Are heatercores worse in parallel?

I just had a weird thought...so I thought I'd ask. We know that slower flow = worse cooling, and higher flow = higher cooling, even in the radiator. Since you want to keep flow through your radiator higher rather than lower, wouldn't heatercores in series be more effective than heatercores in parallel? Or does it not really make a difference?

With heatercore in parallel it keep the delta T higher in both. In series the first one is the same as both in parallel and the second is much less efficient.

With them both in series it slows down flow through the blocks too, which is important as we all know.

Ah...that makes sense. Alright.

See, I'm going to end up running two chevette heatercores in my case - I have an Antec full tower. I'm going to put one above my power supply and the other at the bottom front like a lot of people do. Since the bottom one will be intake and the top one will be exhast, I'm going to run Waterblock(s) --> Heatercore at top --> Pump --> Heatercore at bottom --> Waterblock(s). Trying to keep that DeltaT as high as possible.

I'm assuming you have a gpu and a CPu block?

If so I would go like this:

heatercore at top->cpu->heatercore at bottoms->gpu->pump->heatercore at top

Keeps it high, with the best cooling for your blocks.

I have the same case (In the Chieftec Dragon Full-Tower Flavour), and although spacious, fitting two Chevvy cores close enough for parallel would be really, really tricky. Having an intake, and an exhaust is a very good idea for your space restrictions - but make sure that your PSU isn't generating too much heat for the top-mount exhaust heatercore!

If you set up the circuit as sandman001 suggested, and have a decent pump that can handle the circuit, it should work *really* well

I am currently setting up something similar, but am using two Custom Shrouded Black Ice Extreme radiators in Parallel, both blowing intake with 4 120mm AOC Aluminum fans, in the front of the case (I removed the 3.5" Drive bays, and am cutting holes ) - they extend almost halfway into the case with the shrouds

As an off-topic aside, where are you putting the pump in your case? That is the only thing I haven't figured out yet...

My geuss is where the PCI card go, or in a drive bay.

You see, I was thinking of suspending it from the case ceiling, right between the PSU, and the 5.25" Bays - this would completely negate Vibration, and look cool to boot

The only problems are the design (mini bungee cords, and some kind of bracket screwed to the case roof), and the fact that a T-Line won't fit too well with the pump so high up in the case. And the drive bays are sketchy as I am using modded cooldrive 3's for my harddrives - having removed the 3.5" Bays .

What pump?

Yeah, it's sitting in the bottom of the 5 1/2" drive bays. I took the little floppy rack out because I don't have a floppy, so I've got 7 5 1/2"'s. CDRW and DVD leave me plenty of room for the pump. Can't really suspend if from the ceiling - I'm all windowed and it would look funky.

heatercore at top->cpu->heatercore at bottoms->gpu->pump->heatercore at top

Click to expand...

The problem with that is where the pump is...where would you put the pump in that setup?

My thinking was if it goes pump --> top HC --> blocks it's not the coolest it could be - the top HC is pulling all the warm air from the top of the case. I thought that I would eventually use a white water or RBX, and have one outlet going to the GPU and one outlet going to the NB. After that they'd head back up to the top of the loop and get rid of a lot of the heat, and then get as cool as possible with the cool air at the front of the case.

I'm using a Danner Mag 3.

There is not going to be natural convection currents in a case with a case fan.

I found that the heater-cores that I used worked better in series. The pressure-drop through them is fairly low, with 5/8" fittings. The difference between going through them in series, vs going through them in parallel with two Y's in there as well, was fairly minimal, so overall the flow rate wasn't that much different between the two configs.

Higher water flow rate is better for heater-core style radiators, and provided they are of low flow resistance, putting them in series will most likely be better all 'round.

So would Chevette heatercores be characterized as low-restriction? I'll be using a fair amount of 5/8" ID tubing in my system, as well as a small section of 1" ID clearflex for the pump's inlet. As far as my plans go, the most restrictive portion of the setup would be the White Water's inlet. Planning on running my GPU and NB blocks in parallel after that, and rejoining at the heatercore up top.