Started putting together my 1st wc

one of my new cpu's should come in on Monday according to the tracking number so I thought I'd start assembling stuff. Figured I'd post pics as I go along incase I do something wrong. The setup is a combo of old stuff I bought from the classifieds and new stuff from danger den/petra/jab-tech. Would love any thoughts, ideas, etc.

1) Rear radiator

2) Front radiator. Not sure who came up with the case design, but the airflow from the front 120mm fan with stock setup is really obstructed. Not sure why they did it that way. I was debating adding this rad in, but figured if I have the noise of a fan, I might as well. Note - I'm also installing an intake fan in the 5.25" drive bay that will point more towards the NB/SB/Mosfet. So this won't be the only intake fan.

"You have uploaded the maximum of 5 files"

HD 1

What is the rest of your cooling hardware? Those look to be stealth rads which aren't very efficient since they are so thin. They should be fine for a CPU only loop, if you plan to do a healthy OC on it. You could probably add the NB into the loop without a problem though. You'd be hurting it severely if you put a hot GPU on that loop too.

Axis

The big one is a used Black Ice Stealth I got from the classifieds. The small one is a Black Ice Pro. I have a 120mm Swiftech MCR thats going out the window ... when it starts warming up, I plan to cool that rad with a tec peltier. But the way the loop is, I could replace the outside the window radiator pretty easily since the tubing to it is longer than the computer is tall. So if it doesn't cut it, I could replace it with a 120.3 ... but I'd rather not unless my temps suck since I'd have to change it back to the 120mm one for the tech peltier.

What do you plan to cool with this setup? Do you plan to put peltiers all over the endtanks? I'd hate to see how much tubing you're gonna use if you plan to run the reservior out the window. It won't affect temps much though as there isn't enough volume in it and it doesn't stay there long enough to make a huge difference.

Axis

I'm actually curious to find this out myself. I've always thought the weakest link in watercooling (in terms of carrying away the heat from the cpu) is the air used to cool radiators. I mean in the water and copper you have substances that can carry away so much heat and have such a high thermal conductivity, but in the end the weakest chain is that you have to eventually get rid of the heat using air. I'm really curious to see what kind of effect using 3-4x colder air on that radiator will have. The end of the case is about 6" from the window, so it's not that big of a deal to toss that rad into the loop. I plan to take measurements under load with the rad outside and inside, so it should answer some interesting questions.

Peltiers, also known as TECs get very hot on one side and cool on the other. You have to cool the hot side of the TEC with cooling or it lets the smoke out. Meaning you'll be using TEC's to cool the rad and a rad loop to cool the TEC. Not counting the very high amp 24 VDC PSU just for the TECs, it's not cheap.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=164384

They have gone out of favor in the WC world.

Steven-1979 said:

I'm actually curious to find this out myself. I've always thought the weakest link in watercooling (in terms of carrying away the heat from the cpu) is the air used to cool radiators. I mean in the water and copper you have substances that can carry away so much heat and have such a high thermal conductivity, but in the end the weakest chain is that you have to eventually get rid of the heat using air. I'm really curious to see what kind of effect using 3-4x colder air on that radiator will have. The end of the case is about 6" from the window, so it's not that big of a deal to toss that rad into the loop. I plan to take measurements under load with the rad outside and inside, so it should answer some interesting questions.

Click to expand...

It will help a lot using cold air. All you have to worry about is condensation but it's not like your running into the very negative numbers. When you turn the PC on, open the window and slide the rad out. Should be interesting!

Conumdrum said:

Peltiers, also known as TECs get very hot on one side and cool on the other. You have to cool the hot side of the TEC with cooling or it lets the smoke out. Meaning you'll be using TEC's to cool the rad and a rad loop to cool the TEC. Not counting the very high amp 24 VDC PSU just for the TECs, it's not cheap.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=164384

They have gone out of favor in the WC world.

Click to expand...

Yup! I was actually planning to go tec from the start, but it's such a pain that I figured I'd do this to buy a few months while I learn more. I have a spare 585W psu with 40 amps on the 12v rails I planned to use as a dedicated psu for the tec. So far I'm considering two things:

1) Use 2 big tecs sandwiched in between waterblocks to cool down the water in a loop and use that loop to cool the system. That loop will have no radiators, just waterblocks and a pump. Then use the radiators in a seperate loop to cool the tecs.

2) Use the radiators and current loop to cool the system and toss a weak tec onto the 120mm radiator to get rid of an extra 100-200W or so of heat from the current loop. I plan to use my spare (at that time) heatsink/fan thats listed in my sig to cool that weak tec. The problem is the hs/f would only be able to cool a certain amount of heat so I'd be using a weak tec. But in that case, the loop is also being cooled by two other radiators.

Another bonus of #2 would be that at idle when not much heat is being generated, if the tec overshoots temps below ambient, the radiators will heat the water preventing condensation.

Conumdrum said:

When you turn the PC on, open the window and slide the rad out. Should be interesting!

Click to expand...

Thats the plan ... or maybe even just when I'm running heavy loads. I'll have to see how it turns out. Another good thing about having it outside is that I can use a couple of loud fans I'd be too annoyed to use inside. My mobo came with an external molex connector so it should be easy to just plug them in while in use.

What I learned about TECS is they can cool up to say, 125 watts. Unfortunately they also generate 100+ watts on the hot side PLUS the 125 watts pulled from the cool side. So to cool 125 watts or so, you actually need to cool 225 watts. Thats why they suck. Peeps used to use them when the TDP of chips was no where near the load capabilities of TECs and were able to get below ambient temps for massive OC. Now OC chips blow away the capabilities of TECs.

Also, the TEC in your usage will only cool the tiny bit of water next to the wall of the rad you put the TEC on. So most of the water will not see any benefit as it rushes through the rad.

What the heck, give it a try. I think it's futile.

lol, now you can see why I'm holding that off for a few months. There are a bunch of problems to overcome with it. But tecs are so cheap ... like $15 for a 400W one on ebay. I'm so tempted. I heard if you get a powerful tec and run it severely undervolved, it's much more efficient. Like a 400W tec running on only 5v = about 130W but more efficient. I'm still playing around with ideas how to make it work for under $50. If all else fails, I'd just go the more expensive route (option#1)

Update - this mess is everything put together. leak tested it for 4 hours, then again for 10 hours as I slept (though I got paranoid and woke up like every hour or smething). The temps are nice ... except for my graphics card VRM temps which are now cooled by a heatsink. The little rad at the end is what will slide out the window if needed.

about 1 hour's worth of gaming followed by a break then about 45 minute's worth. Graphics was stock 1st session and overclocked to 700/1450/1300 2nd session. CPU is an E8500 at a little over 4ghz both sessions (plan to push it further, but only had it for 1 day so far). Game was left 4 dead at max settings.

GPU temp goes up about 2-3C, core temp about 4C (core1 sensor is stuck and doesn't go below 40C which is why it looks like a straight line), gpu memory stays real low ... only thing that goes up is the VRM (it and the memory are cooled by a GTX200 heatsink)

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/7428/59152648ce3.jpg