating.

Using the same kind of fans and radiators, your water temp will roughly cut in half every time you double your radiator. That of course doesn't account for pressure drop needing more pumps or heat generated from the power used by extra pumps and fans. But those are small changes in the grand scheme.

I get roughly 11-12℃ difference between my room temp and water temp while gaming and around 13-15℃ under 3 thread prime95 and heaven/valley gpu load with my 290 crossfire and 4670k at 4.5ghz. This is on a swiftech 120.4 xp (20fpi) and push pull 1450rpm gentle typhoons.


So yeah, I could go up to 120.8 worth of radiator and shave up to 7℃ off my temps, going up to 120.16 would drop off another 3.5℃. Going up to 120.32 drops another 1.75℃.

That's why most experienced water coolers say a 10℃ delta loop is good and 5℃ delta is excellent. It isn't hard to get to that point but it starts taking up a lot of room fast.

Supertrucker, would this theory hold true for radiator thicknesses? In other words, would going from a 30mm thick rad to a 60mm thick rad with the same fpi and same fans cut the delta in half?

No. Thick radiators can often only tie or even lose to thin radiators at the thin radiators optimal fan level. For example, the swiftech qp rads compare pretty well to the xspc rx rads at the 600-800 rpm area and the swiftech xp rads compare well to it at the 1600rpm area. But the xp rad gets destroyed at the lower speeds and the qp gets destroyed at the higher speeds.

What thick radiators buy you is often a much broader range of efficiency, and often less flow restriction as well.

Exactly what super has said. Thicker rads work best for low speed fans since they are low FPI. They were designed that way purposely. You'll notice most slim rads at earlier designs were always higher FPI which would involve higher RPM. Its the trade off if you will. Now I am starting to see lower FPI slim rads. Water cooling companies realize the community is not only water cooling for temps but also for quiet operations.