Cooling of MB, mem and others when watercooling

Hi, this is my first post at OCForums even when I've been reading you for a long time now... I want to watercool my next pc (I'm not building it immediately though) and I'm in the process of learn and planning it... I've read a lot about watercooling, so I think I've got the basics, but I've never built a watercooled pc... yet.

The idea is to watercool the components that usually need active cooling (CPU and GPU), but a question has been growing in me... it would be enough with a tipical front/bottom to rear/top case airflow to cool NB, mosfets, RAM, and so on without any other active cooling over their heatsinks, when there's no CPU air cooler? I'm thinking in a case with for example 1 rear exhaust and 2 top exhaust fans. And what about having a big side intake fan in the chassis, blowing directly against the mobo? Should it make a difference even when they aren't the best option to make an optimal airflow through the case? Am I simply oversizing the problem and any case with a good airflow will be more than enough?

Lots of thanks for your help, and please, excuse any mistakes in the text, I'm not a native english speaker...

I have a system that has radiator bottom front & flows air (hot) through the case out top/ rear.

Made the room it was in HOT.

I ended up adding a side case fan (72-100 cfm) to help with "system" temps and ram cooling.

It helped a lot.

PS- & post up more often.

We always like peoples in put around here.

You still need good airflow in the case for the NB/SB/Mosfets. So standard fans are good, and one on the side panel is great. It all depends where you mount the rad. If on the bottom and a 120x3 rad blowing IN thru the rad into the case, most put all the top fans on exhaust. If its a top rad then exhaust at the bottom/back. Having the panel fan blowing in for cool air directly onto the Mobo, always a good idea. If a 120x2 rad, then you might still want one fan blowing cool air in, on the front maybe, the panel fan to IN, and the rest to out.

If an external rad, hanging off the back (common) and the rad having it's own fans not blowing into or out of the case, then don't change your case fans at all. You can turn the case fans down or get quieter ones then, since the internal case temp would be lower.

Great!, lots of thanks to both. So I supose that having a 25cm (10") side fan intake, and a top 120.3 rad with fans as exhaust would be a better setup than, for example, a top 120.3 rad as exhaust, and 2 or 3 fans as front/bottom intakes because of the side fan ability to blow directly against the mobo and cool all these mosfets/NB/SB/RAM heatsinks that were designed to be near a CPU aircooler...

I usually don't like side fans (specially big side fans) because they usually don't work well together with any other fans in front/rear/bottom/top to make a fluent airflow through the case, plus the fact that can disrupt other airflows if not careful enough... but it seems to be a special case when watercooling... In the end is great because I love BIG fans, the bigger the better, and there aren't many places to put a massive 25cm fan in a case except the side panel

PS: Thanks for the welcome, and Warrior, don't have any doubt, from now on I'll post here with certain frequency, now that I've done the worst part (registering yeah, I'm lazy)

EDIT and PS: Mmmm. I've been thinking a little. And how about an inverted BTX-style mobo with bottom intakes (through a 120.3 rad) and top/rear exhausts compared against the massive side fan intake and top/rear exhausts?

Farinorco said:

EDIT and PS: Mmmm. I've been thinking a little. And how about an inverted BTX-style mobo with bottom intakes (through a 120.3 rad) and top/rear exhausts compared against the massive side fan intake and top/rear exhausts?

Click to expand...

That sounds fine; I think Conumdrum mentioned that. If you have been scouring the WCing section, then you probably have seen my post about my water cooling build. If you are looking to internally mount a 120.3, like discussed, just choose your case wisely, its a big boy. Also, if you want to overclock, you might want to consider other than stock (depending on what mobo you buy) cooling for your North Bridge. Thermalright makes a decent sink for it while Noctua has an even better one. You could always factor a chipset water block into the loop.

As for ram, mosfet, and soutbridge. As long as you maintain an influx of fresh air into the case (besides whats being pushed through your rad) and towards those components, it should be fine. I have never actually touched the southbridge sink, however, i dont think that it will ever really need cooling beyond the stock.

You can always purchase something liek this

I actually have one that I won off of another forum. Its nice little fan that keeps some air flow over your board. The only thing is, I would put it on a controller cause it can be noisy.

From everything I have read, water cooling ram is pointless. Its generally said that it only increases your chances of leaks, limits your flow, and offers little to no gain in performance. Some companies do offer mosfet water cooling blocks, but I would think you are better off just use passive sinks on them and maintaining airflow in the region. I would think that for the amount that such blocks would limit flow, it just wouldnt be worth it.

Hey Phil, I've been taking a look to your build, good stuff there . Then I've seen... my main concern about changing stock NB cooling is that with the usual heatpipe cooling design of many boards (it doesn't seem to be your case) I don't know what to do with mosfet and SB cooling... I noticed that your board doesn't have any mosfet heatsink, doesn't they get toasted? I've seen some people using ramsinks on mosfets after taking off the mobo heatpipe, but I don't know if it's a good enough solution...

Anyway, I see that if I had a good airflow in the case going around those areas is enough, and if I have a side fan blowing directly against the board, it could be better (as said by previous posters). So now I've to value the pros and cons of each option, and look for a case that suits my needs (and thank you Phil for the advise regarding the triple rad! They are really big boys hehe).

thanks Farinorco. yeah, i have actually been considering something for mosfets. my original NB sink was just a little metal block with fins. Easy pin mounting. the cooler in the photos from my thread is actually the thermalright hr-05.

southbridge should be fine with stock..

for the mosfet you can go with a set like this